David Miller, director of operations at Ski Utah partner Wasatch and Squatters, has long had a passion for brewing beer. But also for doing it in a sustainable way. The popular Utah brewery, born in the resort town of Park City in 1986, has put innovative practices in place to recycle cans, used grain, water, and more. Last Chair headed to the Wasatch Squatters taproom in Salt Lake City to get insights from Miller and to enjoy a Last One Down lager, a beer brewed in partnership with Ski Utah.
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Miller grew up in Oklahoma – not exactly a ski destination. But his parents were Colorado skiers, so the family often skied the Rocky Mountains of Colorado as well as New Mexico. His passion for brewing first played out when he volunteered to help out at Oklahoma’s Prairie Artisan Ales. His brewery journey took him to North Carolina and then Dallas. While in Texas, his boss was in Utah, and the lure of the Wasatch – both the brewery and the mountains – brought him to Salt Lake City just a few years ago. He sees the mountains as a great place to raise a family, and him, his wife and young kids are now making Solitude Mountain Resort their home mountain.
David Miller and Tom Kelly at Squatters & Wasatch Taproom
But as much as he loves brewing, his other strong passion is being a steward of the planet on which we live. It’s ingrained in Miller’s life, from the lessons he teaches his young kids to the practices he puts in place at Wasatch & Squatters.
“Sustainability does not always come easy – it's not just a flip of a switch,” said Miller. “So if we're able to do something more efficient and more sustainable, even though it may be really hard to do, we're going to take that challenge on.”
It’s mid-day at the Wasatch Squatter’s taproom as guests slide up to the bar for a lunchtime brew. Meanwhile, Miller is diving deeper into the myriad ways Wasatch & Squatters is creating ways to innovate its operation to be more sustainable.
Enjoying a cold beer out in Utah's Mountains
It’s about finding an effective way to recycle cans that are kicked off the bottling line. Or reusing water used to cool hot tanks during the process. Or finding a new home for the tons of grain used during brewing – which makes for some happy cattle on Utah ranches. Wasatch & Squatters also substitutes nitrogen for carbon dioxide, a process that is discussed in-depth in this educational episode.
“I couldn't imagine being part of an industry that didn't care about this,” said Miller.
“Being a part of a sustainable industry means everything. Whatever your views on sustainability or the environment, it matters. And if there’s any improvement we can do, we’re going to do it. We’re going to try to leave this world better than we found it.” - David Miller
The conversation often swings back to his kids, who have learned early on the importance of loading up the truck with cans to take to the recycling center and many other sustainable habits.
“I have two boys and just instilling sustainability practices in them is really important to my wife and I. And they’re already taking note of it, such as throwing their banana peels in the compost pile.”
Those practices carry over to their day-to-day life, including their time on snow.
“Every time I’m on the slopes with my family, I know I have to take care of this place. I pick up that piece of trash or recycle that piece of cardboard. And that carries through our business. And we know we’ve got a lot of people who get up on the mountain who have the same mindset – which is great.”
This episode of Last Chair takes you inside the brewery to learn about how Wasatch Squatters keeps sustainability a key priority. And while the sustainability practices at the brewery are on a high level, Miller easily relates them to things each of us can do ourselves. So grab a Wasatch Last One Down (the official beer of Ski Utah!) and enjoy this conversation with David Miller.
Learn more about Wasatch & Squatters in this episode with the founder of Wasatch Brewery, Greg Schirf!
Transcript
|00:00:00| Tom Kelly: I love these on-location podcasts with Last Chair from Ski Utah. We have been this year in a distillery. We have been in a chocolate factory. We have been out at the resorts in prior years. We've been down in the bottom of a snow pit, but today we're at Wasatch Squatters in Salt Lake City talking with David Miller, director of operations for the brewery. And David, welcome to Last Chair.
|00:00:22| David Miller: Yeah, thanks for having me. Looking forward to talking about our process of sustainability and everything that goes into it.
|00:00:28| Tom Kelly: We're going to talk about that in just a second. But I got to ask, have you been out yet this year?
|00:00:32| David Miller: Oh yeah. Yeah. You know it.
|00:00:34| Tom Kelly: What do you what do you call home up in the mountains?
|00:00:36| David Miller: Really Solitude at the moment, mainly because I have a seven and a six-year-old who we're getting on the on the slopes. But whenever I can get up to Alta or Snowbird.
