Scott Selix of Lua Mashes up Production-Brewery Discipline with Brewpub Creativity in Expressive Hazy IPA and Low-DO Lager

Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast

Scott Selix of Lua Brewing discusses his unconventional career path from law school back to craft brewing, detailing how he balances commercial viability with creative experimentation at his Des Moines brewpub. He breaks down

Key takeaways

• Scott Selix left a law career to co-found Lua Brewing in Des Moines in 2019 after being pushed by his pregnant wife and leveraging connections from his time at Big Grove.
• Lua's flagship hazy IPA, Sun for Miles, now uses up to 65% adjunct malt (red wheat, oat malt, flaked oats) to achieve extreme paleness and haze stability without relying solely on high hop loads.

Main topics

• Hazy IPA production and adjunct malt ratios
• Visual appeal versus flavor balance in modern IPAs

Notable quotes

"Consumers want sweet beer that they can pretend isn't sweet."

Conclusion

The episode offers brewers a transparent look at balancing commercial viability with creative experimentation,

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) This podcast is brought to you by Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine for those that love to make and drink great beer. To learn more or to subscribe, visit beerandbrewing.com or find us on social media at Craft Beer Brew. Speaker 1 (0:22) It's episode 507 of the Craft Beer and Brewing Podcast. I'm Jamie Bogner. And joining me for this episode from Des Moines, Iowa, Scott Sellicks of Lua Brewing. Welcome to the podcast, Scott. Thank Speaker 3 (0:35) you. It's great to be here. Speaker 1 (0:36) We started talking about this in 2024. And here we are finally having this conversation. For those that may not be as familiar, Lua Brew Pub in Des Moines. Highest rated beers are things like fruited sours and barrel aged stouts, which actually are brewing a lot more lager these days and have a pretty disciplined approach to lager brewing in terms of low DO brewing throughout that brewing process, which, you know, it's kind of funny to see this real process focus in lager brewing for a brewery that makes a lot of hazy IPA, you know, but I think. Having that kind of technical approach is what allows you to make all those beers better. We are going to talk about, through the course of this episode, everything from making these fun and expressive modern styles, as well as talking about how you make things like 2.5 % table lager with step mashing and decoction and low duo throughout that brewing process. We're going to talk about whether it really makes a difference in the way that you brew in that finished beer. You know, the verdict is still out science-wise, but anecdotally, if you feel like it makes that beer better, then I can't wait to hear, understand both the process and how, in a sensory perspective, you think it works. We're going to talk about all of those things, but before Speaker 2 (1:58) we do... Hey, brewers. Justin here from G &D Chillers. You know, we're all about solving problems in the brew house, staying ahead of the curve, and building chillers that work as hard as you do. Speaker 1 (2:07) G &D's new Elite 290 micro series runs in a natural refrigerant with near zero global warming potential built for brewers who care about sustainability and performance. They recently built one for New Belgium Brewing, delivering around 50 % energy savings over CO2 systems and 9 % more efficiency than A2Ls. That's real world impact from a brewery that knows what it takes with 24-7 support and remote monitoring. Your cold side stays dialed in day or night. Learn more about sustainable chiller solutions at gdchillers.com slash podcast. And here's a brewer's nightmare. It's the night before packaging. You walk into the brewery straight to the tank. You pull the sample to do a forced diacetyl test and you wait for it in silence. Something feels not quite right. You reach into the water bath and bring the flask to your nose. And it's a butter bomb. The logistics start running through your head. Do we hold the tank? We have accounts waiting. How many days until it clears? And then you wake up and remember that you use Berkeley yeast. Fresh Chico. It's got ALDC inside every cell, so diacetyl can't even form in the first place. Through primary, through dry hopping and hop creep, diacetyl stays ultra low. So you don't have to add ALDC or wait for diacetyl to clean up. And most importantly, you don't have to wake up in a cold sweat worrying about scary stories like these. Fresh Chico is now available in dried bricks for as low as $88 at berkeleyyeast.com. Also, this episode is sponsored by Pac-Tec, delivering craft beer multi-packing you can trust. Pac-Tec's handles are made from 100 % recycled plastic and are fully recyclable, helping breweries close the loop and advance the circular economy. With a minimalist design, durable functionality you can rely on, and custom color matching, Pac-Tec helps brands stand out. while staying sustainable. Trusted by craft brewers nationwide, they offer a smarter, sustainable way to carry your beer. To learn more, visit pactech-opi.com. That's P-A-C-H-O-P-I dot com. All right, Scott, you know