496: Tonya Cornett and Ian Larkin of UPP Liquids Continue Their Tradition of Challenging Each Other and Winning Together

While UPP Liquids may be their latest home, Tonya Cornett and Ian Larkin have been brewing together, then apart, then together again, across three different breweries over the past decade and a half. Over that time, they’ve won countless medals in competitions large and small—including Cornett’s prestigious Russell Schehrer Award for Innovation in Craft Brewing—and they continue that tradition of winning while pushing and challenging each other at UPP in Bend, Oregon.

When they ran the entire German-Style Sour Ale category for 10 Barrel at the 2024 World Beer Cup, it was with drastically different takes—the beers were so different from each other, judges had a hard time believing they were made by the same brewery. But that’s the energy that Cornett and Larkin bring, and sometimes there are equally great ideas at opposite ends of the spectrum.

In this episode, Cornett and Larkin discuss:

the unexpected success and evolution of Pinball Wizard oatmeal stout

raising pH and increasing finishing gravity to smooth out roast character in stout

building body with crystal malt and chocolate rye

using Golden Promise as base malt in imperial stout

finding the right places for difficult malts such as Thomas Fawcett pale chocolate and amber

building a bit of punk rock into imperial stout

lowering IBUs to shorten conditioning time in imperial stout

entering aged Berliner Weisse into competitions

developing and maintaining a 17-year-old mixed lactic bacteria culture