|00:00:46| Tom Kelly: They're beautiful. I was actually up at Alta yesterday. It was awesome up there. So plenty of season left ahead. Set the stage for us. We're at the Wasatch Squatters Brewery in Salt Lake City. Just kind of give us a little sense of where we are and what goes on here.
|00:01:01| David Miller: Yeah, of course we're here at 1700 South, Third West. We always say behind this big Costco. Reason is it's kind of an unassuming building. You know, if you don't know what those big silos are or bulk CO2 tank, you might not know that this is a production facility, but you come inside the walls – we've packed a lot into a small space. Geen here for many years. This is really two separate buildings that we took over the second portion a while back. Installed a bottling line at the time. So this has been our home for a lot of years, and hopefully it continues to be for the foreseeable future.
|00:01:39| Tom Kelly: You're producing a lot of beer here.
|00:01:40| David Miller: We are. We're producing a lot of beer. Which is good.
|00:01:44| Tom Kelly: Do you do you have other breweries in the area? I know that at some points you've had brewing facilities at some of the brew pubs. What's that like now?
|00:01:53| David Miller: Yeah. So we used to own Top of Main in Park City. Roadhouse Grill, Squatters downtown, and the two airport locations. And when we got purchased by Monster Energy back in February of 22 – they've never been in the restaurant industry. They didn't want to be. So we sold that back to Salt Lake Brewing Company, all those locations. And so now it's just just this place. We do have an off-site facility where we store raw materials, finished goods at. Um, but for all intents and purposes, this is our only location.
|00:02:26| Tom Kelly: There's a lot of brewing history represented here in this brewery. And my good friend Greg Schirf, who we had on the Last Chair podcast a few years back. I encourage folks to check that episode out. We'll link it up in the in the show notes. But there is a lot of history here with the Wasatch Brewery and with Squatters and them coming together. Can you just give us a little bit of a sense of perspective of what this brewery has actually meant to Utah?
|00:02:50| David Miller: Yeah, I'm going to try to do my best. because they have meant a lot, and especially Greg and everything that he has done and did. It really put beer on the map for Utah. You know, of course, Fisher Brewing was part of the scene back in the day. But whenever people think of Utah, they don't think of beer. We're kind of trying to change that. And Greg made a lot of headway with that. Things like Polygamy Porter certainly helped. And the laughs that has gotten and continue to get, you know, people come in our store just looking for a Polygamy t-shirt. But, you know, the combination of Wasatch and Squatters, they were separate, came together really to solidify the craft beer scene. And in Utah, that really meant a lot. And we don't look past that. We don't forget it. We have a really robust history of not just making beer, but doing it the right way. Highest quality, efficiency, sustainability. And we just try to continue on that legacy every single day.
|00:04:02| Tom Kelly: These were actually two separate breweries that came together, right?
|00:04:05| David Miller: They were. Yeah.
|00:04:06| Tom Kelly: So we're in the taproom here today, and I apologize if we have any background noise. We are in a taproom. And that's where a lot of skiers tend to gravitate to. But you just just looking over at the taps that you've got here, you're pouring a lot of different beers here.
|00:04:22| David Miller: Yeah we are. We've got 24 taps – half of which are our mainstays, our staples, you know, the apricots, the juicies. The other half are beers that we have created on our small batch system. So not to get too much into the weeds too quickly, but we've got a 50-barrel system as our main system, but we also have a five-barrel system that our Brewers Cellar packaging people get to have fun with. And, yeah, everything on the right side there is, is small batch stuff, which is really, really cool.
|00:04:55| Tom Kelly: There are a lot of choices in beer today. I'm a beer aficionado, and I love pretty much everything except sours, but I do like pretty much everything. But if you kind of go back in time a little bit, what were some of the core beers that Wasatch or squatters brewed kind of back in the day that were really the mainstay before things got a little bit more diverse?
|00:05:15| David Miller: Yeah, and I do encourage people to listen to your podcast with Greg. It's a it's a really fascinating one. But hefeweizens, porters, wheats, those are really the staples because, they were cheap to make. They were easy to make. They traveled well. And, you know, back in that day, Greg was just trying to scrape by. So, you know, as he talks about it was just wheat and two row and not a lot of hops. So it was stable for a long time. And, people drank them and they still do to this day.
|00:05:50| Tom Kelly: Let's talk a little bit about Last One Down. We've actually got one in front of us here. This was a beer that you Wasatch did I think a little bit in partnership with Ski Utah. Big announcement party here a few years ago. But talk about Last One Down and what this beer is about.