how we start this off. Let's get a little background. Talk about your journey through brewing that led you to opening Lua. Speaker 3 (4:19) It's been a couple decades now. Started in craft beer in 2007-ish, 2008. A craft brewery opened up in the town I was going to college in and got a job there and just fell in love, became good friends with the owners. And they opened a brewery shortly after. Speaker 3 (4:41) See, it would have been 2011 or 2012, somewhere in there. A brewery that's much bigger now. At the time, it was a three-and-a-half barrel brewery. It's called Big Grove, now the largest brewery in Iowa. Worked there for several years. What a Speaker 1 (4:54) story Big Grove has been in terms of, like, you know, to have come from such humble roots to, like, I mean, the expansion. I mean, it's serious. Speaker 3 (5:05) Yeah, great guys, great beer. And, um, yeah, just very three and a half barrel brew house in a, probably a 500 square foot room was the brewery that we worked in at the time in 20, 2011 ish. And yeah, now the largest craft brewery in Iowa, I, I, they're top 100 in the, in the U S it's, it's an incredible story. Um, so, but started there. Um, eventually went to grad school and, and got out of beer, got a job, a professional job up in Minneapolis, still loved craft beer, still friends with a lot of brewers, still did some home brewing on the side. Um, and eventually, uh, my wife sat me down and said, yeah, I was a lawyer. And she just said, this isn't for you. You are unhappy. You're either going to leave beer or we're not going to be together in 10 years. And I, a little bit tongue in cheek, but also serious. Uh, she had been running a very great restaurant up in Minneapolis. She was the AGM of a restaurant up there called burrow and parlor, um, burrow up top, uh, parlor in the basement. And so the plan was that I would go back into beer and, uh, be the brewer and she would be the GM. And, um, I went back to big girl. Speaker 1 (6:15) What an Speaker 3 (6:15) incredible Speaker 1 (6:16) wife to push you back into the beer world from a, uh, from a law career. She was also at Speaker 3 (6:22) the time five months pregnant. And so it was, and at the time we said, you know, our 10 year plan was to have a brewery. That was in 2016. So we thought it would take a while. Just a series of events came together to make it a little shorter than that. But at the time I went back to Big Grove and the plan was to stay at Big Grove for quite a while. I was with Big Grove at that time. I went back for about two and a half years as their lead brewer back in the brew house. Um, they, they had just switched from a three and a half barrel brew house, uh, two vessel, three and a half barrel brew house to a four vessel, 30 barrel brew house with, uh, 60 barrel tanks. Um, and there was just four of us in the brewery. So it was a wild time. The first year I was there, I think we brewed like seven or 8,000 barrels, uh, with four people. And then eventually to where they are now at 40,000. Um, and. So 2018, 2019-ish, we were approached by a building owner in Des Moines. I played soccer with the guy in high school. He was a realtor, actually. So I knew the realtor and just said, hey, we have this building in Sherman Hill in Des Moines, a historic neighborhood. Where I grew up is Des Moines. It's about two hours from Big Grove. So he came to me and just said, we have this building. You want to look at it? And my wife and I went and looked at it and loved it. And our plans accelerated very quickly. Speaker 3 (7:44) It got the plans we had to submit to the city. And I was still at the time, I was lead brewer and general counsel for Big Grove, a pretty unique role. And so when we went to the city, that's public record. And there were news articles that came out that said Big Grove coming to Des Moines, question mark. And that was how the news got slipped to Big Grove at the time that I may be opening my own brewery. We didn't even have a permit yet. We didn't know if we could do it. We had to get... We had to get rezoned, but eventually everything came together. We opened Lua in 2019. A couple of other serendipitous things came together. I think that's what it takes to be successful in craft beer is to get lucky and surround yourself with really good people. Zach Dunbar was lead brewer at Forager in Rochester, Minnesota. And he had sort of, you know, with Austin as an owner brewer there, who we are very good friends with, he had sort of reached the top of what he could. do at Forager. So he reached out to me and I said, yeah, we, you know, come on board. Um, it'd be great to, you know, it was a really great opportunity to be able to bring Zach on board. He's a tremendous, tremendous brewer. And then, uh, at the same time, uh, our head chef, James Arbaugh was coming from a Michelin starred restaurant in San Francisco. Uh, he had married an Iowan and they were moving home to her home. So he came on board and just a lot of serendipity brought. the four of us together, me, my wife, Whitney, Zach, and James. And we launched Lua in 2019, uh, in November, 2019. So we launched into kind of a wild time. Um, but you know, uh, seven issues later, it's our anniversary week this week. We celebrate