The Brewery Adventure
Do you love breweries and tap rooms? Well, we do. We love the beer of course, but this podcast is more about the spaces themselves. What makes a great brewery experience? We explore breweries around Minnesota and beyond to discover our favorites. Join us for The Brewery Adventure!
The Brewery Adventure
Wandering Into the Weeds
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
We are kicking off Season 2 with a long overdue episode with Matt Holton and Robby Reisdorf from Wandering Leaf Brewing in St. Paul. You're going to need more than one pint for this one! We take a few detours, but that's part of the fun! We chat about the origins of Wandering Leaf, their approach to making good beer, the community they've built around the brewery, and plenty of other things that may or may not have anything to do with beer!
EPISODE BEERS (from Wandering Leaf Brewing):
Märzen, Festbier, Propagation Pils, Stump Thumping.... honestly, we lost track of all the delicious things we consumed while recording this.
LINKS:
Visit our website at https://thebreweryadventure.com or contact us by sending an email to courtney@thebreweryadventure.com.
Be sure to subscribe to our Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/thebreweryadventure!
Welcome to the Brewery Adventure. I'm Courtney.
SPEAKER_04And I'm Dan.
SPEAKER_06We are here at Wandering Leaf today, shock upon shock. So cheers.
SPEAKER_04Cheers.
SPEAKER_06That was great. If you heard a couple extra clinks in there, we we have some very special guests. We have both Robbie and Matt, co-owners here at Wandering Leaf, who have decided to join us. I've been waiting for this moment for such a long time.
SPEAKER_02Happy to be here.
SPEAKER_06Wandering Leaf is a very special location for Dan and I. I think we've discussed this amongst ourselves. We've discussed this on the podcast before, but today is actually our podcast anniversary. The first episode that Dan and I recorded together. And oh, nice. That's lovely. And it's all because of Robbie.
SPEAKER_03Thank you. I'll take all of the credit.
SPEAKER_06You should take all the credit. It was once upon a time on a wintery night, I came in to pick up some crowlers, and you were the first person I told that it was very early in the podcast. We were only a couple episodes in, and you were like the first person I told, I'm picking up crowdlers because I'm doing a podcast episode on you guys. And you were immediately like, oh, podcast. There's another guy here who has a podcast. You should meet him.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we got to know Dan pretty early on in our opening time, and uh he's obviously a great guy, you know that. Yeah. And I figured if you're new to the podcasting game, he can give you a lot of advice. So I thought I'd connect you two. So and you didn't point her to me?
SPEAKER_02A co-host of Rootbeer Radio? That's true, that's true. I forgot.
SPEAKER_06Root beer radio. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's a show about root beer. We haven't recorded an episode in seven years.
SPEAKER_06Can I still find episodes online?
SPEAKER_02I'm sure you can find it on Spotify.
SPEAKER_06I know what I'm doing later tonight. I'm looking for I had no idea. You didn't tell me this.
SPEAKER_02I did not. I hide that shameful path from Wow. I think it's kind of cool. I have a brother-in-law who doesn't drink and he's obsessed with root beer. And so he wanted to do this, you know, root beer radio uh show. And he's like, Well, how about I bring you on and you just can talk about how beverages are made? I'm like, okay. And I thought this was gonna be like a three-episode thing, and like he's gonna lose interest. No, this thing dragged on for seven years.
SPEAKER_07Oh my god!
SPEAKER_02And every time Dave's like, hey, like, let's do another one, I'm like, really? Like, there's more to talk about, and you know, sure as shit there was.
SPEAKER_06So do you have a lot of pro tips for where to find a good root beer then?
SPEAKER_02Uh 1919. That's that's that that's the peak. That that's pretty much the end all be all.
SPEAKER_04And what's the worst? I think the folks at Sprecker might have something to say about that.
SPEAKER_07Oh root beer fight.
SPEAKER_03We used to have Sprecker here. We used to sell that. Sprecher is back in the day.
SPEAKER_02Awesome.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Sprecker's great. Uh and then Costco stopped carrying it.
SPEAKER_02You can get it at Menards. Yeah, Bundeberg. You got Costco wholesale prices that are yeah, Bunderberg is the worst. Okay. Not under Burger.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I've had that. Bunderberg. Bunderberg.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I can't even tell you who's Frosttop.
SPEAKER_04Where do you stand on Frosttop? Isn't that a local uh is that a Minnesota one? I believe it is. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Had a lot of that. Dave will kill me if I don't get it right though, so. Hello, Dave.
SPEAKER_03What about Barks? The only root beer that I'm aware of that has caffeine in it, and that's what I'm here for. Barks has bite.
SPEAKER_04Barks has bite.
SPEAKER_02And Barks is trash, according to Dave.
SPEAKER_04One of my idiot's sister-in-laws is obsessed with diet barks. She'll never listen to this because she has no culture. It's okay. My gosh.
SPEAKER_02She there's no love lost between us. Really let it out. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_06There's a lot of breweries that make their own root beer.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and for a lot of that, it's like a very similar extract kick. You might throw your own little bit of flavor or whatever you want into it, but it's like the same base extract or compounding flavor. And basically it's just diluted with with water and can make it your own. And I'm not really knocking the practice. It's more of a you're gonna find a lot of the same stuff in a lot of different spots. Because making your own root beer is really challenging to get a very unique flavor in it. Uh it's either wintergreen based or like sarsaparilla uh or sassafras based. I was just gonna ask.
SPEAKER_04Sioux City sarsaparilla. Yeah. Now that's root beer adjacent, or would you consider that a root beer? That's a root beer. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. But like we can make this a root beer podcast if we want to. Forget about beer.
SPEAKER_04Then there's like birch beer. Yeah. What is that use does it use like roots of like birch?
SPEAKER_02Uh it's using the the fresh tips of the birch tree, like the new growth. Hey, there it is. I was waiting for it. Uh uh, it's using the like the new growth on the on the birch tree, and you're cutting that off and like uh steeping that in hot water. And there's a lot of really incredible essential oils and other other stuff in that. Okay. Uh, that provides a lot of intense flavor. And it's the same thing with like spruce beer. You're getting the new shoots off of the spruce tree uh to make those drinks. And so like spruce tip beer uses the same thing where you're taking those fresh new tips off the spruce tree. So that's like a really springtime event.
SPEAKER_04Okay. So to impart that flavor, do you like steep the tips? Is it kind of like a dr like a like a tea? Like you would when you make like a stout and you want to do like peppers, you'd put them in like a cheesecloth, put them in for just a little bit to get some of the flavors while it's in the fermentation tank?
SPEAKER_02Uh it would be like uh for a brewer's uh perspective, I would put it in the whirlpool. Uh okay, so like a dry hop with uh fresh tips. Yeah, a hot side edition.
SPEAKER_04So take that guy, Fieri. Not the only one who knows how to get to Flavortown around here. I also do my own sound effects.
SPEAKER_03Love it. Ignorant question. Who makes 1919 again? Uh shells. That's what I thought. They're the best. Oh. I didn't know it. Shout out Shells. Yeah, Shells. And Deer Brand. Yeah. Great beer. Deer brand.
SPEAKER_02Shells famously for a long time didn't put it into cans. And then COVID hit, and then suddenly you could find it in cans. I think you can still find it now in cans because it does really well. It was 1919 on tap. That was like the big thing.
SPEAKER_03It used to be a big commodity when you got the graduation party that had 1919 in the keg. That was a big deal. And the tomatoes.
SPEAKER_04Oh my god.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah, 1919 was a big one. You fancy. Yeah, exactly. That's right. Yeah, 1919 had a lot of really fun uh like vanilla overnotes, and uh I think it was a winter green wintergreen base, and who knows what else is in there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04When you say wintergreen, do you mean like a kind of like a spearmint? Uh wintergreen itself.
SPEAKER_02It's its own thing. It's its own thing. Okay. Um it's a ground cover plant that you would find in like a lot of forested areas, and it was like a traditional medicine for a lot of things different things.
SPEAKER_04And so you should have tried that for your uh laundry detergent thing. Did you ever think of that? No, you didn't. Well, so yeah. Okay. Interesting. Wow, I mean, that's fascinating. Yeah. This might be I'm gonna ask another ignorant question. Is the process for making root beer the same as beer, except there's no yeast? Well, uh traditionally how do you get the carbonation?
SPEAKER_02Uh traditionally it was a fermented beverage. And so it was like a 0.5 to 3% beverage, and it was a it was more of like a root tea is what it started out as. And then over time, like as we got access to more refined sugars and cheaper and cheaper sugar options, it became more of like a soft drink. And like, I mean it was always technically a soft drink by that by that standard, but yeah, it was more of a I don't know how how else would it say it, uh, like a medicinal beverage.
SPEAKER_03All I'm hearing is that we should make a dextrose-based root beer that's like two and a half percent.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. That's I that's what I was hearing too.
SPEAKER_02I can't wait to clean every gasket and piece of glasses. Because like the those wintergreen oils or peppermint oils or whatever are like penetrant oils. Uh so like mechanics use them occasionally to get into really stuck parts. And it's like they'll permeate plastics really well. And like Dan. You had me at penetrant oils. Uh yeah. Like there, like there's a reason why you don't see mint as a flavor uh in a lot of um in a lot of beer or anything else, it's because it saturates the plastic components or rubber components, silicone, anything of that nature. It penetrates and then it can also show up in beers down the line. So like if you run a mint-based beer through your canning line, a lot of like unless you have like some serious solvents, you're gonna taste mint in the beers that would be.
SPEAKER_06I just thought it was because mint wouldn't be a good flavor for beer. I'm with you.
SPEAKER_03Mint's gum. It only should be in three places.
SPEAKER_02I mean, like, like mojitos, toothpaste, and gum.
SPEAKER_07Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_02I mean, like, there's there's a reason why you don't see certain flavors in beer, and like butterscotch or green apple, like green apple flavor stuff, or oh I found some butterscotch in a beer at the Ratskeller.
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah, yeah. Oh, it's supposed to be like that. No, it's not assholes.
SPEAKER_03I prefer my hazy IPAs to taste like movie theater popcorn personally, so interesting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. But there's a reason why you don't uh like find beers that have these certain flavor profiles because they one present off flavors in beer uh that we all associate with you know bad beer quality. And then on the other hand, there are certain flavors or uh oils that you could impart into a beer that are going to make every batch of beer you make after that much harder to clean uh and prepare for. So mint is a great example of that. Mint is a pen has a lot of peppermint, mint in general has penetrating oils that every time you say it, he's over there.
SPEAKER_06I'm gonna make a point to keep using that word the whole time.
SPEAKER_04That's right. Like the cojones episode.
SPEAKER_02Yo.
SPEAKER_06He's just waiting for the that's what she said button. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Even though it's gonna be quiet.
SPEAKER_04Sound that only dogs can hear. Right on. That was a fun little side quest to kick things off.
SPEAKER_06That was a very unexpected, very informative side quest.
SPEAKER_02I'll talk your rough about it.
SPEAKER_06I had no idea. All I had to do was mention Root beer and boom.
SPEAKER_02He's off to the races.
SPEAKER_03Sorry. I think I could just live here listening to Dan make sound effects the entire time, and I'd be happy. Modern day Michael Winslow.
SPEAKER_06Well, we are celebrating our podcast anniversary. You guys also like kind of recently had the Wandering Leaf anniversary.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we just had our third anniversary back in April. And we're actually coming up on a different anniversary. Uh that's four four years in this space on September 1st. Yep.
SPEAKER_06That's exciting too. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's when construction started. Construction, yeah. And that's that's actually the inception of the game, too. That's right. Almost not pretty close. Pretty close. Yeah. Uh so we have a game that I don't know if you guys have talked about on the podcast because I haven't heard every episode yet, where we throw cans in the back.
SPEAKER_06It does get mentioned. Oh, perfect.
SPEAKER_02Perfect. We're trying to make it a thing.
SPEAKER_06It's a thing. We're helping.
SPEAKER_02We're making it a thing. Rob and I were always up on a scissor lift with either a 30 rack of hands or like a bunch of different six packs or something, and wherever the contractors left our garbage can, well, that became the hole. And we go, what is that? A par four, and then we throw. And then eventually started keeping score, got the contractors involved. Every time an industry friend came by, like, all right, well, we're playing the game now, so you got a shotgun of hands or whatever, and then you're gonna put your name on the garage uh garage door. It's kind of crazy to think that's been nearly f four whole years now.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Back in the day we thought, oh, we have a lot of money, we'll replace that back door. So by the time we open, that all those names that are on the back door will be gone, so it's fine. And let me tell you, you you gotta run out of money during construction pretty quick.
SPEAKER_02So how much do chairs cost? My god. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06But you guys picked really nice chairs.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you spent the money well because these are some of the comfiest tap room seats in this in the state.
SPEAKER_02So uh our architect, Aaron Wickhamper, you know, shout out shout out to him. He kind of like instilled this idea into Rob and I where you can kind of just feel a space when you walk into it.
SPEAKER_06Yes.
SPEAKER_02Uh, if you can see that there's comfortable chairs, nice tables, whatever, you're basically inviting your guest, say, yes, I want you to stay here for a while. If you walk in and you see like those metal bar stools that look uncomfortable, you're like with no backs. Yeah, yeah, like easy to fall off of. Yeah, you're here for a one and done, get in, get out, do your thing. He also introduced us to the concept of timing for seating. Like restaurants might rate their seating in time, where McDonald's will say this is a 15-minute seat, and like it's a hard plastic seat. Uh, it's not uncomfortable to sit on, but you're not gonna sit on it for much longer than 15 minutes before, like, hey, I'm not feeling great.
SPEAKER_06So a bit of a funny thing happens here. Matt and Robbie continue on with this conversation. We talk about some other things, we get into actually asking them real questions, and maybe I look over at Dan and there's a sheepish look on his face, and he's kind of fumbling around on the audio board. Uh, we maybe hit like a stop recording button while we were talking. So there's a bit of a gap here, and we are gonna pick it up again with Robbie talking about the beginnings of how Wandering Leaf came to be. Sorry.
SPEAKER_03I was working in IT and I hated my job. Matt was feeling like he, I'm not gonna use his terminology, but he can say it. I was gonna paint the ceiling with a shotgun. Yeah. Well, so we decided that we're gonna start uh putting a business plan together. And the whole point of that business plan was firmly to talk ourselves out of starting a brewery. We're like, oh, we're well past the hype of the breweries, it's on the downswing. We all see it, like we knew it was happening, but we put the numbers together. We were super duper conservative. Like anytime we were gonna put the numbers together, we're like we're gonna add 20 or 30, 40 percent to that just to make sure that if something were to happen, we were gonna still be okay. And through that though, we started. I knew uh Justin from Omni, so we got his uh first year books. He was so generous to like just show us those, and like he was great, and that was like the kickoff to us like really like starting to put numbers together. And then we talked to Kyle and Ben over at Venn. We talked to Josh over at Wooden Ship, and like I I'm not gonna go through all of everybody, but like Insight and Arbiter, Wooden Ship.
SPEAKER_06Uh this is beer community, yeah.
SPEAKER_03They were all so willing to uh and then uh back channel was a huge help too. They just kept giving us advice, and we talked to I think 30-something breweries before we opened uh about just advice to like how to make this work. Uh, because it's like everyone has mistakes, like no one starts a perfect brewery off the get-go.