|00:06:07| David Miller: Yeah. So Last One Down. You know, we want it to be the beer of people's choice whenever they go on the mountain. And so that's why we created it. We've been – Squatters, and Wasatch – has been the official beer partner of Ski Utah for many years now. But we never really had their logo with our logo on a can. And so what we wanted to do is, you know, put those two powerful logos together on a can that people will take on the mountain whenever they're doing any activity, whether it's mountain biking, skiing, snowboarding, trail running, even. And it all came together really through this partnership and it's working out really well for us.
|00:06:51| Tom Kelly: We're going to circle back to Last One Down in just a minute before we head into the show break. But David, let's learn a little bit more about you. You've been in Utah for a few years now, and what was your pathway to get here and find yourself at Wasatch Squatters?
|00:07:05| David Miller: Yeah. So I've been working with Monster Brewing Company for it'll be nine years come January. Long story short – grew up in Oklahoma, got in the beer industry back in 2016 at our location in North Carolina. So, I worked there for a few years, then got transferred to our Dallas location. Spent a couple of years in Dallas. We weren't crazy about it – my wife and boys. My boss was based out of here, and we always knew that we wanted to live in the mountains. And so, spending a couple of years in Dallas kept poking and prodding my boss to get us up to Utah. You know, we'd love to live there. Finally, that opportunity came in 2021. And we've just been loving it ever since. We hope to be here for a really long time. Utah is an incredible place, and just so happens that we have a great brewery here also that continues my career.
|00:08:00| Tom Kelly: How did an Oklahoma boy get into skiing?
|00:08:04| David Miller: It wasn't easy. My parents grew up in Colorado – moved to Oklahoma for my dad's job. And so they still had that itch. You know, whenever we were old enough to go, they took my sister and I to Red River, New Mexico, when I was about ten, and it just clicked instantly. We loved it and stayed in a true like ski-in/ski-out condo or ski ride up to the the porch. And you know, once you get that bug, as you know, as a skier, it stays there and you got to itch it whenever you can. So didn't get many opportunities, but I did have a lot of family in Colorado. So we would go up there during the winters. Skied those those resorts. And then again, you know, just growing up, I wanted my boys to have that opportunity. So, no skiing in Dallas, Texas. So, again, that's one reason why we're so happy to have landed here.
|00:09:00| Tom Kelly: When you were working out east for the brewery, did you hit the mountains there? There are a few places.
|00:09:05| David Miller: Yeah, there are a few. We didn't really have that opportunity. You know, I was just trying to get my foot in the door as a as a cellar man in the industry. You know, I remember my, uh, interview just telling the guy who interviewed me, just. I will do whatever it takes. I just want to make beer, do hard work with my hands. And so between the long hours and then working overnights. You know, this was before my wife and I had kids. We were just trying to get by, and we weren't really aware of the ski resorts out there until about a year before we moved. And so we just never really had the opportunity, Unfortunately.
|00:09:42| Tom Kelly: So, where do you spend most of your time on the slopes here?
|00:09:46| David Miller: It's been most of it. Solitude. I've got a seven-year-old and a six-year-old, um, seven-year-old's a little ripper so he can keep up with me. But the six-year-old, you know, it's all about just having fun at that age. So Solitude is a great resort for families, really, for anyone. You can make it as easy or hard as you want. That's the great thing about that mountain. And we're just at we live at the mouth of Big Cottonwood. So, you know, traffic aside, it's 25 minutes from our driveway to the hill. But when I'm by myself, Alta, Snowbird or where you'll find me beautiful.
|00:10:19| Tom Kelly: And I should ask, too, how did you get into brewing? And we're going to talk a little bit about sustainability, but, you know, what was your passion? Was it for brewing? Was it for sustainability? And you just combine the two?
|00:10:31| David Miller: Yeah, it really became something that I saw as an opportunity to do something with my hands, work hard in an industry that you know. Sam Calagione, the owner of Dogfish Head, has famously said it is 99% hassle-free. You know, he's my language. But it's true. Everybody's friendly in this industry. And we kind of spoke before this about how we have a great culture here, and I just wanted to be part of a great culture and happened to land with Monster Brewing back in January of 2016. The thing that got me into it was I was living in Tulsa, working in the energy industry, and I didn't really like that. Volunteered at Prairie Artisan Ales with Chase Healey, filling bottles and, working where we could for pizza and, you know, a beer here and there. And I thought, you know, this is pretty cool. This is something that you work hard, do something with my hands. See, quick turnarounds worked in the wine industry for a little bit, and that wine takes too long. You know, I need I need instant satisfaction. I'm us, so I.
