RoHa Brewing Project joins Utah Beer News for the inaugural episode of our Virtual Taproom video series.

Co-Founders Rob Phillips and Chris Haas visit with Tim Haran to discuss a variety of topics, including:

• Fuzzy Pucker Peach Sour: A returning favorite on draft that is now available in 16-ounce cans (and on draft)
• The latest happenings at the RoHa Brewing Project taproom
• A sneak-peek at RoHa’s upcoming sour releases
• Yet another sneak-peek, this time at a hard seltzer line in the works
• And more!

About the Utah Beer News Virtual Taproom

Utah Beer News conducts 15-minute video interviews with brewers, breweries, and everyday imbibers. These brief conversations are recorded virtually. They are uploaded the same day (or the next day) to the Utah Beer News YouTube channel.

Instead of the more in-depth interviews and brewery histories typical of the Utah Beer News Podcast episodes and Brewery Profile articles, these bite-sized conversations feature so-called “newsy” information. We talk about new beer releases, upcoming events, and general happenings in and around Utah’s craft breweries.

If you’re a brewer or brewery representative — or even an everyday imbiber with a story to share — and would like to participate in an upcoming episode, please fill out the contact form.

RoHa Brewing Project Transcript

The following is a slightly edited transcript of our conversation. And here’s a previous article we wrote about RoHa Brewing Project.

[Tim Haran]

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining Utah Beer News for our latest in one-on-one conversations with brewers, breweries, and everyday imbibers. I’m Tim Haran, founder of Utah Beer News. And today, we’re talking to Rob Phillips and Chris Haas of RoHa Brewing Project.

[Rob Phillips/Chris Haas]

Hey, how are you doing. How’s it going out there.

[Tim Haran]

It’s going pretty good. I’m trying a couple new things here and I appreciate as always you guys kind of helping me out being a guinea pig with technology and whatnot. We’ll give this a shot.

I’ve visited RoHa a few times in the last year to pick up beer-to-go and visited you guys in the taproom but I know a lot of things are still up in the air, a little bit out of the ordinary. Can you guys just give us an update on key things beer drinkers should know about RoHa in March 2021? The taproom situation, hours, you’ve got a patio now. Maybe just give a high-level view of what’s going on at RoHa.

[Rob Phillips]

Sure. A lot has changed but a lot has stayed the same, too. We’re still offering curbside pickup for those people that don’t feel comfortable getting out of their car and coming inside. We have opened our taproom with limited seating, trying to keep people distanced and safe that way.

And we still have our patio open outside as well. If you have a hearty soul on a cold day you can enjoy a beer outside as well. We’re open Monday through Saturday 12-8 p.m., trying to keep that consistent. We’re also always rotating beers here in the taproom. I think that’s a great reason to get out and check it out.

[Tim Haran]

For sure. I know there’s some activity at the taproom right now. Maybe we’ll jump right into that. You’ve got a beer release today as we record this and you’re doing some construction it sounds like. What’s going on?

[Rob Phillips]

Absolutely, I’ll talk about the beer release first. That’s the part I’m most excited about. We’re just releasing this beer, this Fuzzy Pucker Peach Sour, which has been a favorite on tap. I’ll talk about the taproom briefly but if we could, I’d like Chris to talk about what the beer is and the flavor profile a little bit and then I can talk about the taproom expansion.

[Tim Haran]

Yeah, for sure, that would be great.

[Chris Haas]

You know, we put this beer on the last few years, actually the last three years, just on draft. A draft-only beer that would come out. Nice peach flavor. The last couple of years we did it with fresh Utah peaches. Soured them.

Actually, the original form of this beer is we took sour peaches and put beer on them. So the beer wasn’t sour, the fruit was.

Now, this is a sour beer that we put peaches into on this one for the canning. We’ve just always wanted it. It’s a nice, really sour flavor but also has a couple of different sours. You know you can get lactic sour and also acidic sour. We’ve combined those two so it’s not all that really puckery, you know, kind of feeling to it.

You still get some of that but you get that acidic too, which gives you a different level, more depth to that sour. Great peach nose and flavor to it. It really comes off really well. It drinks really easy. A little too easy.

[Tim Haran]

A little more of a tanginess to it, would you say, than a sourness?

[Chris Haas]

Oh, it’s sour. I’m just saying a lot of sours, not that there’s anything wrong with it, but many sours are mainly lactic instead of lactic and acidic, and I like the depth of both of them to bring it out. So it’s sour. But it’s not just lactic. It has the acidic as well.

[Tim Haran]

Awesome. Today, March 11, it’s available at the taproom in 16-ounce cans. On draft? Is that? Not draft until next week. OK.

[Chris Haas]

16-ounce cans or four-packs. By the case. By the pallets. If you want a pallet you’ll have to call ahead.

[Tim Haran]

For sure. Well that’s an exciting one and I haven’t made it down to the taproom to pick it up yet but I am drinking one of yours. It’s a re-release, so it was new last year, but a new batch, it’s Transom Dark Pale Ale. I like this beer so much. It’s nice and there’s a little bit of pine to it but also it’s just really easy drinking.