SPEAKER_02And there was one consistent thread throughout the entirety of it. Every single piece of advice, whether it was forgotten star, back channel, Venn, uh, wooden chip, whoever, everybody had the single, same single piece of advice. Get a bigger cooler. Yeah. Yeah. And we have a 460 square foot cooler, it's uh 12 feet tall. I can fit uh over four by two, two by four by four kegs, which is I can't do that. A lot. A lot of that. Um anyway, uh, I can fit a probably over like 130 kegs into our cooler comfortably, yeah. Uh, just on pallets, plus an additional 60 on the ground. It still doesn't feel big enough. Yeah. Because like you have to fit cans in there, you have to be able to walk around in it, you have to have your cold storage for hops and everything else in there. It doesn't feel big enough. And that becomes a problem when you're like, hey, we're busy, and I need to like forecast out a month and a half or two months of what beer I'm gonna be able to sell. Looking at the breweries that were like, hey, plan this out, and like, cool, I have a uh cooler that's four times as big as yours. How are you surviving? Yeah, uh like looking back on it now, I'm like, what how the hell are you making this work?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. I'll let me like back channel and a few others. Like, they have at the time they had cold storage outside of their primary space that they happen to get. They like I will say the brewing industry in general is amazing in Minnesota. Like, it is so collaborative, everyone is so willing to give the shirt off their back. Uh, like you can post on uh there's a Facebook group and there's a bunch of other ways to communicate to everybody like hey, I need this certain hop like today. Or I need a contractor for this or whatever. And you'll get 10 to 20 responses almost within 24 hours. And I love that.
SPEAKER_02And Eric at Insight, I think, gave us our best piece of advice uh, which was we were I was kind of just like laying out what our business plan was and like what size of equipment we were gonna uh potentially open on. And like I had initially planned for a five-barrel brew house, ten barrel tanks, maybe a couple like mostly fives and then a couple tens. And then Eric looked at me and he's like, You're either in this game or you're not.
SPEAKER_06Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I'm like, I'm like, what? And he's like, you can go broke saving money. So if you're planning for success, plan for it. If you plan for failure, you will find it. Yeah, wow. Um, and so like you kind of have to jump into the pool. You don't get to put a toe in. Yeah, you have to jump in. And so, like, for the places that have like open up on smaller brew houses, they may have found success, but it's hard fought success. Yeah, and like I see that in everybody I talk to who has opened up on a smaller system, they're like, hey, we're making great beer. Well, the community loves us, but like it feels like we're drowning. Yeah. It's like, yeah, because you kind of are. Like, I love them, and but like I want to see them succeed, and it's hard to do that when you're on a small kit. Like, how do you grow? Yeah, yeah. If you're making seven kegs at a time on a three and a half barrel system, yeah. So, yeah, that's a hard get.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so when we came back to the to go back to the story, once we like were putting our business plan together, we kind of but your your business plan to not do a brewery.
SPEAKER_06Correct.
SPEAKER_04The whole what was your bar going to be called?
SPEAKER_03Oh, there were so many.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, alarm.com brewing company was one of them.
SPEAKER_03We we uh we had four, I want to say, yeah official names that our lawyer is like, nope, you can't do that. It's gonna be like uh there's a bunch of copyright issues with it, somebody's gonna come after you for it. So uh the beer industry is also tied to the tea industry, beer, and something else. There's one other one that like all of them uh are considered brewing companies. So if your name is even remotely close to that, they can come after you for it. Like a great example is the name Moose. Big Sky Brewery will sue anybody. No offense, Big Sky, don't come after me. Wow. Because like they have moose drool and they don't want anyone infringing on their IP. So like that is a very known So you can't have like moose anything? That is the rumor that I've been told. Yeah, so like they might be able to get away with it because of that. But like uh if you were to if I were to name a beer like just moose IPA, there is moose horn IPA or whatever.
SPEAKER_02And like, well, mo like Big Sky might go, hey, that's super close to Moose Drill. Uh and if you distribute that anywhere, that's gonna be a problem for us. Right.
SPEAKER_03And like that might be changing a little bit. Like it used to be a little bit more litigious a handful of years ago. I haven't really heard of any seasoned assists in the last couple years because unless you're really dis like doing distribution with that brand, people don't care as much. But it used to be like even putting one-offs on your tap menu, like Mars Bar or whatever, like they would come and be like, you can't do that.
SPEAKER_04Like dilly dilly at Modesty? No, not that one. Who knows? That's a hilarious story.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but like even our like we have our fooded blonde on tap right now called Bloom. And we named it, we didn't really like do a whole lot of uh background checking to it.
SPEAKER_03We had no interest in like a thing.
SPEAKER_02Whatever, and I went to a liquor store before I went tubing with uh my buddy Alan. Uh, you know, shout out Alan. Oh yeah, Alan.
SPEAKER_04Uh my new Friday wandering leaf pal.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and so like I went tubing with him, and like I'm gonna grab a couple four bags for the river, and I'm like, oh, Bloom from Insight. They have a beer named Bloom. Ah shit. Yeah. So like like I should have checked before I like, you know, before we registered it, but like whatever. And like we're not distributing it, like we're not stepping on inside's toes, so it's gonna be fine. But like other breweries care a lot. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Well, I'm sure if they're just their beer is out there, that they're gonna care a little bit more. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Wonderingly furious brewing, yeah. Uh furious beer coming up here soon.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, they're not gonna like it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, if we're gonna make a beer like a mainstay longer-term beer, we do quite a bit of due diligence to make sure that we're not gonna be stepping on toes. Specifically in the like the Minnesota area, specifically the Twin Cities, and then like general Midwest.
SPEAKER_06It's a lot of beers to check on.
SPEAKER_03Well, like there's some resources for it, luckily. Uh the beer database.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, there's the beer database.
SPEAKER_03I just hack into the mainframe.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. It's your tech background. That's right, yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_03That's right. So firewall my ass. I'm in, I'm in. We've all watched uh oh, she was the Hugh Jackman movie again. Swordfish. We've all seen Swordfish. Huge jacked. Yeah, yeah. But okay, so we we uh had our business plan. We're pretty like adamant, like, okay, it's not gonna work.
SPEAKER_04Realized the name, that's what she shed was already taken. Yep.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, back shed was not gonna have that. Yeah. We started to realize that the numbers actually worked.
SPEAKER_06Even your high, like elevated.
SPEAKER_03And like even our high elevator numbers, unfortunately, were about accurate and maybe not quite accurate in hindsight, but uh after like we opened up post-COVID era so there was a bunch of construction costs that went way higher than we thought. But like used tanks didn't exist at the time because everything was bought up. So we bought everything new because it was the same price as used. So there's a whole bunch of stuff that got very expensive because we're in the like the COVID era of logistics.
SPEAKER_02And and like an another big uh big part is that like a brewery's business model changes on location. So like for us being in a uh high population retail center, like we can kind of anticipate much higher retail traffic and more people coming in through the front door. So for us to hit like let's just say $100,000 a month in net sale, great. That's a that might be us breaking even, whereas another brewery that's doing $20,000 a month is like, hey, that's our breaking point. Well, our infrastructure costs might be wildly different based on where you are, what your rent costs, what your debt is, everything else. And so there are a lot of different factors that play into your whole vibe or like how you figure out what is financial success for you. So Rob and I still haven't paid ourselves in nearly four years. Yep. And that's not a sore point at all. No, not at all. But like we're we're busy, cash flow's good, but like there's short-term debts, there's long-term debts that we need to consider, and like our wives are very patient, and we're trying to figure out how do we Jennifer and Amy are delightful human beings.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yes. Way better than very clear. Both of you outkicked your coverage big time.
SPEAKER_02I don't know how yeah, you know, we we both lock that shit down real early.
SPEAKER_07I choo, choo, choose you.
SPEAKER_02Like there's a lot of different, you know, ways to measure success for a brewery. And for a business that requires this amount of overhead, you know, expecting you know profit like in like what everybody assumes is profit in the first three to five years, it shouldn't really super be expected. Some breweries were able to achieve that year one when it like times were great.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Right now, if you're planning to open up a brewery, be prepared for a lot of hurt for the first four to five years.
SPEAKER_03And if you are planning to open a brewery, please come talk to Matt and I. We would love to talk to you about it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I was doing some math yesterday. Why? Because I don't know. Math, my favorite. Trying to wake my brain up. But I figured, so like if you sell 400 pints a day at $8 a pint, yeah. There's 30 days and a year, it's $120,000. Yeah. So that's like cash flow in. Yeah. But then like I was trying to like think about like, okay, so there's like 11% for taxes. There's taxes, there's rent, there's payroll, there's upkeep costs, there's machinery costs, there's like different, you know, you need some place to sit, something to look at, you know, if you want your so it's like I think that even if because the reason I I landed on that number is because I remember when Steve Finney was opening up Little Thistle. He had kind of done the same thing that you all had. He talked to Dangerous Man, he talked to Fair State. Now this was back. They're celebrating eight years this August, end of August. So this is like probably ten, nine or ten years ago. He's like talking to these these folks, and he's like, if we sell 300 beers a day, we will be fine. And I was thinking about that number because when I was here on Tuesday for trivia, it was packed. And I'm like, so that's just like that one snapshot, that hour and a half session. But you open at two on Tuesday. So, you know, do you have like that 300 pints a day? What would you say that is now for just a ballpark of hey, if you can do this, then you're in the game. If you can't pull this off, if you can't pull this number of pints, you you need to rethink or you need to aim bigger.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so for us, it's about three grand a day. So that's rounded up to 3200, which is an easily divisible number. Yep. So that's 400 a day. And that's average an hour. 400 per day. Oh, I uh like 400 beers uh per day every day of the week. So that includes your Mondays, your Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays. Hopefully, you're like making some money. Uh Saturdays, whatever. And that cackle is my wife. Yeah. Uh so just gave our regular Jeff a heart attack. Uh like I threw out that number earlier, like about $100,000 net sale a month. And like that's kind of like our breakeven point. We're in a retail spot, rent is high, our debt is expensive, payroll is what it is. It's like interest is high. Yeah, all those things. And so like we need to sell a certain number of beers. And like the thing that every homebrewer or uh somebody who's putting together that business plan of like, well, breweries must make money. Uh like what they come down to is like, well, it you know, like they're selling pints for eight dollars a glass, but it costs them 50 cents to make that like that that pint or a dollar to make that pint. Well, true, but like there's all the overhead, and you make that 90 cents on the dollar once you pass your hundred thousand dollar mark for us. And so, like, if And then it's still not quite 90 cents per dollar. Correct, yeah. Correct. But like, like, like, like, just like broadly speaking, that's kind of like what it is, and so like we have to cover all those costs uh every single month, and then we like every dollar we make on top of that hundred thousand dollars might be like, hey, that's where we're making money.
SPEAKER_03That includes January, that you know, makes no money, and then you gotta balance that out with like j June, July, August, that hopefully will offset that January month.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I I'm pretty open with our money, like with the money, and like I think anybody in craft beer should be, you know, maybe a little bit more open with each other because we're all going through the hardest time ever. We're we're seeing more closures than openings. Uh a lot of our friends are suffering pretty intensely. And like if we're being dishonest with each other about like what the financial struggle looks like, well then we can't help each other either. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So I mean, and like not beer related, but like the whole THC stuff that's uncertainty that's going on right now is really not helping a lot of our friends in the industry. Like, we are out of the THC game, so we're really focused on beer. But there are so many of our friends that are making these great beverages that help and like they're they're great. They like they are helping them stay afloat, but also like it's uh it's a whole market of people that they don't drink alcohol, they want something else, they want to hang out with their friends, but they don't want to drink alcohol, so like they don't feel quote unquote welcome in a brewery as much because like they're not really any beer drinkers, they don't really want to have a Coke at 9 p.m. So having a THC beverage allows them to be here. Like we would love to be in the THC game, but it's just so expensive, it's so cost prohibitive to be in it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and like to a to a point, like making the beverage is cheap, uh, relatively. Yeah, but there are intense insurance costs if you want to like even insure your product. The Office of Cannabis Management is now requiring it, but like there's not really an enforcement agency either. So like you can go, like, well, sure, OCM is telling me I need to have this insurance, but there's no like ATF or like whatever judicial brands like Marshall is gonna come around and say, hey, you need to have this right now.
SPEAKER_04Will that position be called the czar of jazz cabbage?
SPEAKER_02If it's not, I'm gonna be really upset. So uh for us at the time, there were the insurance costs were too like like almost 40% of our revenue for on-premise consumption. So if I sold you a ten dollar uh, you know, a ten dollar drink. This is just to sell it.
SPEAKER_06This isn't even to brew it.
SPEAKER_02Right. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. If I had a THC drink and I was like, hey, this is ten bucks, you know, here's your here's your beverage for tonight, uh like by our sales rate, it was 40% of that. So $4 went straight to insurance. That's not counting the the can cost that it took us to the package it, the label, the lid, the canned body, the time on the equipment, the THC beverage, uh like the THC emulsion, the the water, the utility, everything that went into that. So at at some point, you're like, are we actually making money selling this? And at the time it was a firm no.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um so we got out of it. Yeah. And like other breweries were like selling oodles more than we were. And so, like, of course they weren't making money.
SPEAKER_03We were a little late on the game. Uh so in the wholesale game, it was hard for us to break in and it didn't offset any of our costs. Like, we were in our like best five liquor stores, and they were kind of doing it as like a here you go. That's all right. Yeah, you know, like a little charity gift.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh, here you go, you little poor boy. Yeah, like the THC game is uh like an interesting one, and like a libraries are using that right now to, as Rob put it, to uh supplement their books. And uh with the new legislation that's coming through in the fall, it's really scary because we don't know what the feds are gonna actually gonna do.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but like some of like the best beer in the state, which I'm not gonna say names, but they're like supplemented by their THC brand. They are allowed to make these really awesome beers because the THC pays the bills a bit. It's unfortunate that like that's the world that we live in right now, but like the be the adult beverage market is rapidly changing, and the beer market has been stable for I don't know, thousands of years at this point. We like beer, we like alcohol, that's great. But there's the masses that kind of move around to ready to drink cocktails, THCs, seltzers, whatever is around is the hype thing right now. Those people will shift back and forth. And the beer people stay at the beer. Steady. And that that's the thing that like we found success is that we're making we'll make weird, unique beers, and that we love them, and we're gonna continue to do so. But we also make, you know, like the normal stuff style beers, and we like to make them, like amber ales, brown ales, stuff like that. They the beer drinkers come and drink those, and that's been a pretty core, steady like base for us. And that's like I've always like seen like the hype uh trends for beer where it was like hazy IPAs for a long time, those drinkers stuck. Then we had like the lactose sours, those people stuck. And then they just kind of move and some of those people just moved on to seltzer's, they moved on to ready to drink cocktails, they went on to THC, and they just kind of keep moving with whatever the trend is. But the beer drinkers just they knew what they liked, they stuck with the beer that they like. So you try to find them where where they are, and you keep making the beers that are for beer drinkers, not necessarily the hype chasers. That's our general philosophy, at least my general philosophy.