|00:11:40| Tom Kelly: Love that.
|00:11:41| David Miller: We're only taking a couple of weeks. It it I fit right into it.
|00:11:46| Tom Kelly: You know, David, you talked about the culture of the industry. And I think the culture of the taproom. We're in a taproom. It's got all of the componentry that you'd expect in a in a small taproom. But here, here in Utah, we've seen an evolution of sorts over the past decade. A lot more tap rooms and a lot more small breweries popping up here. Talk a little bit about not so much the culture of the industry itself, but the the culture of the people who enjoy beer. They like to come to a taproom like here at Wasatch Squatters.
|00:12:13| David Miller: Yeah, certainly. You know, whenever you go to a taproom, a brewery taproom, you're almost expecting to find people that you would enjoy having a beer with at the airport or, um, at a local bar or what have you. It's people who are in breweries are usually in pretty good moods. They're they're happy-go-lucky, you know? Um, and the fact that Utah's beer scene is really growing and you've got great taprooms like TF and Fisher and a handful of other places, you know, you know, whenever you go into one of those places that you're going to have a good time, you're going to be around good company. And that's not always easy to find. Um, but it's almost a guarantee every time you do so.
|00:13:00| Tom Kelly: Well, I think that we've got these Last One Down sitting in front of us, and we should probably … we okay to open these up?
|00:13:10| David Miller: Oh, yeah.
|00:13:12| Tom Kelly: Okay. So we're going to we're going to talk about Last One Down a little bit more about what goes into this beer.
|00:13:18| David Miller: We'd be foolish not to open these here.
|00:13:20| Tom Kelly: Cheers.
|00:13:11| David Miller: Cheers.
|00:13:22| Tom Kelly: That's a nice beer. So, let's break this down a little bit. This is a lager. Last One Down. Introduced a few years ago by Wasatch Squatters in conjunction with Ski Utah. Just tell us a little bit about this beer. What are what are some of the components of it now? I'll give you some of my thoughts too, but I want to know what's the real science to this beer?
|00:13:44| David Miller: The real science is it's simplicity. There's not a lot of different malts in here. It's really just a couple and not a lot of hops. You know, I can't help but go back to that Greg Scherf podcast where he's just talking about some of the best beers are the simplest, and that's what we wanted to do with this one. You know, on the back, malty, crisp, clean. That's what you get with this beer. And, again, the reason that we wanted to make it is we wanted people to grab this beer for when they're either on the mountain or done with their mountain activity and know that they're going to get something that's really crisp, clean, enjoyable. You know, if you ask most brewers, their beer of choice is going to be a lager. Lagers don't sell the best. But, you know, if brewers had it their way, it'd be an IPA here and there, but 20 types of lagers. So it was kind of, you know, a personal thing. We wanted to make a beer that we would enjoy. And we certainly we certainly did. So.
|00:14:47| Tom Kelly: Well, as I was telling you earlier, I like any beer, not so fond of sours, but I do go back to roots and lagers and pilsners are pretty much the basic beers and something that I've always enjoyed. What I've really enjoyed about Last One Down is I know you said that it's not overly malty, but it's got to me. It's got just enough and it's got really good strong back notes of malt in there. So, you know, I just think it's a really distinctive lager because of that.
|00:15:18| David Miller: Yeah. Thanks. And that's that's certainly intentional. You know, you if you want to make a hoppy lager you can do so. But that's not our intent with Last One Down. Um, and you know, we're always trying to tweak our beers. We're never fully satisfied with our beers, even though we enjoy all of them. But that constant pursuit of perfection. Right? We know we'll never attain it, but we can certainly try. And so, um, this beer isn't always going to taste the same. You know, you might see tweaks here and there, but it's certainly going to be for the better. We're not going to put out anything that, we wouldn't want to drink.
|00:15:51| Tom Kelly: So, so, you know, to that point, I've always wondered about this. So you have a recipe, you have a recipe you settled on. When you release a beer, there's various things you can tweak, but how much of that tweaking goes on with beers? Are you adjusting the malts and the hops as time goes on?
|00:16:05| David Miller: Yeah. How much time have you got?