that on Saturday. So seven issues later, um, we're still here. Speaker 1 (9:25) So you decided to start this brewery in Des Moines. Now you've got this mix. You've got this now larger scale production experience from this big grove environment. Zach at Forager making small bespoke beers or smaller batches. You've got a Michelin star chef from a Michelin star restaurant. And it's Des Moines, Iowa. What was that creatively? What was the brief that you set out there? Because these are a whole bunch of different, you know, ideas coming together in the scope of one brew pub. Speaker 3 (10:02) Yeah, it was chaos. We had sort of no general idea about how we, you know, on one end of the scale was James, our chef, who was used to using foie gras and caviar and A5 Japanese Wagyu. And then you had me who was brewing 10,000 barrels of. You know, at the time, hazy IPAs were still just kind of becoming national in 2016, 2017. And, you know, I just was so I was used to brewing 60 barrels of lager beer or, you know, old school pale ale. And then you had Zach brewing this. It just, you know, we we we all had a different approach to how we did things. I think we were good people with an open mind. And our goal. was always, we're going to do this as well as we can. And the nice thing about selling 90 % of your food and beer over the bar is cost of goods sold has never been a super big bar to what we do. So it's always just been, let's make things as well as we can. Let's use the best ingredients. And it took three or four years to kind of settle in and figure out how it all go together. But it's been a really, really cool learning experience. When Zach and I would talk about designing recipes or designing processes, I had the large production facility experience and he had sort of the artsy know-how of I'm making stouts or whatever. And it gelled really well in the beginning. Or, you know, at least we routed each other out. The goal at the time was to be co-head brewers. You know, my wife and I were the primary owners who brought Zach on as a partner, as a minority partner. We learned pretty quick that that didn't really work. We just had such different approaches. Speaker 3 (11:40) being a lawyer and the guy who set everything up, it made much more sense in the beginning for Zach to take the lead on beer and then me to focus on the business. But that took us probably two years to figure out that that was the right way to end a lot of headaches and a lot of arguments and working together and maybe not working together. And we got to a really good spot where Zach took over the brewery. We still consulted on a lot of things and we still talked about ideas and processes and recipes. And then I took over the business side. Speaker 3 (12:11) financials, and we Speaker 1 (12:12) made it work. But now things are a little different from that point. And now you are actually more hands-on and Zach has moved into a different role also, just as a example of how dynamic things still remain. It took you a couple of years, so early 2020s, to figure that out. And now in 2026, some things went back. And then you got involved in, you created a THC beverage brand. It's now a partnership project with Big Grove. And talk a little bit about that. Speaker 3 (12:46) Yeah, we launched climbing kites out of Lua, our tiny little 6,000 square foot building. And Zach and I really did everything on that together. Speaker 3 (12:58) And about a year and a half ago, he came and just said, I want to be full time on climbing kites. And we said, okay, that makes sense. That company has now grown. We're in 22 states. We're one of the top five THC beverage suppliers in the country. And he was just much more passionate about that than he was about beer these days. And so he went full time. to that company is, you know, we call it a sister company or, or, or whatever it is. Um, eventually we parted with big Grove on that. So kind of all in the family still, uh, I think I've learned that if you're a good person, a lot of stuff comes around and we've kept a lot of great people in the orbit. Uh, Chris Heron, who was the former CEO of creature comforts, built them into a top 50 brewery is now the CEO at climbing kites. He's an awesome, awesome friend in person. And, uh, Zach's over there. We still talk all the time about beer, uh, but When he left there shortly after that, we had one other person take over the brewery who then went to work for a caviar farm in Sacramento, which is a pretty cool job. I took back over the brewery and now run production, run recipes. We have a great team that I consult with everything on. But yeah, it's nice to have the brewing experience. I jumped back in pretty quickly. Speaker 1 (14:03) Back in the brew house once again. Maybe not on the brew deck as much, but definitely on that creative front. Speaker 3 (14:10) I think we all say we want to get back on the brewing deck and then we show up to work and realize how much paperwork and office work and production scheduling there is. And it's tough to get out there. So I've been saying for about a month that I want to get back up there. I have been, you know, but the last month I've been like, yeah, next week I'm going to do it. I haven't got up there yet, but