SPEAKER_02No, no, no, it's the same. Because like uh as a brewer, it it's you're not making beer for you. Yeah. Right? Uh if you want to make beer for yourself, and like you're like, oh, I only want to drink lager, so I'm only gonna make lager. Well, be a home brewer. Yeah. Like, like make it for yourself. Because like, if you're gonna be a brewer and want to open up a business to do it, you're making it for your community. And if your community's telling you, hey, I want smoothie seltzers, dog, I don't know what to tell you. You're gonna make smoothie seltzers if you want to stay alive. Yeah, like that might be a hard way to make a living in terms of your soul, but uh thousand calories at a time. Thousand calories at a time.
SPEAKER_04Uh but like Wilford Brimley is rolling over in his grave. Thank you, Drecker.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, for sure. But that's kind of the point, is that like if you're gonna make, if you're gonna open up a brewery, you have to make what your customers want.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I remember when we were going around talking to different people, asking for advice, like there were a couple tap rooms we went into. There were two different tap rooms I can I'm not gonna name, but there were 17 different uh hazy IPAs on tap.
SPEAKER_06That's a lot of hazy simultaneously.
SPEAKER_02And it's like, okay, cool. Well, there's 17 hazy's, there's one pills, one sour. There's nothing else for anybody else.
SPEAKER_04Like that time I got blindfolded at a key party.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. I can't see it.
SPEAKER_04It smells like oranges. What's happening here?
SPEAKER_06Hey, yo. Even if you're the hazy drinker, that's too many options. Like, what are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you you get blinded by choice. Yeah, and so if like for us, like we're like, hey, there's a max of like four hoppy options on tap. There's a couple lagers, there's a couple dark beers, there's a couple sours, fruited options, whatever. But like we want to maintain a varied tap list because like not everybody who walks through your front door is a haze head. Yes. And kudos to those people. Like, like, I'm happy to make, I'm trying, I'm trying to make the best hazy I can for them.
SPEAKER_04You can make a really good one.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. But like, I also want to make an excellent lager for the people who are like just like coming in from Heather uh regular Heather. She she's a nurse at the or uh admin staff, maybe I can't, I can't remember anymore. She's here all the time. She's great. Uh uh Heather, she's but she's at the she works at the VA hospital, she stops here nearly every single day uh on her way home after her shift, and she is drinking a lager here. Yeah. And she just likes beer. She wants it to have flavor, she doesn't really like Bud Light or anything like that.
SPEAKER_04She sounds like a much better version of uh the Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh. She also likes beer. Yeah, but he's a prick.
SPEAKER_02And she doesn't boof it. Yeah. Where are the calendars?
SPEAKER_04Speaking of, so I want to give another jarring statistic while we're talking about this. At this table, we have 75% empty glassware. Oh, we should take a break. We answered through one question. Yeah, even one question. And uh yeah, when we come back, we'll delve into more of uh the talking points.
SPEAKER_06You think I have talking points? You're looking at me like I have talking points.
SPEAKER_04I've looked at my pants twice. That's right. Oh, no, we got eight more to go because we want to make it a 10. A 10 10 star 10 star rating so we can get that sponsored by NASA diapers. When you need to drive cross country, but don't want to make a pit stop. NASA diapers.
SPEAKER_07I don't know what's happening.
SPEAKER_02NASA.
SPEAKER_04That's right.
SPEAKER_02Love it. All right. Airbreak. Of the course. These pants won't shit themselves.
SPEAKER_04Who's the I think that's Bull's horn that has that up on their behind their bottom. Hell yeah. That sign. My god, Malord is just disgusting.
SPEAKER_03Love it. I will go on the record and say not that bad. I agree. I think it is firmly in the not good category. But there are worse liqueurs. And I will shout them out right now. Complements, go to hell. Jaegermeister, go to hell. Yes. Yes. Interesting.
SPEAKER_02Uh again, I'm gonna go back to- You place Malort ahead of Jaeger?
SPEAKER_03Yes. Yes. Doug. That's insane. I like bitter, and I think that Malort around.
SPEAKER_04Do you like tossing the salad of a rusty car battery? Because that's what it's like.
SPEAKER_06I'm gonna add Mezcal. I hate Cal.
SPEAKER_02Oh, oh, we're gonna fight.
SPEAKER_03I will fight. I like rubber tires. I do like Mezcal.
SPEAKER_02It's like rubber tires, apparently. So like for Malort, for me, it's like licking an ashtray. Like the the main note I get is ashtray. Astray, yeah. Yeah, ashtray. Astray.
SPEAKER_06Astray.
SPEAKER_02Hey, next beer name.
SPEAKER_04I'll have another. Are we on? We are on, yeah. We've been recording since the Malort.
SPEAKER_03Mint doesn't belong anywhere except for mojitos, gum, and toothpaste. That's it?
SPEAKER_06I no, I would add to the thing.
SPEAKER_03I will say that like Thai food and other like Asian dishes. Like mint leaves are great. I will say that.
SPEAKER_04Do you like when you uh are you a lamb fan? Do you like lamb?
SPEAKER_03Not really. I want to. Like uh Nordic dogs that have the lamb dogs every now and then, and those are delicious.
SPEAKER_06Is it Dr. McGillicutti's? Yes. Dr. McGillicutti's in the freezer when you get sick in the winter and you just need a little shot before you go to bed, that's okay.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I also like to put mint in hot cocoa. Yes. Because then it turns it into a liquid Andy's mint.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I don't like Andy's mints. I think mint chocolate's bad. Actually, to be fair, I'm not a big chocolate person. So like that's not fair. I clearly chose a wrong business. Absolutely. I have hard opinions about things that really shouldn't have hard opinions.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like I I joke a lot about like, hey, Rob's gonna die on this hill. Uh, so don't be offended by that. It's just the autism. Sorry. Sorry.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I mean, everybody's got a hill that they're that they'll they'll die in. What's your hill?
SPEAKER_02What the hill I'll die on.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, what's your non-negotiable? Where like somebody does this like nope, nope, nope.
SPEAKER_03Oh man. Using the DMR in Warzone.
SPEAKER_02You know, like hey, hey. My God. Like for me, like, this is not really a hill to die on. It's more of like an like a look into my own psychosis. If I'm in Costco.
SPEAKER_07Okay.
SPEAKER_02If you ever hear about like people randomly disappearing and the Costco killers a foot, that is gonna be me. And Ron is just gonna lose it right now. Uh I lose my shit at people who it seem it seems to be their first day on earth everywhere they go. Yes. And I'm like, alright, I'm gonna follow you to your barking lot and let the air out of your tires. Because, like, what the hell, man?
SPEAKER_06They're just meandering around and like looking and then looking over here. They're in the way.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, how have you not interacted with other people on this earth? Like, I really feel like people should have to work in the food service or service industry sort of job for at least a year. Like, kind of like a tour in Vietnam or whatever. Hey, like you know, it's like you have to do this to be a functioning member of society.
SPEAKER_04And thank you for all who served.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. It's like if you don't have a big thing.
SPEAKER_04Oh, but we went to Costco this afternoon since we just put them on the same park.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. But but like I guess my point is like like when you have ridiculous requests of service staff. Oh yeah. Know what it means to be like on the other end of that when someone's like, hey, my ranch is too hot, or like that's a bad actually a bad thing. I don't know, my mom might say that. Oh, Jesus Christ. Cold beer's in hot ranch. You know, like uh like just understand like it's out of your servers' control at certain times. Like they're just going out to eat is like requires like an like a whole ecosystem of people, like my cooks, servers, bartenders, everybody all working in in unison, and like just the fact that your meal is slightly different than what you expected doesn't mean that you need to torch the place to the ground. No, yeah, um, like have a little grace everywhere you go.
SPEAKER_03I will also say, like, we've talked about this at length. When you go to a restaurant, there are like 10 minimum people working at any given time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Which is crazy. Like they like they have just crossing paths all the time, doing different tasks, doing different things. I got a brewery, like we might have three, maybe four people on the bar and doing tasks around the tap room. Like, we might have some people in the back doing like brewing and packaging, shots. Shotgunning hams and tossing them into a garbage can. The hard stuff, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um things that keep the lights on.
SPEAKER_03Uh but there's like there's uh there's like restaurants nearby that we would go to, and I'm like, it's a Monday night, and you have seven, eight people going right now. Like you have four servers, you have four people in like the kitchen. Like, yeah, how do you even employ these people?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you're burning a hundred dollars an hour in labor. Yeah, like like how do you generate the revenue necessary to like fund the business?
SPEAKER_03So whoever runs like the general managers of restaurants, like kudos to you, because like that sounds very difficult. I couldn't do it.
SPEAKER_02Totally different structure, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Courtney, what's your what's your hill that you're gonna die in? What's your like pet peeve of non-negotiable?
SPEAKER_06I have a lot. Pick a topic.
SPEAKER_04Driving etiquette.
SPEAKER_03Oh my god.
SPEAKER_04Give me a driving etiquette hill you're gonna die on. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Is it everything? Fuck out of the left lane. Yes. Yes.
SPEAKER_02Is it your first day on earth?
SPEAKER_06Learn how to merge. It does not involve slamming on your brakes or like trying to merge when you're driving 30 miles an hour onto the interstate.
SPEAKER_04Are you a zipper merger?
SPEAKER_06It doesn't have to be a zipper merge, but you need to like get up to speed and find an opening and go in. And likewise, the people that are in traffic, you need to adjust a little bit when you see someone is about to enter.
SPEAKER_03To defend the zipper mergers and to defend the people that don't zipper merge, I'm gonna take a middle stance, which is crazy for me. But I do think that there should be a social etiquette standard. If everyone is deciding not to zipper merge, then you don't zipper merge. Yeah. If everyone decides to zipper merge, zipper merge.
SPEAKER_02Well, if you're moving at 60 miles an hour, how do you make that decision fast enough?
SPEAKER_03Oh, then just zipper merge. That's fine. Because like, but like I'm talking about like you're backed up on 62 and there's clearly like a 200 feet of space that you could go forward and then cut in. Yeah. Or just cut in 200 feet early, just do the 200 feet early. As someone that drives on 494 and 62 too much, just leave space for people. Yeah, yeah. Like that's all I'm saying. I have gotten 180 on this. I firmly was uh like I'm gonna like tail the person in front of me when I was like 19 years old because I'm like never letting anybody in. And now I've I I I feel like I've become Zen, and I'm just like, I'm gonna just give like 50 feet of space. And if 12 people want to come in front of me, it is gonna cost me about 30 seconds of time in my total commute. I just don't want to be slamming on my brake anymore. I'm just like, I'll I'll just like coast at 12 miles per hour instead of 15 miles per hour.
SPEAKER_02I'm just gonna crank up my my chemical romance. That's right. And just like listen to the MC. Polish the shotgun in the in the car while listening to MCR. Yeah, I'll I have more patience for drivers than I have for patient patience for people in Costco. That's right. Because like, how are you looking at frozen yogurt for longer than this?
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_02And you're taking up a whole aisle, my god, I'm going to follow you in the city.
SPEAKER_03There's a social etiquette to walking, and it is hug the right. Yes. And in Costco, people and their kids will stand in the middle of the lane. Yes.
SPEAKER_06I'm stuck. They have no concept for other people around them.
SPEAKER_02It's crazy. It's crazy. I hate it. And I follow them home and let their hair in the terrors. You know, it's like, hey, you know, like you thought you're gonna go to work? No, you're not. You're gonna go into the auto shop.
SPEAKER_03I really hope that this podcast becomes like a core part of the prosecution for me. And then they're like, those poor jurors are gonna have to listen to this podcast like 17 times just to like hear all. Of Matt's laughs. It's like, okay, what did he mean by that laugh?
SPEAKER_06But by that point, they're gonna be like, you know what? This guy's pretty cool. He he's fine.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, that that's a valid reaction. I would love to tire uh air out of the tires of that person too.
SPEAKER_03That's the joy of it. Psychological warfare that Dan's a part of. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04One time, and this was not that long ago, I would go in days during my prep and move the desks in this teacher's room up half an inch every day. Like, and got out of there before this person even got to school. And at one point, this was like weeks into it, they're like, why is there so much space at the back of the room? I'm like, that's diabolical. I love it.
SPEAKER_02That's a real Captain Holt situation. I will You didn't know how'd you pull this up?
SPEAKER_04When I was younger, in order to scare my sister, I would wait in her closet for like a half hour. If I knew she was eventually going to be coming up to her room and then getting settled, I jump out and scare the crap out of her. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Man, the long game.
SPEAKER_04It's all about the long game for me. I've done that.
SPEAKER_03I don't have that conversation.
SPEAKER_04So I'm a pretty good prankster.
SPEAKER_02Were you an uh older or middle uh sibling? Oldest. Oldest? Yeah, yeah, I was definitely the youngest. So so like as as a aspect in order to get noticed, I would do shit like that. Uh like uh my my favorite uh like this is a huge side tangent side side tangent.
SPEAKER_03Has this whole podcast been side tangent for?
SPEAKER_04A lot of side quests. It's good. This is what the people want. They want this.
SPEAKER_02When uh MP3 players first came out, my brother got a Rio Geo. And it could hold like 40 songs.
SPEAKER_04That's some sort of bikini wax, properly. Tangerine dreams?
SPEAKER_02Uh we can hold 40 songs, right? And so like uh my brother got it, and I'm mowing the line at my parents' house, and I'm listening, I'm using it. Uh my brother let me borrow it, and I'm mowing the front.
SPEAKER_04What year is this?
SPEAKER_02This is like, oh my god, it had to be like 2001. 2001, 2002. So it's like it's loaded with songs from LimeWire, so half of them are like just corrupted and just terrible. Um Mr. Bright's eye, number one on the MP3 player back. So like uh I'm listening to it, and my younger brother comes out, he's like, hey, Ryan wants his MP3 player back. I'm like, well, it's his, so like I gave it back. And I do the first pass to the back of the house, and I see my younger brother on the porch listening to it, and I just let go of the lawnmower and immediately started swinging. Like the biggest fight I ever got into. And I just like kicked the dog shit out of my younger brother.
SPEAKER_03And then what happened like two years later?
SPEAKER_02Oh, uh, he uh got bigger than me, and uh he would do what he would call the paperweight, where he'd throw me onto the couch and just sit on me. And uh I have not won a fight with my younger brother since uh 2003. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I'm the same age as Matt's younger brother. We went to high school together. Matt's two years older than me, so I'm aware of the family dynamics.
SPEAKER_04This is something we didn't mention early on, but you two didn't just meet when you were, you know, at the U.S. No, you guys have known each other for decades.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah, so Matt and then my cousin Andy. Shout at Andy, he's great. We're friends in middle school, I think, and then high school.
SPEAKER_02Andy, Andy was probably my was was my best friend for from like I would have to say like 1998 to 2009.
SPEAKER_06What happened in 2009? I mean like oh we're stressed in the world, me now, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like we don't talk about my girlfriend. Matt Matt became the we we went to different colleges, and like like like I went to the U, he went to St. Cloud State, like we just grew apart that way. We were really close for the longest time. And so like I knew uh Robbie's family for forever.