|00:16:06| Tom Kelly: Um …
|00:16:07| David Miller: I don't think people realize how much science goes into beer. Um, you know, there's a brewer. Certainly do. Because there's a lot of good, good brewers out there who are making a lot of good beer. Part of that reason is the science involved. It's it's really, you know, a very large bag of things that can be tweaked from the temperature of the water that we use in the brew house. That's a huge factor to the water itself. Water, yeast, hops, malt. Those are the four components you need to make a beer. And they're all really, really important. But most people don't think about water. We've got good water here. You know, over the course of a life of a beer in from brewhouse to packaging, we do about 150 tests on it in our lab. And that's not including the test that we do after it's packaged. So we've got a lot of data and we're data driven. But at the end of the day, you know, we've been trained sensory-wise to be able to drink something and say, um, I'm not really liking that flavor, you know, what can we do to tweak it? And there's a, there's a laundry list of things.
|00:17:23| Tom Kelly: I know you've got a lot of data, but do you also rely on people just sitting down and having a beer and telling you what they think.
|00:17:29| David Miller: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Um, you know, we've had instances where people say, you know, I thought that last batch of the Last One Down was a little more malty or a little more hoppy. And we go, well, it might have been it might have not been, but we listened to it, you know. And so we'll go back. We keep archive beer. We'll go and taste it. So, you know, actually, they were right. What did we do on that batch that might have made it different, because at the end of the day, what we want is whenever you pick up the Last One Down, it's going to be the same every single time. And that's really difficult to do. You know, you've got to give kudos to the Coors and Budweiser of the world that you know what you're getting every time. And for a craft brewery like us, it's hard to do.
|00:18:12| Tom Kelly: Yeah, I can imagine that. I love your example. I mean, I go way back in time. Growing up in Wisconsin, when we would make ski trips out to Colorado during college, we would always bring back a truckload, of course. I mean, we'd bring back a lot. Of course, because that was like. That was the big beer. Just this morning, I was just driving through Salt Lake City and I'm following a Coors Banquet semi-truck, you know, and I was like, wow. I remember skiing in Vail and picking up a case of that to bring home. But, you know, beer brings memories, right?
|00:18:40| David Miller: It does. Yeah. And I've got a lot of memories with a lot of beers. And, you know, again, lucky enough to be working for this company for almost nine years now. And, um, it might be weird to hear, especially in Utah, that some of my fondest memories with my children are at breweries. It's just something that brings people together, and especially whenever you're sipping a good one, you know that that makes it even more special.
|00:19:09| Tom Kelly: So you got Last One Down in 16 now, and you're going to make a change there.
|00:19:13| David Miller: We are. Yeah. So 16 ounce 12-pack can be a little, a little much. You know, you see it in the grocery store, you might think, oh, I don't need that much beer. We beg to differ, but, I would too. We're going to put this into 12 12-ounce can. We're going to offer it in six packs and 12 packs. It's going to have a refreshed design. People will start seeing that in stores come late spring.
|00:19:41| Tom Kelly: So if you really like Last One Down, you might need to put two in your backpack.
|00:19:45| David Miller: Right? Yeah. Or the whole six-pack. You know, we're not going to we're not going to shy away from that.
|00:19:50| Tom Kelly: Sounds good. We're going to take a short break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about sustainability. There's a lot of things that are going on in the brewery here, and a lot of interesting innovations taking place here at Wasatch Squatters to really look to the future. We'll be back in just a minute with David Miller.
|00:20:50| Tom Kelly: We're back at the Wasatch Squatters Taproom here in Salt Lake City. Our guest today is Director of Operations David Miller. And David, we've talked about the beers. We've talked about Last One Down. We've still got one in front of us here. But one of the things that is really important, I know to you personally and to the brewery, is how it can be as sustainable as possible and how it can continue to put out all of these great beers and manage some of the byproducts that come with that. So can you give us a little introduction? I mean, I think first of all, just your own personal interest in this, and then we'll dive into some of the things that Wasatch Squatters has been doing.
|00:21:04| David Miller: Yeah. Of course. Personally, you know, I'm always up for a good challenge. And sustainability does not always come easy, especially when some of the times, you know, it's not just a flip of a switch. And so if we're able to do something more efficient and more sustainable, even though it may be really hard to do, we're going to take that challenge on. And that's that's something that, you know, I could speak very highly of about our crew here is that they never back down from a challenge like that. So personally, I think that's pretty great. I mentioned I have two boys, and just instilling sustainability practices in them is really important to to me and my wife. And they're already taking note of it. You know, composting at the house, things like that. They throw their banana peels in the compost pile. So whenever I say, you know, to them, hey, we've got to take a run of cans to this place or whatever. And they ask why? It's, you know, speak about the sustainable aspects of it. I think that's pretty cool. And it's pretty rewarding.