[Chris Haas]

Yeah, we’ve put an old-school hop in that. Galena and I really like it and people go crazy for it. Galena the hop on there. Yeah, Galena is the hop on there, at least the predominant hop. There’s quite a few hops in there, but that’s the predominant hop on the nose. Really piney and estery and kind of that oily resiny kind of flavor.

[Tim Haran]

Sure. Well, we’ve both got beers now, so that’s great. Let’s talk about what’s going on in the taproom for people who are going to come visit you. Maybe some people have visited you in a year and, at least not gone inside, so what are people going to be able to expect next time they come visit.

[Rob Phillips]

Well, if they come today or in the next several weeks it will look like a construction site because it is.

But we had the opportunity to take a look at the space right next door to us. The building wasn’t occupied. So we’re going to end up taking the whole building actually will be ours. We’re doing a little bit of construction to remove some walls and reconfigure some things.

And really because of this pandemic and the need for more spacing and also more space, we’ve looked at that and said, man, we could have an opportunity to really add some drinking space and get more people in here in a safe way and keep our employees safe and everybody safe during this time.

It sort of just fell into our laps as an opportunity to proceed with this. We’re taking out walls and demolishing walls and putting in flooring and paint and doing all the stuff to make it a nice, big drinking space.

[Tim Haran]

That’s awesome. Wasn’t it right before the pandemic that you did some more remodeling where you kind of reconfigured the taproom a bit? You guys have been busy.

[Rob Phillips]

It was last February, we spent a day and kind of moved our package store around and added a couple little tables and things like that. We just sort of gained some traction and more people fitting in the taproom. We could fit six or eight more people, something like that.

And then things came crashing down in the middle of March last year. That space never really got utilized. It’ll be nice to expand and have the space we wanted from the start.

[Tim Haran]

I don’t like to harp too much on the last year and all the bad stuff that happened but I was just impressed with the resilience of the breweries. You guys kept it going and kept cranking out the beers, making it safe for everybody, building a patio so people could enjoy their beers outside, really doing an innovative curbside to-go type thing.

[Chris Haas]

We tried to do as much as we could, Tim, but really the resilience is the beer drinkers of the craft community around here because they were set to come to our place and come to other breweries as well but actually go to the breweries to get the beer so the breweries could get the most of it and make sure those breweries stayed in business.

I was really surprised and really touched by how many people getting out and trying to visit their local breweries more than they ever had.

[Rob Phillips]

Yeah, the local outpouring of support was pretty amazing. The people that would show up week after week to buy beer directly from us and check in on us to make sure everything was going OK. Things got a little crazy when everything first came crashing down.

I remember, you know, just Chris in the brewery trying to scramble and look at draft demand vs. canned demand and all that changing all of a sudden. So it was a little tumultuous for a bit but really the community came out to support local breweries like us and every other brewery in town, so it was pretty cool to see.

[Tim Haran]

It was cool to see everybody rally around that. And right before everything went sideways you guys were about to celebrate your three-year anniversary. So now we’re coming up on four-year anniversary for RoHa Brewing Project. What’s the last four years been like for you guys and what are you looking forward to for the next four, eight, 12 years?

[Chris Haas]

Well, luckily when we started this brewery, we had a pandemic plan in place.

[Rob Phillips]

I missed that section in the business plan.

[Chris Haas]

It puts a strain on all your plans and you have to, I think really know when to scrap your plans and start anew and do something else but I think we situated ourself for the pandemic to really jump on the pandemic and take over some of the beer market and really make more of an impact on the shelves.

[Tim Haran]

Well you guys were pretty well set up with packaged beer and I’m sure that was a big advantage for you guys.

[Rob Phillips]

Yeah, we were lucky there that we were already set up to package and our revenue stream was split up pretty well between package and grocery store package and liquor stores and draft beer. We lost a leg to our stool but we didn’t lose the stool altogether.

[Tim Haran]

That’s a great way to look at it.

Moving forward then, you’ve got this Fuzzy Pucker who’s the newest release in the RoHa lineup. What are you guys kind of focusing on or what’s maybe, yeah, a focus for the next few months? 16-ounce cans, it sounds like might be making an appearance. Anything else people should know about what you guys have going on?

[Chris Haas]

Well, for one we have the 16-ounce cans, right now it’s just in the sour series because this Fuzzy Pucker is a sour series. We have two other sours that are going to come out. They’re going to be year-round.

So we’re going to have the Fuzzy Pucker into the Bumpy Pucker, which is a raspberry sour, into a Dimple Pucker, which is a blood orange sour.

So it’s going to be a whole sour series. And then obviously wrap back around and back into the Fuzzy Pucker.

[Tim Haran]

OK. Obviously sour beers have been a trend. Is that kind of what you’re seeing or is it something you really wanted to brew. What was the, I guess, philosophy behind doing a sour series?