SPEAKER_03So every now and then though, like they lived near each other, and I would sleep over at my cousin's house, and then Matt would be around and we would hang out. Uh, but that's like when we were kids, yeah, like kid kids. And then I was two years younger, so like I knew Matt kind of in high school. I was, you know, like he was always an upperclassman, I was a lower classman. Younger classman? What do you call it? Lower. Lower classes. Lower classman. Yeah. Um and then like once we got to college, Greg, his brother, and I um both transferred into the U of M as sophomores, and so we decided to live together. Okay. And uh we were always good friends in high school, and so we hung out. Uh, and so we decided to get an apartment together, and then the following year we all lived in a house together, and I got to know Matt really well, and then we just became really good friends because of that. And that was just the like the catalyst of a I hope a lifetime friendship. So no, I'm gonna kill you. That's fair.
SPEAKER_01Honestly, like uh finding out. Don't ever go to Costco when you go to Costco.
SPEAKER_03Honestly, if probably deserved.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. No, but uh, yeah, like Rob and I have known each other forever, and it's it's more than just like a like a friend relationship, like like we've known it long uh long enough that like it's almost like a brother situation. We can get mad super hard at each other and like very frustrated, but at the same time, like it's like well, we're still in the same shit. Yeah, and we're doing the same thing. And like that's kind of like been like a different bridge in like a business partnership, too. Where like like the advice is don't go into business with your friends. I would still advocate for that. Yeah, but at the same time, if you know the other person and you know their weaknesses, you know their strengths, you can lean on them when when you can, you can lean on like like you can pull away when you need to, and you can fight when it's necessary. But at the end of the day, you're gonna have to come together and figure out what is necessary for the both of us. Because like we we've gone through a lot of hard times, and it's been it's been a real challenge for sure. But at the same at the at the same time, like we both looked at each other and like I need to know that you're still in this. And if you're not in this, you need to tell me right now. Yeah, but it's like we're we're still here for each other, yeah, and whatever the business needs is what the business needs. Yeah, but like at the same time, if you're not if the business isn't satisfying you, yeah, then like you need to have a real conversation like how we look forward from that.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, I I like I to add to that a little bit, I think anybody that starts a business at some point in their life, they would do it. Um it's it's it's it's a lot of stress. So you're gonna go through it. Like it's not God love the people that like start a business and they just make billions of dollars and they never go through any stress in their life. Like, I don't know if that happens ever, but I don't think it can.
SPEAKER_06If it looks like it does, I think they're faking it.
SPEAKER_04Trump University. Does that make money? No, it did not.
SPEAKER_03It might have. We don't know. We don't know. They burned the book. He hasn't released his Epstein files. Oh, his tax returns, but also the Epstein files. But yeah, so it's it's a very stressful endeavor. Like you're out, like you're putting your family's money on the line, and so that's a whole like you're adding so much extra like stress on top of a relationship. We talked about this very early on. Like, it's likely harder for us to get out of our business than it is to get divorced or to murder your partner. Like, it's like it's like it's it's a like it's a big endeavor to do this, and you're putting a lot of money and a lot of effort, and like when you involve the government, because we have a small business loan, like it's in like pretty close to impossible to get out unless you have like an angel investor that's willing to like do a lot of yeah, assume risk uh like for a business that they didn't start.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And like like I'm with I don't even want to trust somebody else to make me a sandwich. I don't know how you would just like you know, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Like the ratio of pickle to mayo, it's like my god, yeah, no pickle.
SPEAKER_03Oh, so all mayo. Hey, all small, all banana pepper, no pickle. That's interesting.
SPEAKER_06I like pickle, I like heat.
SPEAKER_03No.
SPEAKER_04Banana peppers aren't spicy though.
SPEAKER_03Let me tell you. Oh no.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you can take you can take the man out of St. Cloud, but you can't take St. Cloud out of the man.
SPEAKER_03Hey, these banana peppers are really burning me. Okay, Matt can attest to this. I have a I can handle synthetic capsasin like nobody's business. Yeah. Like the bomb hot sauce, you're okay with. Yeah. The last dab can do it. The moment you give me like a spicy banana pepper, I'm like just gasping for air. Yeah, it's crazy. Jalapeno, jalapeno.
SPEAKER_04Are you talking like peppercinis? No, peppercinis are fine.
SPEAKER_03I'm talking like, so there's like a shout out to Adam, Amy's uh business or like uh co-worker. He grows these spicy bananas. I put them on my sandwich last night and I was dying. Yeah. Dying. So like Amy was killing me. She's roasting me because I was like gasping. She's like, you must be like pulling my leg and like, nope, I'm dying.
SPEAKER_06Did she eat it too? Did she like it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, she just like she's she's Amy's not human. Yeah, that's a hundred percent true. She just handles heat like nobody's business, and it's not fair.
SPEAKER_02I train, I put effort into it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, interesting.
SPEAKER_02But like, but like to like kind of like sum that up, Rob has been able to handle hot sauces that I find like in like almost incompro comprehensibly bad. And then like for like a video for like Hot Girl Summer, which is one of our beers, we ate a piece of habanero pepper. It was not a big deal for me, but for Rob, he was like gasping for air. Yeah, like but like like for a habanero hot sauce, Rob might be able to handle that like, oh, this is nothing. And I'd be like, dude, I'm gonna die. Yeah. I don't understand. Like, I can eat a raw pepper and feel okay, and Rob will handle it like the inverse from what I can do. And I don't understand that. I don't understand. The flaming hot Cheetos effect, I think. I love my Yeah, it's not like a Minnesota spicy sort of sort of situation. It's more of a uh you don't tolerate like you handle synthetic chemicals in a different way than other people.
SPEAKER_03I have the diet of an eighth grader. We all know it. I I love wax donuts, they're the best. Shout out Entamins. Oh my god!
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's a good shout out to the Entamon sponsored Entamin's Donut Collab. Let's do it.
SPEAKER_04Um also uh, you know, they they played there was an Entamins uh Seinfeld episode too.
SPEAKER_03Was there?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I didn't watch Seinfeld.
SPEAKER_06Can you do a wax donut flavored beer?
SPEAKER_03Oh can we?
SPEAKER_06Let's do it.
SPEAKER_03We already know the name for it. Yeah, yeah, the wax donut.
SPEAKER_02No, no, yes, wax donut is the name. No, no, there's a more obvious choice. Okay, floor donut. Oh yeah, floor donut's the name. Yeah, that's right. You're right. So, like, during construction here, Rob and I being degenerates, we wouldn't eat on a normal basis. And so we'd walk over to Aldi and like they had like these, you know, waxy chocolate donuts. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Just what you were looking for. They're done in a pinch.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'm not gonna do it. No nutrition. No, no, no.
SPEAKER_02Sometimes you need that. And and being degenerate.
SPEAKER_04His body was built on floor donuts. Right.
SPEAKER_02And being degenerates, we would drink, and then like we would occasionally drop them on the ground. And like I think the idea was we were throwing them and we're trying to catch them. Yeah. Okay, okay, like let's romanticize it. Yeah. But our friend, uh our friend James Lee, who built our brew. Built the brewery, he's the best. He's built like 30-something breweries now. But like he coined them as floor donuts because they were on the-ritten on the wall in the back. Yeah, like we were eating them off the floor in a lot. And he's like, like, I can't be in floor donuts, I'm a father now. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06That's when things changed.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So it's like, yeah, we can't be taking risky shit uh like on our health. Um, we have like other responsibilities. And so, but like Rob and I like, whatever, like this was like in construction dust for like five five minutes. Like, who cares?
SPEAKER_04And that's just good protein.
SPEAKER_03I think, okay, let's be honest. Like, what's the difference between breathing in like seven hours of construction dust versus just like eating a little bit of construction? Get an all-one bite donut off a beautiful floor donut.
SPEAKER_06Was the floor wet? No.
SPEAKER_03Was the donut wet? The donut would never was never wet.
SPEAKER_02I think the donut's inherently wet.
SPEAKER_03Well, yeah, it definitely has a like a little bit of like uh sweat.
SPEAKER_04The inherently wet donut, that's gonna be a beard.
SPEAKER_03It's blocking the the it's preventing any of the dirt pickups. Sometimes the wax coating will sweat. And I don't know why.
SPEAKER_04I don't want to know why, but it will be because beautiful things can still happen in this world as topsy turvy as it is.
SPEAKER_03Oh my god. That's right.
SPEAKER_04Now, speaking of beautiful things, I want to talk about this beer I'm drinking. It's the fest beer. Great segue.
SPEAKER_06And why is Dan putting us on track? I gotta get into this.
SPEAKER_04That's true, yes. We'll get there. I want to pause though, because you know, we're recording this on August 20th, 2026. Yeah. I think that's correct. Yep. And one of the big controversial things every year is when how early are people gonna put their Oktoberfests on? I don't have a problem with it. Seasonal creep. You took like we talked about earlier, you know, if if people are gonna buy a beer in its seasonal optimal time, you need to have it ready for that. Because in November, nobody wants Oktoberfest. So I still want Octoberfest. Applaud you have it all for having all not only not only an Oktoberfest style beer, but having a fest beer and a Martin. So the Martin was the first one I had. Now I'm onto the fest beer. They're both really good. Thanks. And I think you will be having a fall festival uh near the end of September. Is that correct? September 26th. September 26th, 2026. Yeah. Be there or be square. I think it's it's great. This beer is now the the challenge is going to be making sure I hope you made enough of it because I feel like this fest beer is going to go really fast.
SPEAKER_02If it sells better than every other beer we've ever made, yeah, it's gonna be a problem. Um I packaged uh 20 kegs of each. Tip like for our best selling individual beer, it's like four kegs a week. Yeah. Um so five minimum weeks. And it's the middle of August, that's end of September, or like right around the festival. We should have enough. Yeah. Okay. Um and if I sell five kegs a week of both of these, holy fucking shit, I I've done something that I've never thought about. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Uh so it's a weird balancing act of getting it out into the public. Yeah. Because on the wholesale side, and I hate that this is a thing, if you're the last one to the game, liquor stores are like, oh, we already bought all of our fest beer for the year.
SPEAKER_04Right, yeah.
SPEAKER_03We got the brands, we got the winter warmers. They're on the Great Lakes Christmas sale. And like, shout out to Shells and to Summit. Like, they kill it every year. But and then and their beer is delicious. I'm not gonna like discount it because like I like love their beers. But they, I think both released their fest beers at the beginning of August, maybe even the end of July. And last year, we I think released our fest beer in the first or second week of September. And we well and then we tried to sell it in the wholesale market, and I was like, no, we don't want it. Like it's it's just not gonna sell through by the middle of October, and we just don't want to bring that in right now. And it's like so and the Fest beer last year was great, and it sold really well in the tap room, and it's I in my opinion, very good this year as well. And hopefully it'll do well in the wholesale market as well. But like you like you have to balance that wholesale market release strategy versus tap room strategy, and that's just a pain in the butt because everyone's creeping forward. Like, I'm sure next year it's gonna be the third week of July that everyone wants to uh release the beer, and then the week before it's just gonna be a Christmas thing all over again. It's not just beer.
SPEAKER_04The fuck nuts at Target think it's a great idea to have school supplies on sale in the middle of June. Yeah. Fuck that shit. Oh my god. I remember. I remember wanted to drive a flaming Mac truck full of petrol into a store more than when I see that. It just gets the rage inside me going. It's it's not good.
SPEAKER_03I mean, on that note though, I remember uh walking through Costco, I think in the end of June, and I took pictures of it and sent it to our uh taproom manager who loves Halloween, and they had the Halloween stuff up already. And like I remember the reason I sent it is because there was like this uh skeleton that had motion sensors and it scared this kid. And like it just it it like tickled me. The kid was Robbie. Yeah, the kid was me. Oh my parents home, we gotta go home. And I remember sending it because it's like it's so funny that they already have it up at the end of June for Halloween. It's like I I like holidays, but they have a time.
SPEAKER_04Yes now, as a as a as a kid who probably could have stood to have more friends uh and was really into Halloween. It shows. I thank you. There was one year when I started making Halloween decorations in July, and I begged my mom to take me to the like the craft store and get the multicolored construction paper pack, and I threw every color away except for white, orange, and black, and I started cutting out jack-o'-lanterns and bats and ghosts, and she was befudd and angry. She's like, Why did you throw all that away? I'm like, Well, these are the only three colors I need. That doesn't mean they could've they needed to go in the garbage, but also, yeah, Halloween decorations in July. So, I mean, I loved Halloween.
SPEAKER_03On that note, we have Maury Povich coming in. This has all been an elaborate setup to talk about Danload some childhood trauma. This whole podcast thing.
SPEAKER_04You are not the father.
SPEAKER_03The witch. Well, I didn't think I was.
SPEAKER_04We're not hook abroad until 2002. Uh is he not relevant anymore? I mean, I think he is. Oh, thank God. People have a certain way.
SPEAKER_03I don't want to age myself.
SPEAKER_06I mean, Dan and I are older than you guys, so it's like it's That's right.
SPEAKER_04Still remember when uh Maury Pilich and Connie Chung were the power couple of Hollywood. Well people listen to that is like, well, who are these people?
SPEAKER_02So I I just looked up in my uh my text messages and I have a text from my friend Glenn at Udipils, and on July 9th, he sent me a photo of their fest fest beer.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Oh yeah. July 9th. I mean I thought a couple years ago.
SPEAKER_02I love their beer. Well, you have to though. But like like that early is like that's the game we're playing now. Like for Utapils, like like we have to be like in that area. We have to be the first.
SPEAKER_04In 2023, I was in Asheville, North Carolina, coming home. I was at the airport bar, Sierra Nevada, on like July 12th, and I had their Oktoberfest on tap. And I'm like, this is the cr this is the earliest I have ever had an Oktoberfest. But then the year later, Bring Change Collaborative did a field trip on July 20th up to Lupulin, and we all got cans of their Oktoberfest. GABF gold medal winning Oktoberfest. Yep. And had that on July 20th. So I think that this concept, people get their undies in a bunch about this, and it's kind of just, you know, like you said, if if people are gonna buy it, you you don't want to miss it. You don't be late to the game.
SPEAKER_06But I think everybody could just get together and say, as an industry, we're not gonna do this before this date. This is the first time.
SPEAKER_04But it's but they're not gonna then you're saying then you're saying no to money.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, there's there's gonna be the people that don't abide by the social norm. Right.
SPEAKER_07Fuck those people.
SPEAKER_04Well, I think it's the people that don't have a plan when they go into a Costco. But there's like the The people that don't fight back against Papa John's lackadaisical knuckle-dragging p pizza delivery drivers, you know?
SPEAKER_03Like a whole there's a whole podcast of it. There's like the 60, 70 percent of people that don't follow the plan and they don't pay attention to news or whatever, and then by the time that November starts, they're done drinking Oktoberfests, and if you're stuck with inventory, you're stuck with inventory.
SPEAKER_06But isn't that gonna get pushed up? Like you if you're stuck with your inventory on October 1st now, because it's starting so early.
SPEAKER_03But I think the saving grace of the Oktoberfest is that it's called Oktoberfest. So people will still drink it through October, but the moment nobody's gonna be able to do it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, if you want to get technical, doesn't Oktoberfest end on like the second weekend of October. I think so, yeah. Yeah. So there's a bunch of there's a bunch of sheep out there drinking Oktoberfest on like Halloween, like, oh, it's Oktoberfest. No, it's not.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, on like a side tangent to all this, uh, there's a holiday that I'm going to name right now. Uh, it's not an official holiday yet. There's a millennia and millennia anniversary for a brewery in 2040 that makes an Oktoberfest beer, Fein Schiffaner Brewing, uh, in Bavaria. They make one of the best Hellas' I've ever had. Uh huh. They've defined the style for epites in.