|00:22:13| Tom Kelly: Yeah, it's really cool to see that I'm from a different generation. So for us, it's a matter of learning it because we didn't get it when we were growing up. But I do see that in kids today that they understand what the compost bin is all about, what the blue recycling bin is all about. So it really does start at home, doesn't it? It really does.
|00:22:30| David Miller: You know, we got the blue, black and green bins in the driveway and any bit of trash the boys are asking blue black or green you know and it matters. So that's pretty cool.
|00:22:39| Tom Kelly: Beautiful here at the brewery a little bit of a different story. You've got it. Same thing, though, but on an industrial size. Yeah.
|00:22:46| David Miller: Same same concept, larger practices. So we create a lot of waste here. And you know, waste can be seen as a dirty word, but it's not always so we've got, you know, different avenues, whether it's out of the brewhouse or the cellar or the packaging. We have recycle bins, trash bins, just like we do at home. And a lot of work goes into making sure that we're doing the right thing.
|00:23:14| Tom Kelly: Let's break it down a little bit. And the first thing I want to talk about is reuse of water. And I think this is something that's, you know, you're not going to probably think about just the top of your sustainability list, but you go through a lot of water and you need to reuse some of that in some other ways.
|00:23:31| David Miller: Yeah. We use a lot of water. We use about five gallons of water for every finished good barrel, which, it's hard to put that in perspective, but it's a lot. And so, you know, we wanted to think of ways that we could reuse water. One example is we have two pumps. It's called a brewhouse knockout pump, where we send water from the brewhouse to the fermenter, and then a yeast spring pump, which circulates this tank. Those type of pumps are the type of pumps where we need to cool down with water, or else they'll get overheated. So, up until early this year, we were sending that water straight to the drain. What we started to do was recirculate that water, cool that water down. And so far, we estimate we've saved about 150,000 gallons of water this year. So to put that in perspective, you know, the average Utah household family of four uses about 22,000 gallons of water a month. So we're saving about six months worth of water of an average Utah household per year, which is a lot.
|00:24:44| Tom Kelly: And when you reuse that cooling water, does it go back into a similar cooling application? Yeah.
|00:24:52| David Miller: So it's just in a bucket with a pump that restarts it. And then if it gets too hot, we'll just add a little bit of cool water to it, and we'll change that water out once a week just so it stays fresh. But, yeah, it's it's essentially a self-contained thing. And, you know, the climate here in Salt Lake doesn't get too hot that it's not really ever a concern.
|00:25:14| Tom Kelly: One area that really intrigues me is your use of nitrogen instead of CO2. I don't know enough about the brewing process, but I know that nitrogen is a component that's often used in it. But how are you using nitrogen to replace CO2?
|00:25:32| David Miller: We try to do it in as many places as possible. One of the main places that we do it in is after we clean a fermenter, we need to pressurize it in order to make sure that it seals properly before we put beer in there. We used to use CO2 to do that and put about five pounds of CO2 on there. Let it pressurize sit, and then we just empty the tank whenever we're about to put beer in there, just releasing that CO2 to the air. Now we're using nitrogen. So while it's still not perfect, it's not CO2 just going into the atmosphere. We don't have a CO2 recovery system here. Um, possibly looking at getting one one day. But that nitrogen has saved us a lot of CO2 about call it 200 pounds, roughly of CO2 a year.
|00:26:22| Tom Kelly: That's that's amazing. The other thing that I was thinking about is that in the brewing of beer, you're using a lot of grains, malts, barley, hops, and other things, and you probably have some waste there, too. Have you figured out a way to circulate those into some other application?
|00:26:43| David Miller: Yeah, absolutely. So in 2023, we used a little over 2.6 million pounds of grain over the course of the year. In 2024, we're on track to use about 3 million. We've figured out a system, and most breweries do this, to be fair, we figure out a system to capture that spent grain, put it in trailers that a farmer comes and picks up and feeds his cattle with. So you're talking about 2.6 million pounds of grain that would normally go to the landfill, goes to feed cattle. It just works out because we've got to get rid of that somehow. He's got to feed his cattle somehow. So it's a beautiful partnership.
