Mike Rybinski has been winning major medals at Midwestern breweries for more than 25 years. Before the Siebel grad was brewmaster at ZwanzigZ Pizza in Columbus, Indiana, he oversaw brewing at Walter Payton’s Roundhouse in Aurora, Illinois, where he won gold medals at three consecutive World Beer Cups from 2000 to 2004 (plus a silver in the next one). Here, Rybinski describes what goes into ZwanzigZ Fulcrum—the American-style imperial stout that won gold at the 2022 and 2025 World Beer Cups.
The modern Fulcrum recipe has roots that are two decades old, based partly on what I learned from other brewers.
I was secretary of the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild at the same time that Pete Crowley—the former brewmaster at Rock Bottom and cofounder of Haymarket—was the guild’s president. In 2004, I won the gold medal for barrel-aged beer at the World Beer Cup, and he won silver. So, we would tease each other—I’d call Rock Bottom and ask for Pete, they’d ask who was calling, and I’d say, “Just tell him it’s the gold-medal winner; he’ll know who that is.” We went back and forth. Pete would say, “I heard it was a coin toss between silver and gold, and you just happened to win the toss.”
Pete had his own American stout that was winning awards, and I wanted to see whether I could beat him at his own game. We would blab about ingredients. He insisted on using Crisp’s dark chocolate malt, saying it was the closest thing to being burnt without being burnt. He would tell me about how he was dry hopping the beer and which hops he was using.
So, I took those ideas, and I took ideas from Joe Formanek of the Urban Knaves of Grain homebrew club. Joe won the Ninkasi Award twice and Midwest Homebrewer of the Year several times—and he won the Sam Adams LongShot competition in 2011, so his Russian imperial stout went into those LongShot six-packs. Joe and I did a pro-am collaboration for GABF one year, and the volunteers pouring it said they had to cut several people off because they were digging it so much.
Joe used Quaker Oats in his stout. At the time, when I was brewing at Payton’s Roundhouse for America’s Brewing Company, we would actually make the oatmeal, get it down to 150–160°F (66–71°C), then dump it into the mash tun.
So, Fulcrum started in 2012 when I came to ZwanzigZ. But I started developing the recipe and using derivatives of it more than 20 years ago.
Fulcrum’s Pivot Points
Everybody is doing imperial stouts at 10 to 12 percent ABV, but I’m getting away with 8 percent. It tastes great, and it’s winning awards.
The base of the beer is two-row from Canada Malting Company. When I was at a previous brewery, before it went bankrupt, CMC was very helpful in maintaining our malt needs, knowing that the bills were going to be paid a bit later. I’ve stuck with them ever since. I do about 66 percent two-row, and then 4 percent light malt extract (LME) to bump up the gravity.
Besides the chocolate malt and roasted barley, I love Special B. It’s one of my favorites. It’s like a crystal 120°L—it’s so raisiny, it has a ruby color, it’s fantastic. I use that in my nut-brown ale, too.
I’m set up for infusion mashes, so I mash this beer (and all my beers) at 155°F (68°C). Our water is pretty hard and high in calcium—I have to de-lime my hot liquor tank every six weeks because of all the sediment. I just put the water through a charcoal filter to remove the chlorine. Otherwise, I don’t do anything to it—it’s just nice, hard water.
For the hops, I wanted to be a little different—I didn’t want to follow what everybody and their brother does. So, I start with Cascade with 50 minutes to go in the boil, then I hit it again at 40 minutes with Cascade. At 30 minutes, I add Columbus, then at 20 and 10 minutes I add Centennial. On day five of fermentation, when it’s close to the end, I dry hop it with Amarillo, Centennial, and Chinook.
You can tell it’s been dry hopped, and part of the secret of this beer is the Chinook. Amarillo gives it a little bit of something more “current” from the C-hops, too, and I always just love Centennial. So, there’s hops in the nose, but you still get the roasted-stout aromas. One time I forgot to dry hop it, and it was night and day. I still sold through the beer, but it makes a difference.
The amounts of hops changes based on the alphas—I don’t hop select or have a contract, so I use Country Malt Group or markets such as Lupulin Exchange. The IBU target is 34—a tribute to Walter Payton.
I use Wyeast 1056 American Ale liquid yeast, knocking out and fermenting at 68°F (20°C). For this beer, I pitch a corny keg of yeast—it is usually about four gallons (15 liters) of yeast. I take the yeast from a previous beer, which could be the pale ale or the nut brown. I get about 10 uses out of the yeast before I buy another one, but I don’t re-use the yeast from the imperial stout. I also use a little bit more oxygen on this beer. Once the beer has finished fermenting, I bring it up to a 72°F (22°C) for at least 24 hours. Then I crash for at least 48 hours, just straight down to 32°F (0°C) on the glycol—I think the lowest it gets is 35°F (2°C).
After 48 hours, I transfer to the brite tank and carbonate to 13 psi (0.9 bar). I used to have a Zahm & Nagel CO2 meter, but it broke, so now I do it visually. I take a small glass, open up the sample spigot, and look at the bubbles—that’s all experience. It’s really hard with a helper—I’m trying to teach them, but I’m just looking at the beer, and I can tell just by looking at it. There are so many nuances in the brewhouse.
Once it’s carbed in the brite tank, I let it sit for at least 24 hours and suck off some of the bottom—there’s always going to be a little yeast left over. I don’t use any finings; it’s all natural.
Spicy Takes
For our Ghost Pepper Imperial Stout, I take about a quart of Fulcrum and make what I call a “sauce,” adding three ghost peppers to it and boiling it up. I separate the solids and pour that liquid into a keg of Fulcrum. It doesn’t move fast, but we have some pepper heads down here who are totally geeked for it—and it won gold at GABF in 2017.
When I barrel age the Fulcrum, I like to use Heaven Hill—that’s one of my favorites. If the barrel can come in wet, even better. Then I ferment the beer just like normal, but instead of going into the brite, I send some to the barrel. The beer goes in cold, but it sits at room temperature in the barrel and warms up. I put a bubbler on it for a week or two, in case it starts kicking—they occasionally do, they like that little residual sugar that’s in the barrel. After two weeks, I cap it off and then go for 100 to 200 days.
In my opinion, 200 days is the best flavor—anything after that, it starts to drop. You have the angel’s share—that top of the wooden barrel starts to dry up, and air starts to sneak in there, and it gets to be a little too much oxidation.
So, then I pull it from a barrel, put it into a keg, leave a little bit of headspace, and put it in the cooler for 24 hours to get it cold. Then I shake-carbonate it for 15 minutes at 32 psi, and I typically get the exact carb that I’m looking for. And when you do that, you scrub some oxygen out of it, too.
We call it Fulcrum because that’s the pivot point between good flavor and the way the style of the beer is supposed to be—well balanced. The diesel-engine company Cummins’ world headquarters is also here, so we kind of went the engineering-geek route.
This beer is big and bold, so you’ve got to pair it with something like a beefy steak. Pizza-wise—because that’s our main dish at ZwanzigZ—we have a lasagna pizza that uses ricotta cheese. That’s a fun pairing.
I don’t plan to make any changes to this beer. I’ve hit the board twice with it, so I think I’m going to keep it exactly the way it is.