SPEAKER_04Y'all know your way around a Hellas.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And they make excellent beer. Gold medal winner! But uh, but like I'm like like this idea of holidays and you know, like celebrating beer. Feinstefanner is celebrating a millennia anniversary on in 2040.
SPEAKER_04And that's uh in Bavaria. But yes, I know we're Bavaria.
SPEAKER_06So I have some time to plan.
SPEAKER_04But how but millennial, like, tell me what number that is 500? 1,000 years. Did you just say we're taking a road trip to Germany in 2040? Yeah. Because I'll start I'll start doing P90X so I can fit into later housing. If I start now, I feel like when is twenty forty? That gives me fourteen years to find abs.
SPEAKER_02I think they're in there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I did just I'll be fifty.
SPEAKER_02I'll be fifty at this uh millennia anniversary. Good god, twenty forty. How old are you? I'm thirty. This year. Okay. And I'm 35.
SPEAKER_04So if you're going to be 50 in 2040.
SPEAKER_06We don't need to say the number, Dan. Don't say it. Don't Dan.
SPEAKER_03Dan will be 79.
SPEAKER_04And I'll be 61.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. But like Oh, that's like uh that's a that's the Hollywood 40.
SPEAKER_04That's right. It's the St. Paul 87.
SPEAKER_02No, but like, I think it's so incredibly special.
SPEAKER_04What's in the water? Why do you look so old?
SPEAKER_02It's so incredibly special that we're gonna see a millennia anniversary for a brewery in our lifetimes. Yeah, where's your microphone?
SPEAKER_06Whop whop. We can't hear you.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, my bad.
SPEAKER_06Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Uh it's uh like incredibly special. We're gonna see a millennia anniversary for a brewery in our lifetimes. I'm counting on it. Like, I want to be there for this because like you don't see thousand-year anniversaries for anything anymore. Like everything is new, yeah, it's fast, it it comes and goes, whatever. Weinstefanner defined a style of beer, Eppabitzen, because like they were German royalty, and the Heinskepats, like the German beer purity law, didn't apply to them because they could still make wheat beer during the famine. I might have my facts wrong a little bit on this, it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_01We don't fact check here.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, the more you know.
SPEAKER_02You know, I mean the world we live in doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_03The only thing I know about the Germans, they do not care about facts at all.
SPEAKER_02So but like when we buy a Heizen yeast drain, it is almost certainly a clone of their Hefeweizen yeast. They have effectively defined a style of beer, they're turning a thousand years old in only 14 years. Yeah. I am super excited to go see this.
SPEAKER_03I think the the fact that I like the most about that whole thing is that for Heizen fans, you know that the kind of tastes like a banana or a clove. Yeah. But that flavor, like the banana flavor, didn't exist in Germany when that happened. So like they the yeast gave that banana flavor. I'm not sure about the clove.
SPEAKER_04If you've ever had a good saub bratton, you know cloves exist.
SPEAKER_03Well, but they didn't but that yeast would put off that banana flavor, but they didn't have bananas yet. So they just thought uh, you know, uh they got this fruit and they're like they just thought eagle is like is it the did tea did the eagle tea bags the mash again?
SPEAKER_04What's the dipping bags now?
SPEAKER_03Put your pants back on because it's just not proper. Because I personally love the idea of a bunch of Germans that are like, we found a fruit that tastes like our beer. That's amazing. That's amazing.
SPEAKER_04That's a great point, though. Yeah, it's so interesting.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, like what a great fruit. It's like, oh, it tastes like my favorite beer. Like, that's great.
SPEAKER_04And I, you know, this this brings up something that I think I think is important, but you know, you just pointed out some really specific, really important beer history. Yeah, obviously, you both have backgrounds in homebrewing. I think homebrewing has been a catalyst for a lot of breweries. Yeah. I want to get your take on the fact that the brick and mortar homebrew store went the way of the Dodo Bird and the Squatty Potty. They don't really exist anymore.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. I have a uh as a former employer, uh employee, not employer, Jesus Christ, uh employee of uh Northern Brewer. Uh so I worked at the Midwest Supplies uh homebrew shop for about nine months. We started construction here. I needed a part-time job to kind of like fill the gaps, and like I don't want I didn't want to be in the way of the contractors while they were building out stuff. So I'm like, I'll go work at a homebrew shop and earn a couple bucks and just kind of shoot the shit during the day, and then I'll come here at night and do the things I need to do. And so I went to the Midwest Supplies homebrew shop. That is where I bought my first homebrew kit.
unknownOh.
SPEAKER_02And that was like 2009 or 2010, who can remember? I started my homebrewing experience at Midwest Supplies. I ended up working there for about nine months during construction here. I watched that business get gutted for parts by private equity. We couldn't afford to fix the lights while I was there. And like we had all this inventory on the on the floor, and I kept getting told by management, if you can get a price above this, sell it. And like, like I had a thousand-liter uh tank uh on the floor, and I had a guy come in and was like, hey, I'll give you $400 for that. I'm like, fucking sold. Because like it was more than the company paid for. Uh so I I kind of watched the the death of uh this institution that like kind of created the basis for what I have now. Now, Northern Brewers still exists as an online store and does all that, but like you lose the brick and mortar part of it where you can walk into the front door and ask for advice and help and all that. But like on the flip side of that, I come from the wine industry here in Minnesota. I was a vineyard manager for over 10 years, and while I was there at this Midwest Supplies homebrew shop, every time somebody would walk in through the front door and go, like, hey, I harvested a bunch of grapes. I what do I do with them? All my coworkers would just point to me and go talk to that guy. And hey, I just harvested 400 pounds of fruit. What do I do with it? I'm like, it's August 3rd. What do you mean you harvest it? He's like, Well, the grapes turned color. I'm like, you're a month and a half early.
SPEAKER_04That happens to a lot of guys. Okay, let's get calm down.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we're getting a little judgy here. And then they're like, what do I do? I'm like, try again next year. Because like, there's there's no amount of sugar or anything you can do to make that fruit palatable. Like, you're gonna make the worst wine you've ever tried by like putting that through process and just try again next year. Homebrew shops are kind of like where you like kind of like test your ropes out on it. You know, just that's where you find advice as like an up-and-comer. Mark from Back Channel would come into like into the homebrew shop every now and then, and he would go, like, hey, I need I'm I'm short a bag of this, I'm short a bag of that. I'm like, Well, I've got that for you. And so like I got to know Mark really well at the homebrew shop, like when we're really into the weeds and like trying to plan. I'm like, hey, I need advice here. Right. So we went out to Back Channel, and Mark, Melissa, Josh, Ollie, uh, everybody sat down with us for like over three hours, and like we kind of like just shot the shit. And like, what what worked for you, what didn't. Yeah, but homebrew shops kind of afforded the opportunity to run into people who knew better than you, and we've lost that kind of as an institution here and I guess nationwide now, because there's not many of them left.
SPEAKER_04Well, I want to take it a step further. I think about people that I've talked to in the industry who worked at Northern Brewer, people who founded Insight, bad weather. There are so many people, industry stalwarts, who have, if if you wanted to start a brewery, pick the brains of these folks, and and there's there's way more. But how do you people get the itch now? Because I remember like like that's a that that was inspiring to me to be able to like, wait a minute, I can make beer at home. And you know, when I I dipped my toe in the home brewing pool back in the day, we we talked about Moose Dool, the the uh the Northern Brewer extract kit, caribou schlobber. I made my fair share of caribou schlobber. Great name. And uh fat tire that was like spelled differently. Yep. But like I thought that was really and I thought that was really fun. And and I would go on the forums, and one thing I learned, Josh Secor, the head brewer at Gambit, yeah, he's been on the basic brewing radio podcast and apparently has a YouTube channel. Which I did not know about it. Well, here's the funny part. I don't know if Josh listens to the brewery adventure, but I heard from Mike Christensen up at uh Alpines that Josh probably doesn't want people knowing about this YouTube. So go find it, check it out because he's he was very passionate about homebrewing. But I think about like in a certain generation of people, in the just in the Twin Cities, and we could we could we could uh we could expand this out nationwide, but the number of people who caught that bug, and you know, maybe for various reasons, maybe their local bar didn't have the amount of craft beer options that they wanted. Well, if that was the case, there were a lot of like resources. We go to the homebrew shop and and feel the grain, taste the grain, have a conversation with somebody who was working there but planning their own brewery. Yeah. So it was a very real thing. Tapping into that passion is pretty special. How do people, how does somebody in 2026 get that bug? Because you know, going into a brewery is one thing, but like being immersed in like all the books I own, I I I tell people I'm the world's worst English teacher because I don't my library at home it's all beer books, all verse. It's not the classics, yeah. But but how how do we keep this going? Because you know, in 2040, you're gonna be 50 years old. I'm gonna be a dinosaur. That's right, 79. We need we need a way to kind of pass the torch. How does that happen?
SPEAKER_03So I'm gonna just do a quick little spiel and then Matt can take over. For the the dumb dumbs like me that like the extract brewing, and we like we are just scratching the surface of brewing. We like to make a beer that's palatable and like maybe a little bit more than that. Like the homebrew shops and stuff were a great resource. Even the online stores can help with that. We try our best. We're we're trying to like fine-tune the recipe a little bit to get better. But there are like there's a breed of brewers out there, homebrewers included, that they read the books, they're they're trying to interpret what these like really talented brewers are trying to put out there, and then take that and apply it to their kit. So here's like the the big thing is like no water is the same, and no like grain bill is the same, no yeast is the same, no hop is the same. But you're getting a bunch of hodgepodge stuff together and you're doing your best to make the best beer you can. For the homebrewers, you're hoping that your homebrew uh shop is doing their due diligence to give you the best ingredients they can. But the downside to that is no homebrew shop can because they're doing their best to pull from stuff that are going to production breweries. So if you can rely on your homebrew shop to give you what they can, the biggest downside is the yeast. But Matt can go into that detail. I made some what I'm gonna say, pretty good palatable beer and homebrew. Like it was drinkable beer. It was drinkable.
SPEAKER_06Can that be a beer name? Pretty good palatable beer.
SPEAKER_03It was pretty good palatable beer.
SPEAKER_04But like pretty good.
SPEAKER_03Pretty pretty pretty, pretty good. So when Matt and I were on our upswing of like, okay, we're gonna do this, we brewed, I think, something like 50 batches of hazy IPA within 40 weeks. Wow. Like it was a lot. And we were like, we're we're testing different hops, we were testing different geese, we were like, we were like, let's figure it out. And that became Convergent Evolution, which is our flagship hazy. It has changed since we've been open, it is gonna continue to change, we're gonna keep working on it, but it is but hazy that that is that is of high quality, I think.
SPEAKER_04And I I'm not a hazy, I like I I know hazy. Like I like I've had Treehouse, I've had the Alchemist, like I think those are delicious. Yeah. Problem with hazy's is that the good ones are few and far between. You have to wade through a swamp of bad ones. Well, that's what I was really hoping. When Donald Trump got elected, when he said drain the swamp, I'm like, I hope he's gonna get rid of those subpar hazy so I don't have to have to go through a minefield anymore, but nope, they still exist.
SPEAKER_03I am not a hazy IPA fan in general. I used to be, I after brewing 300 plus gallons and then drinking about 275 of those gallons, like combined between that and I know. Not all heroes wear capes. Uh I I still haven't quite been like, I want to drink hazy IPAs again. I'm not, I'm not there yet. I like our hazy IPAs, they're fine. Like they're good. That's but like I just can't do it. I'm strictly like almost a lago drinker at this point. But Convergent Evolution is a it's a balanced hazy. It gives you some citrus tropical notes, it gives you some white wine characteristics. It's leaving you in a spot that is great. Like your your palate is not destroyed. You can have a beer after, you can have a beer before, and you're not gonna feel like your tongue is overwhelmed.
SPEAKER_04Yes, I think there need there need to be, in my opinion, and I'm just one just one beer guy, you know. Just one beer guy amidst a sea of beer guys and beer gals and beer they're just beer fans in general. Uh I reposted a thing on Instagram today and was like, why do you keep calling your coworkers fucker? I said, and the next line is like, because it's gender neutral. So I want to have, you know, we're all beer fuckers. I think a good hazy IPA needs to be very bright, tropical fruity at the beginning. It has to have like a pillowy mouthfeel, and it should finish with some modicum of hop dryness to balance out the sip. Yeah. And I think if you can do that, you can sell a lot of hazy IPAs.
SPEAKER_03I'm gonna finish my thought and then Matt can take over because he's the one that actually like knows.
SPEAKER_02We're we're on the same wavelength, yeah, I think right here.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Uh I firmly believe that if you're gonna if you're gonna make hazy IPAs and make them so that people want to keep drinking them, like maybe I'm wrong. I might be wrong. But you want to like balance them out so that once you're done with your 16, 18, 19 ounces of it, you can drink another beer and taste whatever you're drinking in the next. Right. And when you're drinking a lot of hazy IPAs that I've had in the past, it's like it bombards your tongue to the point where you can have a spicy beer and you're not gonna taste it because it the hops have just crept on your tongue so much that your palate is done. And I think that is something that like I like our hazy for that reason alone, that it you can have a beer after it and it will still taste like the beer you want it to be.
SPEAKER_06You can still taste it.
SPEAKER_04You mentioned something that I kind of want to unpack a little bit. Is that hop burn? Or what are what are you talking about specifically? Because I've had beers where it's just like, oh, all of a sudden, like the back of my tongue is kind of like burning, not in a spicy way, but just like it's it's it's like too much.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I would qualify that as hop burn. The alpha acids and everything else in the hop oil we perceive can perceive as bitterness when they're boiled. You can at some point overwhelm your palate. Thank you.
SPEAKER_04Uh you can you're getting their conversation because your mic is there. Just put it in your crotch where the mic belongs. Oh, my God. Oh my god. Pervert. My lord. And our special guest, Merv the Pervert, showed up and he's gonna Don't have to bleach that microphone later.
SPEAKER_02But at some point you can overwhelm your uh overwhelm your palate with the amount of hop oil and everything else that's present in the beer. And so hop saturated ales for a brief period of time were a thing, where like 10 pounds per barrel of uh hops were added to like in dry hop to a beer. These things were almost thick with hop oil and like two C's, like almost a Q at that point.
SPEAKER_04I mean, I I love all forms of thick, but not that. Yeah, not thick at all.