|00:27:25| Tom Kelly: Are there still nutrients in those grains that can benefit the cattle? Yeah.
|00:27:29| David Miller: It's one of the best things that they can eat – pigs, cattle. You know, he essentially just puts it in his troops and lets all of his animals eat it. So it's it's extremely nutrient. And they they love it.
|00:27:41| Tom Kelly: And I think the thing that, uh, that we often think of the most is just your bottling in cans, you're bottling in aluminum cans. And I imagine you've got a lot of, a lot of waste there as well.
|00:27:54| David Miller: Yeah, we try not to, but it's just part of the manufacturing process. You know, we've got a couple of different machines on our lines that will check the weights and the fill levels of cans. If those don't hit our specs, they'll get kicked off and rejected if you will. So what we do with those cans is we have these harvest bins that we take over to Wasatch Resource Recovery. They crush those cans. All that beer gets sent to their anaerobic digesters to create natural gas that heat homes in the valley. And I think we've, uh, last calculations, we've heated about 2,400 homes in the valley this year with all of our canned beer waste and then high strength bod waste that gets taken out and put in those digesters also.
|00:28:47| Tom Kelly: So I would imagine that many craft breweries are doing these same things. Do you have a good dialogue through the brewery industry to kind of share different best practices that others have said, ‘hey, this worked for us.’
|00:29:02| David Miller: Yeah, there's a Brewers Association community that, you know, you can you can pull up any topic that's been brought up. And there's quite a long list. Um, internally within Monster Brewing Company, you know, our other locations are always talking to each other, and we're really kind of pushing each other to see, you know, hey, how much better can we get? We're doing this. You guys should try it. And it's it's friendly competition. But, you know, at the end of the day, if anybody's interested in what we're doing, you know, hopefully they're willing to reach out because we're. That's the thing about the beer industry. We're willing to share. You know, we … everybody wants to get better and help make everybody better. So, you know, you may not think that or you may not know that Wasatch Resource Recovery has this capability. And they do. And it's fantastic.
|00:29:56| Tom Kelly: So we're going to have a video in the show notes. So you can go to skiUtah.com and go to the podcast page for the David Miller episode, and you can see a little bit more on some of the things that they're doing here at the Wasatch Squatters Brewery. Any other points that you want to make on the sustainability aspects of things you're doing here at Wasatch Squatters?
|00:30:16| David Miller: Yeah. So we do have waste whenever we clarify our beer, send it to the fermenter to the brite tank. And that's just the nature of it. You know, we've got hops, proteins in those fermenters that we don't want in the final product. So where we send that waste is to a high strength tank. It's just a, you know, 8,000 gallon plastic tank that we have in the back. Once that gets full, we have a tanker come and fill that or empty that tank. Take that to Wasatch Resource Recovery that goes into their anaerobic digesters also. So, um, between the cans and the high strength bod, we're making a lot of natural gas, which is. Which is great. Um, and, you know, not to mention just the recycling of cardboard and empty cans and things like that. You know, in my view, that seems obvious. It may not be to everybody, but we have a lot of carton waste. You know, all of our cartons come in cardboard boxes. We can't reuse those. So we recycle all of that stuff. So we do what we can, where we can. And we're always trying to always trying to improve.
|00:31:31| Tom Kelly: Just to wrap it up altogether, take a look at this just from your own personal perspective and what it means to you to be a part of this industry and to be a part of sustaining this industry for the future.
|00:31:45| David Miller: It means everything, Tom. I couldn't imagine being part of an industry that didn't care about this. I just don't know what industries those are. I know they exist, but I'm so happy and proud to be part of one, because whatever your views on sustainability or, you know, environment, it matters. And if there's any improvement that we can do, we're going to do it. We're just going to try to leave this world better than we found it. And, you know, that takes a lot of hard work, and we're not doing everything right, but we're certainly trying to. So to me, it's everything. I wouldn't I wouldn't work in an industry that that didn't care.
|00:32:32| Tom Kelly: Well, to me, being a good steward of the place. We live and work. That's everything. Right? Yeah. It is.
|00:32:39| David Miller: You know, and you think about it every time you're on the slopes. You know, I got to take care of this place. You know, I got to pick up that piece of trash or recycle that piece of cardboard. And so that carries through our business, our facility. We've got a lot of people that get up on the mountain and have that same mindset every time they do. Which is which is great.