[Chris Haas]

A little of both. I guess it’s easier to do a series sometimes or a seasonal kind of sour than to do one-offs, then it’s hard to do another one because then you have two sours in the market. So that’s why we went with the seasonals.

We could put one out, then put another one out, then put another one out but not have them competing against each other in the market. I think there’s a lot of people that like them and I think there’s not that many to choose from right now.

We were like, you know, I think this, we’ve had such great success with the Fuzzy Pucker, let’s see if we put it on the shelves and can it. And then, you know, we just looked at different things to make it stand out to make it different and that’s why we went with 16-ounce cans.

I think that will be good. I don’t know if we’ll come out with other beers in 16-ounce cans, but it’s gone well with this stuff.

[Tim Haran]

The can just looks awesome. Maybe you can hold that up again. Did Rob have the can? Yeah, you had the can.

[Rob Phillips/Chris Haas]

That’s a good-looking label. Too much shadow. Back slowly. Hey Rob, back slowly. Oh. Now it’s just washed out. Sorry. I know. It’s like the light from the window is too much down here.

But yeah, it’s a cool-looking can. For me, anyway, to be in the 16-ounce we’ve seen a lot of other breweries do 16-ounce cans, never really saw any advantage one way or another. But for us, it was a way to maybe differentiate another brand and get it on the shelf where people would see it and buy it.

Again, like Chris said, we wanted to do a sour. To me, when I’m out there in the market I see there’s only two beers on the shelf. There’s IPAs and then there’s another beer.

And so I think it’s fun to have, you know, we have a great session IPA on the grocery store shelves but we also like to be known as somebody who can put out other beers too that are delicious and sell well and people enjoy. So this is another way to do that.

[Tim Haran]

Yeah. Well you guys have been putting out a lot of good beers. And not just IPAs. Like you said, you’ve done Porters, this Dark Pale Ale is really good that I like. You’ve done that Maltese Cross, pretty close to an OG RoHa beer, a red ale. Yeah. So yeah, you’ve kind of worked the gamut of beer styles, which I think is really cool.

[Rob Phillips]

Yeah, I think it’s important, too. It seems like the consumer today is looking for a new beer every time they shop for beer and so I think other than just IPAs or pale ales, having a wide breadth of beer offerings is important out there. Definitely.

[Chris Haas]

Yeah, we’ve got an experimental beer out right now. Our barrel-aged Nights Out. Our Nights Out comes in at almost 9% and we put this on Desolation Distilling whiskey barrels and this is a trial run because we’re going to come out with cans later this year of it. It tastes delicious. At 9% it packs a punch.

[Tim Haran]

Is this your first barrel-aged beer.

[Chris Haas]

I think officially, yeah. We’ve done some for draft last year and done some small-run stuff. But this is the first time we had a bigger run of it.

[Tim Haran]

I had a note about that one, too, because that one it’s not just a typical stout, right. It’s got a Belgian yeast or something in there.

[Chris Haas]

Yeah, we wanted to do something different so it’s got a Belgian yeast and some Belgian candy to really make it more interesting in the end in the finish the malt character to it. And a little bit of spice to it. Doesn’t come through all that much, but just a hint and that’s what we wanted to do it.

And it’s nice and dry. I mean it dries out for a stout so it’s really easy drinking. It drinks more like a Foreign Stout, which is a really big dry stout. It’s just really dry, really chocolaty. And high alcohol.

[Tim Haran]

Well thanks guys. I really appreciate you taking the time. Is there anything else before we go that you wanted to touch on about what you’ve got going on.

[Rob Phillips]

I guess just looking through my notes, the last big thing coming out of RoHa right now is we’re actually going to launch a seltzer line this spring as well.

We’ve sort of rebranded as Gemini Seltzer RoHa’s Evil Twin to the small craft brewer, but we’re going to launch what we’ll call a twin pack.

It will have two seltzers in it. It will have a black cherry seltzer and then a white grapefruit seltzer as well.

We’re working through that process right now and have been doing some test batches. If you’re a seltzer drinker, they’re delicious and I think it will be fun to experiment in that world, too. So stay tuned for that.

[Tim Haran]

Awesome. You said that’s coming up in the next when?

[Rob Phillips]

It should be this spring. I had a more definitive date but I’m working with the DABC now so you can’t pin anything down exactly.

[Tim Haran]

Thank you Rob and Chris for taking time to jump on with Utah Beer News. Kind of a virtual taproom.

I’ll go ahead and finish my Transom and you can sell some Fuzzy Pucker.

[Chris Haas]

I look forward to having you in and doing a proper interview with some proper beers and some cheers, some toasting when this is over.

[Tim Haran]

Hopefully it’s just around the corner. I think so. A lot of shots are being given.

[Chris Haas]

Can you see that? Freshly vaccinated. Freshly vaccinated just for this interview.

[Tim Haran]

Aw, thank you. Keeping it safe. I appreciate that.