SPEAKER_02And so like it overwhelms your palate to a point where like it's almost impossible to taste anything else. And if you're a hazehead, my god, like that might be like heaven for you. But for someone who wants a normal beer as a just like an everyday drink, which is what beer really should be, then that kind of beer kind of like destroys everything else in your life. You're not gonna enjoy your dinner if you're gonna have that kind of beer on top of it. Yeah, at some point, like you're making that single beer the mainstay of your day. Yep, because it's gonna like impact everything else that goes beyond it. So having a super high saturated beer with hop oils and everything else is a choice as a brewer to say, like, this is the only thing my customer's gonna take. Uh gonna going to taste. My stutter's coming out now. Yeah, but uh it it's uh it's the only thing that customer's gonna taste, and that's a problem if you want them to try anything else.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Well, there's also let's let's let's get back to the economics of that. You know, I recall and and one brewery owner called it the hops arms race, and he was like, I refuse to participate in the hops arms race. But I know from talking to Eric Sennerud, a lot of these hops, you know, and and and something that if you're listening to this and you want to learn more about public versus private hops, you should go to One Pine Stand and find my interview with Eric Senerud because he really did a deep dive into that. And I did not know all the machinations of that. And and and that's a that's a you know, you want to talk about you know, cost, you want to talk about, you know, uh what's the word? Um not logistics, but like worker conditions of of of these these hop farms that basically in some cases have worked people to death. Oh but you know, if you're if you're making a beer that you want to sell and you want to make money on, if you're dumping, I mean, back in the day, it was not unheard of, like, you know, people would brag five pounds per barrel, seven pounds per barrel, ten pounds per barrel, fifteen. Why? It wouldn't wouldn't the mark of a skilled brewer be to do research on coaxing the same flavors out of those hops with maybe three pounds per barrel, yeah, uh, versus having to dump literally the kitchen sink of your hop supply in there?
SPEAKER_02So I I think I can uh answer this pretty well. Every home cook thinks that they can open up a restaurant. Like every successful home cook thinks they can open a restaurant.
SPEAKER_04That's a great segue into the my new venture, the coming down to the pick and lick that's gonna be happening.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god. Every successful home brewer thinks they can open up a brewery. At some point you need to find the balance between how much is too much, like how much butter in a dish makes it gross and fatty, versus oh my god, this is the most luxurious thing I've ever eaten.
SPEAKER_04Well, if your name is Pauline, that does not exist.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah, like let's deep fry that in butter. Uh but the but like like there at some point.
SPEAKER_04We'll edit that out.
SPEAKER_06You gotta snort out of Dan.
SPEAKER_02Hell yeah. But but like the the idea that more is more is prevalent in a lot of different craft breweries. People keep adding, like, hey, this beer's not exactly where I want it to be. Let's add more to it. Let's add additional dry hop, let's add more fruit, let's add this, let's add that. And at some point, the beer it's not really beer anymore. It is a hop tea or a fruited like cider, more than whatever.
SPEAKER_04Well, on the balance sheet, then doesn't it also become diminishing returns because you've spent so much money and ingredients? And I have to believe that comes at the cost of other beers are like, okay, we spent all this on this. So we gotta we can't get the fancy dark malt for our stout because for sure we put nine bajillion dollars into this hazy IPA.
SPEAKER_03But when you're at a large scale, the goal is the marketing of the beer. So if you're gonna spend some amount of money, but you're gonna make some amount of money plus five dollars, whatever, on every single flat of beer that you're selling, it doesn't matter. If you're saying, like, oh, we're gonna put a hundred IBU into this beer because people are gonna buy it, because that's the craze. It's like we want the highest IBU beer. Right. I'm not talking about a specific beer by any means right now. But it's like there was a craze when I got into beer. Right. Yeah, the bitter hop arms race. We're like, and that's where I got into beer.
SPEAKER_04Do you remember Hop Stupid? Yeah, like that's what I was doing.
SPEAKER_03120-some IBUs, like, oh, like that's how I got into beer. I Matt's brother was like, You gotta drink these Amber's, these browns, these stouts, and I was like, Oh, these are all disgusting. And my brother-in-law gave me a Sierra Nevada torpedo, which I've talked about in the past. That's the beer that got me into beer. I was like, oh my god, like this bitterness is amazing. And so, like, I firmly loved bitter IPAs. That was how I got into beer. And there's not the typical way to get into beer, yeah. But that was my entry, and now I'm like firmly in the lager territory. I it's pretty rare that you'll find me drinking an ale by any means. I just like lighter lagers, and that's and that's my bias.
SPEAKER_02But like, but like on the cost structure, uh, at some point you can Okay, hold on.
SPEAKER_04I gotta tell. All right, you said Sierra Nevada. Torpedo. Torpedo. Yep. Guess what the IBUs are on that one?
SPEAKER_03I'm gonna guess 91.
SPEAKER_04You should not buy a lottery ticket tonight or go axe throwing because the answer is sixty-five.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's so low. All right, but here's my brewery ownership coverage.
SPEAKER_04And this is this is this gets me to kind of the the point that I guess I'm trying to make.
SPEAKER_03But it's a 9%-ish beer, 8.7.
SPEAKER_04Let's see what it what it well hold on.
SPEAKER_03Look back when it was like 2019. 7.2. So I changed the recipe. 7.2. Yeah, I changed the recipe back in like 2013.
SPEAKER_04Okay. 7.2%. I think there is, if you know what you're doing with ingredients through biotransformation or just let's read up, understanding how yeast works, under understanding how to manipulate yeast, you can get those those targets out of what you want. Yeah. Yeah. And I and I think it's like, I mean, if you want to go back, kind of goes back to homebrewing, that experimental phase. Like, how does this thing perform? What I would everybody listening, if you're really a beer nerd, what I would encourage you to do, and there's two locations there's a go to White Labs, there's one in San Diego, there's one in Asheville. Those are the two I know about. But if you go to that place, you can find, and this is a this is an incredible beer experience because what they'll do is they'll put Put two beers on, two beer styles using this, or they'll do one single style using two different yeasts and show you how different those beers are. Yeah. And it's like, that's homebrewing. That's curiosity. That's passion. That's understanding. That's how you that's how Town Hall stays in business. Yeah. Town hall, they're not flashy. They're not, they're for sure not dumb. I I've been at the bar when people staying in the hotel came in, who were obviously in town for some sort of wedding or cult meeting, asked the bartender, do you have a hazy IPA? To which the bartender said, No. And watching the body language on those three people, like, what? What do you mean we don't have you don't have a hazy IPA? Why would you need to chase trends or fads when you do the basic beers so well? And yes, they've been around since 1997. But they have always prioritized process, research, understanding. They don't need to chase trends, they don't need to dump 15 pounds of hops in a batch because that doesn't make sense.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's it's a fun balancing act between doing traditional brewing and trying to maximize what you have of the ingredients you have, and not like, oh, the only way I achieve this flavor is by overloading the beer with this thing that's going to accentuate that flavor. It's a balancing act between that and like, hey, I need this, I want this flavor in this beer. So I need to use this much of it to get to that position. So like for our flagship hazy to achieve that white wine character, that tropical note, there's a certain number of hops that like I need to add, and right now it's around three pounds per barrel. I keep seeing online from other breweries like like, hey, we do four pounds per barrel dry hop for hazy IPA. I'm like, cool. That like that's a minimum for some other breweries. And some like are like, hey, we're doing six pounds per barrel. I can understand how some of these places arrive at that number and like their yield is lower because the hops absorb liquid, but the number of kegs and cans they can get out of each batch reduces, which increases their cost per unit and everything else. But like if they're chewing through the volume, they can justify the cost. Right. But like if you're a smaller spot, like you kind of have to be nimble with that. We're like, hey, how do I ex like maximize the ingredient that I'm putting in? Like, how do I not be wasteful here? And I think that's like a legitimate part of brewing that people should maybe fall back on. You know, like can I achieve the same amount of hop extraction on two pounds per barrel instead of four?
SPEAKER_03There is a homebrew equation in here that like we always dealt with, which is how much money do we want to spend on a five-gallon batch of beer? And that's a hard equation because like yeah, now when we're brewing here, money doesn't make any sense. Yeah, it's like, oh, that's a $2,000 batch of beer. It's like, oh, hell that makes sense. Yeah, $100 a keg, whatever. Yeah, yeah. And like when but when we were homebrewing, it's like, oh, that was a $47 batch of beer that we're gonna dump down the drain, and that really fucking hurts. But like that, but that's what you do as homebrewers. You're trying your best to like maximize the returns for what you get to drink.
SPEAKER_02And you're doing it on the worst possible equipment too. By far the worst. So like the commercial equipment affords you the opportunities to make egregious mistakes and maybe not completely screw it up. I've got a I've got 20 care uh 20 kegs of our flagship hazy that I'm gonna going to dump. I noticed an oxidation issue on it. I think I've traced it back to a bad gasket on a tank that allowed oxygen ingress into uh the vessel during fermentation. I didn't catch it before packaging, all those things. Now, like there's 20 kegs worth of beer that I now need to destroy. And that's like over a thousand dollars worth of material, not not to mention the time, labor, and everything else that goes into it.
SPEAKER_04Oh, and the potential profit.
SPEAKER_02Right, and like all the all the potential revenue from that. So, like, I'm gonna put it down the drain because Do you have a ceremony when this happens? I play I play Sarah McLaughlin.
SPEAKER_03Uh but it's it's not like I tried to like we were talking about this earlier. It's like it's not just the beer that's getting dumped down the drain, it's the now we have to re-brew that beer and tie up another tank that could have gone to a different beer that could have been like it's a cascading effect of like now for the next like three or four months, our production schedule is thrown off thrown off by two or three weeks because one tank is tied up like off and on because one beer got screwed up.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but yeah, you know, that's uh I know it's a tough decision to make, but it's the right decision to make it. Right, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Good brewers dump bad beer. Yeah. And so, like, when you taste a beer on tap that is like, hey, what the hell is in my glass? Yeah, then like, yeah. You know, like every every business owner, every brewer gambles that equation every now and then of like, am I proud of this to serve? When the when the answer is no, take your lumps and dump it. Yeah, yeah. The brewery no longer exists, so yeah, I'm gonna talk a little shit, but uh I was gonna say don't say the don't say the name, but no, no, no. Talking shit.
SPEAKER_06I've been on a streak of bleeping names out, so I can always bleep it out.
SPEAKER_03I'm gonna ask you to bleep the name, but if you don't want to, I understand. They're not in existence anymore.
SPEAKER_02It did get me sick, so like Yeah, but like they're no longer in business. We went uh like on their closing weekend and I tear tasted parasitic acid in a beer, which should not happen. At some point, the you should consume uh consume that, convert that to other byproducts and everything else.
SPEAKER_03Their paleo was also great.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like the color's wrong, everything else is part of it.
SPEAKER_06But you drank it anyway?
SPEAKER_03I didn't one of the owners. So I had to finish the beer.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and so like just talking a little shit. If if we don't call out our friends for doing bad things and like putting out a beer that tastes bad, well then we ruin the reputation of the industry as a whole. And Minnesota wine, which I worked in for 10 years, has that problem pervasively. Everybody has a bad perception of Minnesota wine. Nearly everybody who's been to a Minnesota winery has had a bad experience. And like there's like maybe five or six different uh wineries that is making good beer, uh good wine.
SPEAKER_06And I have a fun time at the winery, I don't have a great time drinking the Minnesota wine.
SPEAKER_02Right. And so like if that's your if that's your experience, then you're like, oh, all Minnesota's wine is like this. And if if that's the case with Minnesota beer, where like every beer I have at a Minnesota brewery is bad, then like, oh, well, Minnesota beer just sucks. If we hold each other accountable and like, hey, like, you're fucking this up, maybe change your process here, do this different, whatever, and we kind of lift each other up, then we all make better beer. The industry itself is better for it. I don't know. Maybe we all do a little bit better as a result of it.
SPEAKER_04Also, wouldn't you okay? So, like, if I if I have friends over for dinner and I try a new recipe and it doesn't come out well, I want to know that it wasn't good. Yeah, at one point jelly beans on your steak is not a good advantage. As long as you were intending to serve the side. But I always like, you know, I think there's like telling somebody, oh yeah, this beer sucks. Well, that's not helpful. But if you if you like have the understanding of like what it should be and be like, hey, I'm getting this thing. Have you heard that before? Is that supposed to be? I think it's it's all about how you phrase the feedback if it's constructive, but I I just have to believe that you want to know because in a perfect world, you would be able to taste your beer at every stage, you know, back there when it you're you're doing samples off the tank, uh, when it comes on tap, uh when it goes into package product, if you're tasting it, it's like, okay, this is tasting as it should. Well, yeah, there are a lot of things that can happen that are out of your hands. If if you sell your beer to a liquor store and they don't put it in a cooler, well, it's gonna deteriorate the beer, and that's not your fault, but like if somebody comes in and tries a wandering leaf beer on tablet, like, hey, I'm getting this, like, is this normal? Yeah, you'd want to know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. And I I think this kind of like leans into like the like the history of our own space here. Uh so I stepped back in as head brewer back in October. Within two months, uh, Matt Waddell came in and One T. One T.
SPEAKER_04As he's called.
SPEAKER_06Um it's on my my list of things that I didn't even tell you.
SPEAKER_02Your two T's. So so Matt Waddell came into our space and called me Matt today, by the way, which is I think is the highest honor.
SPEAKER_03So yeah.
SPEAKER_02So you get to be the third Matt.
SPEAKER_03I'm three Ts now.
SPEAKER_02Three T's. All right. Uh so he came into our space with three Ts to operate his pen name fermentation project. And part of that is like a little bit of side consulting and kind of just like overviewing our process. I'm a I'm a homebrewer. I worked like my production experience is in the wine industry. So beer is something I know, but like there's always things to improve upon. And his presence here has completely reshaped how I look at look at beer. And his hypercritical feedback on beer has been an absolute blessing. So within I would say two months of him being here, I rebrewed a batch of Oswari, which then we submitted to the guild. That won first place. Um thank you. Um first place on our uh for international uh pale logger.
SPEAKER_04It's fucking great.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and but like when when you were announcing like the winners of that category, and then like I heard Lupalin as number two, I'm like, ah fuck, we're out of this category. And and like you ran up rang off our uh our name. I'm like, I I think I legitimately blacked out. I'm like, oh, that was us. I can confirm.
SPEAKER_04He did have it on video. Yeah, I have the whole thing on video.
SPEAKER_03So like he took off all of his clothes.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I'm like, wow, you weren't lying about the Kendall thing.
SPEAKER_02But like radical candor is like an important part of beer, of like where your friends should be able to tell you what you're doing wrong, what you're doing right, and like lean into it.
SPEAKER_06But I think that says a lot about you also as a brewer, that you are willing to accept someone else's help and their feedback and not just be like, no, I'm fine, I got this, I know what I'm doing.
SPEAKER_02But but that's the same advice I'd give to everybody who'd be opening up a any business of any type. Your peers in your industry, when they tell you something that like they're experiencing is a problem, listen to them. So someone telling you that, like, hey, your cooler's too small, listen to them. Yeah, this problem is going to be a major issue. Listen to them. And if you don't, you're an idiot. Uh the hey, like all these 30 people who are like all experiencing the same thing as uh like that I'm going to enter into, they're all wrong. I'm the unique case here.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, right. I can overcome that online.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I can overcome it. Like everybody else experienced this. I'm gonna be the I'm gonna be the new one. Well, we are the smartest people in the world. Oh, for sure.