I will. And I still, you know, still try to direct the processes and all that. You Speaker 1 (14:34) just have to ask yourself, what would Vinny do? Vinny would get back up there once a week on that brew deck or just build a five-barrel pilot system. So he has his own little brewery playground there. So just throwing it out there. What would Vinny do? Anyway, I want to talk about some of the beers you make. Before we do that, Oregon Hop Country is heaven to world-class lager varieties, and Indy Hops is – proud to have introduced Oregon's newest lager hop, Lorien, in 2022. Lorien is in a growing list of beers that have found their way to the podium and, more importantly, into the hearts of lager lovers across the country. Discover Indie Hop's Lorien. Side effects may include rampant festivities, sales bumps, and exceeded expectations. Indie Hops, life is short. Let's make it flavorful. And if you're like many podcast listeners, you've got a lot of beer at home and your regular fridge is at capacity, enter the MyDia 5050 Flex. The industry's... first dual compartment three-way convertible freezer. Here's what all that means for you options. The 5050 has the power to be all freezer, all fridge, or a little bit of both, but you'll probably want to use those 20 cubic feet as a massive garage-ready beer fridge. You can also change which side the door is on or how you want the shelves to be arranged. The 5050 totally flexes to fit your life. Plus, it's designed to maintain a stable temperature even in non-climate controlled conditions, so you can crack a cold one even on the warm days in the man cave. Take your garage to the next level. Check out my idea.com slash us to get more information about this game changer today. Also, this episode is brought to you by ADM innovation is shaping the future of beverages and ADM is helping brewers stay ahead of what's next with cutting edge, natural flavors and hop ingredients, category insights and advanced technologies. ADM works alongside beverage creators to unlock new possibilities in taste performance. and consumer appeal. From breakthrough beer concepts to unique flavor-forward creations, ADM provides the expertise and solutions to help transform inspiration into market-ready success. Ready to create what's next? Visit ADM.com slash alcohol to learn more. All right, Scott, where do we start here on your beer journey? I mean, the biggest thing you brew the most of is probably Hazy IPA, right? If I'm guessing correctly. Speaker 3 (16:55) Yeah, we still are in this to make money. So Hazy IPA is still the thing we brew Speaker 1 (17:00) the most of. You're trying to find ways to make less money and brew those beers that you want to brew just for yourselves. But in the meantime, but at the same time, you coming out of this, Between you and Zach having this kind of pedigree, the ability to make beers on this progressive end and execute on them very well. That had to be meaningful in that Des Moines environment of 2019. And you've continued to ride that. And I should also say, I remember the first time that I grew more familiar about Lua. I was up at Pulpit Rock and Bob up there was talking about you guys as I was just passing through between Minneapolis. Actually, I had gone through Forager, went down to Pulpit Rock, ended up down in Chicago after one of our Minnesota craft beer festivals. But the fact that you all were well connected in that beer space meant you came out of the gate with collaborations, doing things with other interesting brewers. And it kind of, you know, put Lua on the map in those early days as making interesting beer in Des Moines. Speaker 3 (18:08) Yeah, for sure. And we came out in 2019. It's, it's different. You know, we talk about it a lot here, but that was still a time when finding a good hazy IPA in a lot of markets was difficult. And so we, we were able to, I think that was. That was where we started was with Hazy IPA. And those relationships were more than just, hey, they know Pulpit Rock or they know Toppling Goliath or they know Blackstack from a marketing standpoint. But we were able to buy their hops, especially Blackstack and Toppling Goliath. And being able to buy selected hops as a brewery that plans to make 600 barrels of beer in your first year, we weren't stuck with what was on spot. We knew that we were going to buy great hops from Mike. from Murph. And that was a huge benefit that we had that not everybody has. If you don't have the right raw ingredients, you just can't make, in my opinion, good hazy IPA. And so being able to buy... You know, for instance, when we opened the first bag of Citra we got from Topping Goliath and our entire brewery smelled like pseudo-sue. And you know exactly what Mike's selecting for when he selects his Citra hops and the profile that he wants. At least, you know, I suppose what he must want because it's the same every time and it's just incredibly awesome. And there's no way we could have got that if we went to any hop supplier and said, hey, give us your best lot of Citra. So it was a big benefit to know people and to have been in the beer industry for... over a decade leading up to our opening. And when we launched, I thought our hazy IPAs were terrible. I think Zach