|00:32:58| Tom Kelly: You know, when you're skiing at Alta or Solitude or any of the ski areas around here, you're up in those mountains, and it's such a pristine area. You really think about things like this, right? You really do.
|00:33:08| David Miller: Yeah. And we want everybody, you know, tourism is obviously very large. We want all the tourists to think that way also, you know, keep it clean, keep it better than you found it. And I think people, for the most part do a pretty good job of that.
|00:33:20| Tom Kelly: Yeah, I think we're blessed to have being an industry, an outdoor industry where people do care about it. David, thank you so much. We're going to wrap it up with a section that we call fresh Fresh Tracks. Just a few other closing questions. And first of all, what's a fun thing that you and the family have discovered here in Utah that you could not find in your home state of Oklahoma?
|00:33:40| David Miller: Yeah, it didn't take me long to think about this one. Um, whenever I was first told about Red Butte Garden and the concerts there, I didn't believe it. You're telling me that there's a quaint venue that you can bring your own lawn chairs, your own food, your own beer, and enjoy a concert that feels really intimate. So I had to see it for myself. And man, I'll tell you what, first time I was there, I was like, this is heaven, this is it. And the fact that there's still a venue like that available is, is mind boggling. So it's really cool. I hope it never changes. But you'd never find anything like that in Oklahoma.
|00:34:22| Tom Kelly: Who'd you see this summer?
|00:34:25| David Miller: We saw Camp who were really big fans of. And then the most recent one, was … I'm blanking on the name. Um, but they're a really good band. Lake Street Dive. Sorry. Lake Street Dive. That's one of my wife's and I's favorite. And again, they're a big band, but it just felt like you were at an intimate concert whenever you're there. So we had a lot of fun.
|00:34:53| Tom Kelly: It really is an amazing venue. And folks, if you're a listener, don't know where Red Butte Gardens is, check it out and come in the summertime and go to one of the shows up there in the foothills on the east benches of Salt Lake City. How about a favorite ski run that you've discovered in Utah?
|00:35:08| David Miller: It's hard to beat High Baldy traverse up at Snowbird, right? Especially on a powder day, any of those runs going down is just really magical. Mambo at Alta. You said you were skiing there the other day. I skied there as well at a on Friday. Ski Utah board meeting, which is great. That's a great run whenever it's groomed. You know, just flying down that track is one of my favorite things to do. So it's it's hard to pick one, though.
|00:35:39| Tom Kelly: How about a favorite Utah apres ski restaurant or bar that's not the Wasatch Squatters taproom?
|00:35:47| David Miller: Well, in that case, probably have to go with Cotton Bottom in Cottonwood Heights. You know, we live right around the corner there, just at the mouth of Big Cottonwood. Um, they were actually the very first establishment to put a Wasatch beer on tap. Evo Amber Ale. And still to this day, they serve Evo on tap and have ever since day one. So it's kind of a, you know, a nod to them as a thanks. And it's it's a great little bar. You know, Evo mixed with a garlic burger is hard to beat.
|00:36:23| Tom Kelly: I have to second Cotton Bottom. I hadn't thought about the Evo on tap, but that's another good reason to go. And then lastly, what's your favorite Wasatch Squatters beer after a day on the slopes?
|00:36:35| David Miller: Yeah, this might throw people for a loop, but there's something about drinking an apricot after a hard day on the mountain that is so refreshing and it's almost rejuvenating. You know that beer is one of my favorites because it's freshness. It's just very lively. Right. It's bright. You're drinking that in the parking lot while you're taking your boots off, and it just makes taking those boots off that much easier, especially after a long day. So I'd have to go with that. Juicy is obviously very good, but I usually have apricot in the cooler in the back of the car.
|00:37:11| Tom Kelly: Yeah, those those are great choices for me. It's still Last One Down. David, thank you so much for joining us on Last Chair. I hope that we'll run into you up on the hill or in the taproom, but we appreciate your insights and and also what Wasatch Squatters is doing to preserve the future for our next generation.
|00:37:28| David Miller: Yeah, we hope so. You know, certainly doing our best. And, um, we appreciate everybody who's been part of our, our ride and hopefully do it for a long time and continue hitting these slopes here in Utah.
|00:37:40| Tom Kelly: David Miller, Wasatch Squatters, thanks for joining us on Ski Utah's Last Chair podcast.
|00:37:45| David Miller: Thanks, Tom.