SPEAKER_06You can be the smartest people because you listen to other people.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, for sure. I was just being a little facetious, but yeah, yeah. But like, like, but like but Okay, this has been a long time coming, but I I actually have a question for both Courtney and Dan, which is like, oh no. When do we allow this? No, it's happening. I'll take it back. No, like, but when you go to a brewery, when you own a brewery or like you're a brewer or you're generally in the industry, you tend to drink their lagers or their pilsners or whatever it is because you wanted to see how their processes are. Like you can't hide behind a pilsner, like that's they're just off flavor. But when you go to a brewery and you try their hazy IPA and you are like, hmm, I don't know about that one. Do you perceive it or no? Are they is that is it easier to perceive an off-flavor in the hazy or not?
SPEAKER_06Dan and I have two very different drinking styles.
SPEAKER_03I like this.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_03I love this. I didn't I didn't know this, so I'm very excited to hear the answer.
SPEAKER_04They are very different.
SPEAKER_06We have two very different drinking styles. Dan can easily detect and and no, I'm drinking this style of beer. I don't need to speak for you, but I'm going to right now. You should.
SPEAKER_04You should.
SPEAKER_06He he knows.
SPEAKER_04It's not the first time a white lady has put words in my mouth.
SPEAKER_06Oh, I can't do it now.
SPEAKER_03No, go for it. No, keep going. I'm gonna keep begging you on to put it in.
SPEAKER_06Dan knows his beer. Dan, Dan knows his beer. Any style of beer, he knows what he's expecting to taste. He knows if he tastes something that is not quite right, or like you told me that this was this kind of beer, and it it's a good beer, but it's actually this other kind of beer. You should not call it this. That's happened many, many times. Dan knows beer flavors. It's it's what makes him Dan.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. He's very special. Yeah, yeah. He's Dan.
SPEAKER_06I mean, I'm not gonna notice your off flavor unless it is significantly bad, like the beer at calling it the rat cellar.
SPEAKER_03Let's ignore Dan for a second.
SPEAKER_04I'll say it, it was and then we went to and we ordered a and I wanted and I said, This tastes like Yeah.
SPEAKER_06I knew that beer was bad, like, but it has to be at that kind of level for me to be like, oh, I'm not drinking this.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so let's ignore Dan, who is let's let's say he's a super fan of beer. He comes in the tap room, he knows what beer should taste like.
SPEAKER_06Yes.
SPEAKER_03So let's I don't want to put words in your mouth, but let's say like you're a casual beer fan. You're going into a tap room, you like beer, but you're not like, oh, I don't I'm just like I'm a beer fan. And I'm you're going up, you're gonna order a beer.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And you get a beer and you're like, eh, I don't know like if I like that beer. What is your reaction to that?
SPEAKER_06Order a different one.
SPEAKER_03Oh, so you're like, oh, that wasn't a like for you, it's like, oh, that wasn't just the that wasn't the beer for me. Yeah. I'm gonna get a different beer. It wasn't that the brewery's screwed up.
SPEAKER_06It was unless it is horrifically bad.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And then that if it's horrifically bad, then maybe that's not the place I want to be.
SPEAKER_03But would you ask the bartender, like, I don't know, is this beer bad? Or like what like my question is more of a at what point would I say something? Yeah.
SPEAKER_06It would have to be really it would have to be really bad.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_06But this is like for like a Dan's got a lot to say right now. I know he does.
SPEAKER_03I I wanna I wanna hold Dan for a second. Because like as a as a brewery owner, my my question is more for the bartenders where this is like the perfect segue into the next thing.
SPEAKER_04So yes, continue.
SPEAKER_03So like at what level is the casual beer drinker like should they be noticing if a person's not having a good time with their beer? Right, yeah. Like, so like, oh, I got this beer. I've had a pale ale in the past. I've had the summoned EPA. I love the summoned EPA. I got your pale ale. It doesn't just not right. It's not good. But I don't know how to express this to you. But I want to get a different beer. So I'm gonna try your IPA or whatever it is. But like the whole point of this is that what I want from our bartenders is that if you don't I poured you a 19 ounce, 20 ounce pour of beer and you don't like it, I want you to like the beer that you got.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So I would rather eat that cost and you get the beer that you like.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Because like I like as a casual beer drinker, I don't want you drinking a bad beer, like by any means. That's that's dumb. Like you should always get a beverage that you like.
SPEAKER_06For me, it takes a lot for the beer to be bad.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_06That's that's what I it takes a lot for me to be like, I don't want to drink this beer.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. So Jennifer.
SPEAKER_06It's even mediocre, I'm still gonna drink it and just order a different one afterward.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So uh, whenever Jennifer and I go into a different like any craft brewery, uh, she will order a flight. And I for me, I feel like I don't know a beer until I'm three big sips into it. Yeah. So I never get flights, I get a pint and of a style that I want. And I'll drink that beer. But Jennifer will get a flight, and she'll like hand me it like she's like, uh hand me the glass, and she's like, take a sip. Guess what this is? And don't look at the menu.
SPEAKER_07Guess what style of being testing you?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, she's like, guess what style of beer this is? We've been married for 11 years now, and like this is kind of like a game that we do every brewery we go to. And part of that is one, do I know the beer I'm talking about?
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And two, is it is the brewery okay? And so, like, hey, this is a payload. No, it's a Kolsch.
SPEAKER_06Okay, that's not really.
SPEAKER_02Not like like glaring issue, it's more of a huh. I would have never guessed that.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Did the brewer achieve what they were trying to go for? I think this is segue into Dan here.
SPEAKER_06I will say before Dan starts though, oh yes, keeping it. My favorite because I he's gonna start switching over here, it's gonna be amazing. I like getting flights because when I come in here and see that you've got all these different beers on the board, I really want to try every single one of them to see what everything is and all the different flavors. I want one of everything, which is not a great idea. In one visit, you should probably not do that, but a flight is the best, the best way to get the most flavors that are different.
SPEAKER_03Okay, before Dan goes in, no, we're gonna we're just gonna keep on the quiet the whole time. We're just gonna keep saying this forever. Before Dan comes in, there's nothing wrong with a flight except you have to drink it correctly. You can't go beer one, one sip, beer two, one sip, beer three, one sip, beer four, one sip, beer beer one, one sip two, beer. Oh no, I want to drink the whole. You have to drink the full four or five ounces, but you gotta do it in one, two, three, four sips of one beer. The first beer cleanses the palate, the second beer gives you the base of the flavor beer, the third sip gives you the full flavor of the beer, the fourth, the fifth sip, whatever you want to do, it gives you the true essence of the beer. This is why when Matt was saying, like, I want to drink the full pipe, you you you can't like go back and forth between uh like the beers. Yeah. You're not if you keep switching back and forth, you're never gonna get the true flavor of the beer. Right. And like I'm not saying this is like a snob, it's just like no, no, no.
SPEAKER_04And and also, like, you know, beer is temperature sensitive. Yeah, for sure. And if you let a beer sit, you know, in in some cases, if it's if it's a well right, yeah, but I'm gonna I'm gonna Aaron Ziert, head brewer at Lupulan, phenomenal person to taste beer with. But if it's a nice day and you're on a beer cation, you're not sitting out on the out on the patio. No. You're indoors because the beer will get light struck. He will never do a flight. For the very reason that you just said, Matt. I'm not gonna say that there's a there's a you know, if you want to do flights, that's fine. I love flights. If I'm going to a place, because I'm 47 and a half, you know, my uh Yo. Yeah, that's right, exactly. It's possible I might die in the next five minutes. So be ready. Give me a CPR if you're if you know what I'm buying. You know, I like flights for the simple fact that I want a taste, a little taste of of what's going on. I would love to have a full pour of everything on tap if I'm going to a new brewery. That's not realistic. So I try to, when I go to a new brewery, I'll get a flight and I'll I'll note the beers that I really like. I'm like, okay, I want a full pour of these beers. I realize that's not the that's not the way you intended it. And I'm sorry, but my god. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
SPEAKER_03Like, to be really honest, we weren't going to allow for flights when we first opened. We were pretty.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Well, we have strong feelings about flights.
SPEAKER_03We were pretty adamant about like it's you don't get the full taste of a beer in five ounces. Oh, originally it was four ounces. We upgraded to the five ounce uh little glasses. We didn't even buy the initial flight glasses until I think a week or two into being open. There is something to be said about like you make more money per ounce with flights and whatever, but you have to appeal to the audience and the beer snobs. And like, I don't know.
SPEAKER_04Those two those two those two things, like if you're trying to hit both, that's it, that's quite the seven tenths button. Here's what I'll say. I think it's it's are we letting him talk?
SPEAKER_06I guess it's so bad. I guess word and edgewise here.
SPEAKER_04I think that every brewery is different, and I think that what what needs to be understood is that a majority of people coming in your front doors and even the side doors, people are coming here for a craft beer experience. Yeah, yeah. And how do you how do you how do you across the board make that good for the person uh like me, if I'm trying to write about a beer, if I'm really gonna be nitpicking, I'm not ordering it in a five-ounce pour, I'm getting a full pour. I'm gonna be really nitpicky. But for the people that come in, and this comes down to staff training, and I think that the staff here at Wandering Leaf are really good. And I think that like if somebody had a beer that they didn't like, I can't, I mean, the you've you've you've pretty much got the A team on tonight. Yeah. So like you the the the folks pouring beers tonight, I always think like, what if the person that they're serving is they've never been to a craft brewery before? Are they gonna take time? Are they gonna be like, I don't know what craft beer is? Is it like, well, I mean, there's a line behind you. Can I just get you this? I have the sense and I've seen it happen. What do you like? What flavor do you like? Try this, try that. There are some breweries that don't do samples. Yeah, and I think that is really stupid. Yeah, I think you're missing out on a sale if you're not willing to do samples. And I get the economics of it all. At a certain point, it's about getting somebody to come back. Yeah, why like you need you need people to because if you have a great experience at a place, you're gonna tell your friends.
SPEAKER_02My my grandpa would call this tripping over a dollar to pick up a dime. Yep. And so, like, if you're like, hey, I'm not gonna do a sample because I'm gonna waste five cents on that pour, and like foolish. Okay, well, you're gonna miss an eight dollar sale if you're gonna miss on that five cent sample.
SPEAKER_03But I think also on the greater point, the crap. The craft industry, I think, is last I checked, 25 or 30% of beer sales, give or take. So Budweiser, Coors, Molson, whatever, is 70% of all beer sales. Like Minnesota craft beer is like six percent, probably. Because like you got your Sam Adams, whatever, that are taking up the vast majority of it. But the whole point is that if every tap room is doing the thing of like educating beer drinkers, like potential beer drinkers, of like this is what you could like, this is what you could like. And we're all doing our part to educate the next beer drinker, like, oh, I do like sours, or I do like whatever. But when they go to the next tap room, they know that they like that style of beer, they know that they like this style of beer, but then they will maybe order that beer. I don't think, like, yes, for our bottom line, I do like the idea of like, oh yes, we did get the sale. But I also think like educating people in general is part of the craft beer ethos. I think that is a general goal for all of us. I think my sister's a great example. I hated craft beer. Or not even craft beer, just beer. She didn't drink beer, like she was a firm Jose Cuervo. Terrible. I like finally like got her into beer by like getting her to sours. And then she eventually started drinking fruited beers. And then she started like now she's like firmly into the stouts and porters and dark beers.
SPEAKER_06Everybody needs a gateway beer.
SPEAKER_03Everyone needs the gateway into beer. And like, if your staff is trained to find that gateway, but like you have to ask the questions. Like, I like dry red wines. My brother-in-law knew that, so he's like, try this super dry hoppy IPA, and that was the catalyst for me. So he got me into beer because of that. Like, I and I think that's how like you have to train your staff, like, find that catalyst for people and have the beer on tap that could get them into beer.
SPEAKER_04Also, I watched when we brewed a bit weird, isn't it? Okay, a malty beer on the surface, very low ABV. Yep. Probably one of the lowest that you've maybe ever done. And I watched people come in and like, you know, what's that? Well, like, it do you like malty? Yeah. Start there. Start with a flavor. Don't go, you don't, you don't need and be like, yeah, I'll give that a try. It was so fun to watch, like, oh, this is really good. Yeah. Because there's this, there's this assumption that a dark beer has to be heavy and a light beer has to be light. That's that's not all. But it's about education and watching your staff just be open to like, okay, get this is something new. This is something probably you haven't had a dark English mild. It's not a style that's on everywhere, but I think it's a style that has viability in the current drinking climate where people are wanting lower ABV beers. Watching your staff walk people through what it would be, and then seeing that resonate with people was really cool. And something that I think is really important, that you can't just assume that looking at a beer or like if you if you had a bad experience with a certain beer style that like at brewery A, that that's gonna transfer to brewery B. And that's the onus is on your staff to do that to showcase, and that's like give a sample, have a conversation. What do you like? When when I go to places and people are like, Well, what's your favorite go-to style? That's really refreshing because yeah, I as Courtney said, I've I've done a lot of when I started writing about beer in 2014. I was like, who's gonna take me serious if I don't know what the hell I'm talking about? So I've done a lot of research and I've taken classes and I've done all that stuff to understand beer styles and things like that. But I appreciate the beer tenders taking time to well, what do you like? You know, that's a great starting off point to have a great craft beer experience.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, one of the so I like Matt and I both work the bar not as often as before, but like we try to work about once a month. I tend to work a little bit more than Matt, but a very common question is what's your favorite beer? And I'm like, that's a great question. I like this beer, but what types of beers do you normally drink? Like if you like, oh I like this style of beer, but we don't have that. But let me talk about like what flavor profiles do you normally like? It's just like breaking off point of like what are you looking for for your style of beer? There's a whole gamut of beer styles and beer flavors, and what are you going for? Like, I firmly believe that you can go from any brewery to another and you can have the same styles of beer from across the board. Like I could give you the same exact reps recipe from here and go to another brewery, it's gonna be different. It's like their production is different than ours, their packaging is different than ours. So you're gonna get a different experience. So your bartenders need to know how to explain that to a customer. Like, is it malt? Is it not malt? Is it bitter? Is it not bitter? Is it sweet? Is it not sweet? Does it have a little bit of like a copper flavor to it? Does it not? Like, you never know. Like, yeah, what like your bartenders need to be trained in that. Having bartenders that actually like or at least try the beers at least a little bit to be able to explain it in a way that is tangible to the customer.
SPEAKER_04Right, it has to be accessible.
SPEAKER_03And like I'm very honest with the customers, but I'm working at the bar and they're like, how do you feel about this beer? I'm like, it's not my style of beer.
SPEAKER_04I don't particularly watch you say that, and I think that's refreshing.
SPEAKER_03I'm like, I don't particularly like amber ales or amber lagers. So if you are asking about that, I'm like, it's not for me, it's not for me. But what other customers have told me is that they like it because they like amber ales and amber lagers, but I don't particularly like those because people that like amber lagers and amber ales might not like the beers that I like. And so like it's just a it's a conversation, and you can have that conversation in 15 to 30 seconds, and the person behind you is not gonna like blink an eye at them, right? And they're okay with you as long as you give them that time of day as well.
SPEAKER_06That conversation is much better than just watching someone sit there and look up at the board and upset and having the the server not engaged with them to help them find something.
