Why I Brew With Briess
Matt Potts, founder and owner, Destihl Brewery
Where did Brewing begin for you?
The summer before law school in Chicago during the early 90s, I was exposed to some good‐quality beers, drinking imports like Guinness, Harp, and even Killian’s Red. That got me to start appreciating beers with something more to offer, with flavor. But right before I started practicing law, I had my first Anchor Steam beer in the summer of 1994, and that was the pivotal moment for me.
My wife gave me a homebrew kit for Christmas in 1995. I started home brewing right away, and surprise, surprise, my first homebrew was a steam beer, or a California Common by style.
“What’s funny is that my history with Briess goes all the way back to that moment because I used Victory Malt, which is my favorite Briess malt to this day. I love it so much – all the character it has in terms of biscuit and toast, and just the color that it offers a beer. I used it in that first homebrew recipe, and for me, that’s very nostalgic, so I actually called that first homebrew, ‘Victorian Steam Beer’.”
We started doing Hazy IPAs in 2018, and they were very complicated in terms of making them hazy and stable, for a long enough period of time that you could distribute. When Hazy’s first came out, they’d maybe last for 30 days. Developing a distributable Hazy for about 120 days (most are about 90) required a lot of R&D and working with Briess to source higher-protein malts, wheat, flaked oats, etc.
Once we had that dialed in, we decided to lean into our DeadHead® beer, which we’ve been brewing all the way back to 2008 with our OG of the DeadHead® series: the Deadhead Double Double Red Ale: malty, but really hoppy.
“The most pivotal moment for the DeadHead® series is when we got the gold medal for Tourbus® at the Great American Beer Festival in 2021 out of 427 entries.”
Then, four years later, earned a Gold medal at the 2025 Great American Beer Festival (GABF) Competition in the most competitive category: Juicy/Hazy India Pale Ale. It’s a category where people don’t normally win two medals.
It’s so exciting for us because it speaks to the consistency of the brewery, Briess malt, and the beer. We know that because we’ve loved it every day since then, and it really hasn’t changed since we won the award the first time.
Winning for DeadHead® TourBus® in that Hazy IPA category put us on the map for more than just what the larger market knew about us, which was just sours. We actually won a Bronze medal that same year in the Hazy Imperial IPA category for Haze of the Dead, which is another DeadHead® beer.
“We’ve been with Briess since 2013 and never thought twice about using anything else.”
What do you like most about working with Briess?
Well, certainly the quality, the consistency. I think a beer like TourBus® getting the two Gold medals in that toughest category speaks to that. We’ve known that it’s been consistent all along, whether they’re tangible or intangible things.
I think Briess’ close connection to their farmers, even connecting their brewers to their farmers in the Bighorn Basin. We took the Bighorn Barley Tour trip and it was so awesome – walking barley fields and seeing how different farmers approach raising Briess barley and kind of that closed loop system that you have supplying them with seed, knowing their farmers, selecting the barley, that meets the specs, of course, and malting…it’s where everything’s coming from, which is great.