SPEAKER_04I think one of the things to get back to one of the original questions, like, what do you do when you encounter a bad beer? I think that you know, when the Surlee bill was passed in 2011, that gave breweries the go-ahead to open up tap rooms. And we saw you know breweries opening up in the Twin Cities, we saw breweries opening up in Greater Minnesota, and there was this kind of accepted thought process that, like, well, you know, to be fair, we'll give them six months to figure their stuff out. In 2026, I'm not willing to pay eight dollars for Yorick, your RD. Yeah. I I think we're past that. Yeah, and I think if if if I'm at a brewery or a bar and a beer is served to me that is obviously flawed, not that like, okay, I didn't understand the menu and I I ordered an IPA and I don't like hoppy beers. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about if you get a beer that is flawed, that's bad, that's not up to quality. Yeah. I don't think there's anything wrong with talking to somebody about that. Oh, for sure. I think that's it.
SPEAKER_03I I'm on Courtney's side here where like I will put up with a lot when it comes to a beer that I've ordered. I think maybe three times in my life that I've ever sent a beer back. And one of the times was I'm not gonna say their name, but it makes it's a Minnesota company that used to make wings before it got bought by a venture capitalist company. Buffalo wings. And uh not naming names. Yeah, they're now closed to like the snelling location. But I got I don't even remember what the beer was, but it tasted like soap.
SPEAKER_06Oh no.
SPEAKER_03And it's like so they either just cleaned their tap lines, which yikes, because that need to be rinsed out, or somehow their beer tasted like soap, which is a bigger yikes, I guess. It was so bad. And then I remember sending it back and getting a different beer, and it still tasted like soap. And like, so we just like we sent I think we sent back four beers total, and we like out this have water. Yeah, it's like it was so like it was. Did the water taste like soap?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, change it being like, Yummy coke.
SPEAKER_02Like this is kind of like a mantra in like cleaning draft lines, is like, you know, like the lines aren't clean until like uh there's beer back in them. So like when you clean draft lines, like we clean our draft lines every two weeks. When we re-hook up the kegs, we re-bleed the trap uh the draft lines until we see beer come out and we taste that. We're like, hey, that's still beer uh on the other end of it. Because who knows if your opening staff are like, hey, yeah, you want this? Here's like a quart of your glass is gonna be what was in the line before we re-bled everything. Nope, nope. And so like that's bad news. Like it has to be beer back in the draft line until before a customer tastes it. Now, and as a brewer, the la the last time you touch a beer is when you put it into the package. Yep. It is everything that happens beyond that is out of your control. So your taproom staff, the packaging quality of your cans, the liquor store, everywhere else, how the customer handles it in their refrigerator, whatever, that is out of your control. So it has to be absolutely perfect before it reaches the customer. And so if your draft lines are dirty and it sucks, that's a problem. If you've just recently cleaned your draft lines and they're not fully purged, and that's the what the customer experienced, that sucks even more. The point I I guess the point I'm trying to get to is you need to care about how the customer receives your beer.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_02For Rob and I, when we were at the Buffalo Wild Wings and we received this beer that tasted like soap. A company that's not to be named. No, no, name names.
SPEAKER_04Who doesn't love a good cilantro lager? Did you know, like 13% of the population when they eat cilantro, it tastes like soap? I'm not one.
SPEAKER_03We have had recommendations to make a cilantro lager. That sounds like a bad idea.
SPEAKER_04Because 13% of those profits down the toilet.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. But think about the 87%. Right?
SPEAKER_06Are they that jazzed about it that they're gonna make up for the case?
SPEAKER_04Okay, Pythagoras. I see you.
SPEAKER_03Uh well, I don't know. Ask the Chipotle rice fans. I don't know. I like Chipotle Rice.
SPEAKER_04I'm gonna mention my other idiot sister-in-law who's like, I don't like Chipotle. What's her name? I'm like, uh, name names, name names, name names. There's idiot sister-in-law one and idiot sister-in-law two. Oh, wow, man. Uh they're both ridiculous. She's like, I don't like Chipotle.
SPEAKER_03Is it your brother or sister's spouse or your wife's okay bingo?
SPEAKER_04It's fine. More important. We don't talk anymore, so it's fine. They're not surely gonna not gonna listen to this because they are not people of culture. But she's like, I don't like Chipotle. Like, well, you can't judge it because you're one of those people who when you eat cilantro, it tastes like soap. They're like, no, that's not it. I'm like, pretty sure it is.
SPEAKER_06That would have a pretty big impact on it.
SPEAKER_04It would have a very big impact on it.
SPEAKER_03How many people do you think exist in this world that just the hot flavor also tastes like something? Oh. That's what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_04I mean, probably quite a few. I I mean, if you wanted to, I don't know what the genome of cilantro is, but there could be some sort of so I mean my my mother, after 15 years of making beer, still will not taste my own beer.
SPEAKER_02What?
SPEAKER_04Interesting.
SPEAKER_02She tried one. Yeah, if someone else other than me will ask her to try it, she'll try it.
SPEAKER_04Your mom brewed beer.
SPEAKER_02No, no, no. No, his beer. My my beer. She won't try it. Uh 15 years of making beer, my mother will not try. Why? She's like, I hate beer.
SPEAKER_03She likes whiskey. Oh, she'll ask her to try other things. She likes her whiskey.
SPEAKER_02My mom likes whiskey. She'll be like, so she's a classy lady.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_06If you brought home like really weird-looking art projects, would she tell you that they looked nice and yay, good job? Yep. But she won't drink the beer.
SPEAKER_04I call this excited Papa Smurf 2.0.
SPEAKER_03All right, your mom was really supportive of your art, though. At least one of our moms. Man, self-esteem is falling through the toilet.
SPEAKER_02I'm really sorry. No, uh, but she like for whatever reason, it doesn't matter the style of beer, whether it's a sour or like a Scottish, you know, we heavy or a IPA, whatever the fuck it is. Uh, she will not like the beer because it tastes like beer to her. Wasn't it?
SPEAKER_06Okay, but if you the more beer you drink, the more you like it.
SPEAKER_02She went to college at Marquette University in Milwaukee.
SPEAKER_06Drink the beer.
SPEAKER_04Right down the street from Lakefront? Yep. She drank.
SPEAKER_02She drank a lot of beer in college and hated it all the time. And uh she just will not do it anymore. Can't tell you why.
SPEAKER_03I have that stubborn gene, but not to that level.
SPEAKER_04I want to circle back to yeah, we should probably wrap up. I mean, there's a lot we can circle back to.
SPEAKER_03We have a lot of questions. We still gotta get through. Let's make this a five-hour episode. Well, we're almost a three hour episode. We haven't even finished the story of how we opened.
SPEAKER_06No, we're still on. You were making a business plan that didn't want to happen.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_04And there was a bucket and there were floor donuts. That's right. And next thing you know, you got four years of the I'll do a yada yada yada.
SPEAKER_03We did the business plan, yada yada yada. It worked out, yada yada yada.
SPEAKER_06But how do you determine this business plan that we wanted to fail was all of a sudden a good idea and we should do it?
SPEAKER_02Um, that that's the funniest part of this, is that Rob and I like looked at each other early on and we're like, hey, uh, if at any point we'd want out, like let's have a check-in and like just discuss this.
SPEAKER_03It wasn't just like a at any point, it was like a we have a firm date that the four of us are gonna check in. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And the four of us checked in sort of, and it was like Is this like you're holding a certain color marble in your hand and then you're looking at the behavior?
SPEAKER_03Like on July, I don't know what the day it was, but like let's say July 15th. We'll have a dinner together and we'll just like decide. And then we never have the conversation, and we all just kind of went forward and like the business started because of inertia.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh, every step we did led to the next. Like, at no point they're like, hey, we're doing this, right? Of course we're doing this, because like I'm talking to banks now. Yeah, and I'm like, I'm talking to equipment contractors. On that note, I was about to make a couple call-outs.
SPEAKER_03Fuck Old National and fuck Wells Fargo. And God. I don't have to bleep those. I'm pro-Gateway and I'm pro-Sunrise, more or less. They're our bank. Yeah. Well, the the conversation we had like with the old national guy, I will leave Wells Fargo of it. They're just dickheads, and they're like, you are a restaurant and we're gonna ask for 60% interest or whatever, or uh equity. Like, okay, well. Alright. But the old national guy.
SPEAKER_04Here's a really good back scratch, I can give you that.
SPEAKER_03The uh the old national guy was like, Are you sure you want to open a brewery? And we're like, yes. And he's like, Are you sure for sure? And we're like, Oh my god. Yes. And he's like, Well, I don't believe you guys, and fuck you, we're gonna do like 17% interest. And we're like, okay, no. Yeah, like he was I don't believe you.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Such a dickhead. I submitted. He was such a like, yeah, and I mean this in the most offensive way, the most boomeriest boomer banker that exists in the world. I I submitted. I don't remember his name. I wish I did, because I would call it out now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I submitted over 30 loan applications to different banks.
SPEAKER_03Um, we you did like 27 of them, but I did at least three. Yeah, so teamwork makes the dream work.
SPEAKER_02So different proposals, uh, different revenue projections, like all the things submitting to banks, like, hey, look, this is our business model, this is what we believe is gonna happen. It was over like 30 complete uh applications, and it like it was a tremendous amount of work to do that. Two banks eventually landed on, like, hey, like, let's look at this. And one was Sunrise Bank and the other one was Gateway Bank. Both were local. On one hand, I'm thankful for the national banks who basically just slammed the door in our face and like we're not even considering this because it forced me to reevaluate how I was proposing our loan uh to other to other banks.
SPEAKER_04Assume somebody has had their brain removed. Correct. And that's who you're dealing with at old national.
SPEAKER_02But it like now for nearly four years in, looking at the state of the industry, I'm like, well, maybe the bankers had some foresight of what was gonna happen because they had brewery clients that were failing. They were looking at us who are gonna open up a taproom model brewery and go like, well, you're gonna fall the same way as like these bigger brands who are more regional. Well, we're not the same style of business. We're not like I don't even know a good comparison of like opening multiple McDonald's instead of a single location in like an underserved neighborhood.
SPEAKER_04Um, yeah, you're not you're not going, you're not seeking to be summit, you're seeking to be wandering that's the problem, is like there's so many different ways to approach it. And and when you were applying for loans, the industry and what might be deemed quote unquote the path to success has changed.
SPEAKER_03Well, so and I I don't I mean to be morbid, but we knew when we were starting the brewery that uh COVID was gonna kill off a lot of breweries. We like we knew that that like that is a given, and uh it hasn't happened fully yet, but it is happening. There has been some stays of execution, and I don't mean this in like in a morbid way, but like it is happening. Like there, like there's been the business side of breweries, uh, just is not great. When when you started in 2014, it was uh build it and they will come and you don't even know how to have to have good beer. That that that's how it was. Yeah, by the time we started, it was having good beer is the minimum. That that's what it was. Because that's how beer is nowadays, right? Like you can't exist as a business and making shit beer. No offense to people that make shit beer, I guess. Some some some offense.
SPEAKER_04Some offense, but no offense to and then place over and then oh, don't forget about the and then I had to bleep him in the last episode.
SPEAKER_06I've actually bleeped him a couple times, but I think the last episode is when he finally caught on that I've I bleeped something out. Oh so now I think he's gonna be able to do that.
SPEAKER_04This is not the first time I've been censored by LGBTQ.
SPEAKER_03Mark the mark the time.
SPEAKER_04246 38.
SPEAKER_03What was the what was the beer? What was the brewery?
SPEAKER_05Uh I have bleeped out. I have bleeped out. I have bleeped out.
SPEAKER_03Oof.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, no, no.
SPEAKER_05I mean, those aren't surprises. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Name name names.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. To br to bring it all home, we record the brewery adventure here almost exclusively in the last several months. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I'm just the prettiest girl at the ball. I'm just laying my feet at the table right now.
SPEAKER_03I kind of like I kind of enjoy being a part of it. So if you ever needed like a just a 30-minute edition, I I just like talking. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06I feel we didn't get like the full story from you guys. We have so many more things to discuss, so you're gonna have to come back.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Or I mean we're gonna be here anyway. So we're gonna have to grab a mic.
SPEAKER_03And uh Matt's really good at making beer. I'm an okay, I guess, owner. Yeah, we try to make an earthy I hazy IPA. Oh my god. That was a big mistake as a uh home brewer. I was like, well, hazy IPs are super popular, and I really enjoy West Coast IPAs. What if I combine the two?
SPEAKER_04It's called Midwest IPA and it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_03No, I worse. I was like, I'm gonna take the hops from the West Coast and I'm gonna just shove it into the body of a hazy IPA, and it tasted like it was so mad. Jesus Christ, why would you do that? I was like, this is gonna be the next big thing, and it it wasn't.
SPEAKER_04Hey, sometimes you gotta you gotta shoot for the stars because even if you miss, you land on a cloud. But we love coming here.
SPEAKER_06We love coming here, and I do want to say the first time I ever came here, I was it was with a group. I was really super early. I we've talked about this before on the podcast. You guys were up at the bar and just like had this very normal, organic conversation with me that wasn't weird, it wasn't off-butting, it wasn't uncomfortable. We talked about we talked about video games. I had no idea that you guys were the owners, the co-owners of this place until like very late in the conversation. And it like I I think about that every time I come in here because that's part of that's part of the charm of this place is you guys and talking to the people who come in and treating everybody who walks in the door like they're part of your community already, even if it's the first time they've been here.
SPEAKER_03I guess unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, we are here all the time. Matt is here like 24-7. You yes. I'm here like 18-6.
SPEAKER_04I I believe, Courtney, I believe we have some audio of that, uh, just some banter that uh Robbie and Matt were having behind the bar.
SPEAKER_00How would it be if we put mouth hood in the body of a hazy IPA?
SPEAKER_03So that's interesting. Um I will stand behind the idea of a bitter hazy IPA. I will stand behind it. I think that it can work. That's just a Vermont hazy. I'm just not like a Vermont IPA. I'm just not smart enough to do it. Yeah. And I'm not willing to spend thousands of dollars to do it.
SPEAKER_02No, but like, but to your point, breweries that put on their platitudes of like, oh, we're community driven. They have to be part of their community. One of the big things that I've taken a lot of pride in is that like the Ethiopian community in our neighborhood has been huge supporters of us. And it's partly because, like, when they first started showing up, we're like, hey, what the fuck are you doing here? It's more like, what beer do you want? Because like you're not part of a craft beer demographic at all. And like, well, we want this, you know, uh this pilsner or whatever. Since we've opened up, we've gotten to know that there's like a a whole ton of geopolitical issues uh that are within this, you know, small community here in South Highland Park. And we're kind of treated as a kind of like almost a Switzerland of sorts. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Uh like a whatever that would explain all the yodeling.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Uh as a uh we have a one customer who's like the brother of the pastor at the local local Ethiopian church. He keeps calling us uh second church. Like we've learned through him that all these factions in the Ethiopian community are just kind of civil here and they go to their other like their own spots after we close. I would have never imagined that we'd be at the center of like a hey, like things on the other side of the planet are present here. They're all civil because they're all here in America, they're all dealing with the same problems here in America, but they also have all these other problems that they're trying to deal with, but they can be civil here.
SPEAKER_06You get to be the safe haven, the neutral zone. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Well, and you fostered the, you know, to use a horticultural, the soil was prepped and ready for that to grow and cultivate. You've cultivated that. Yeah, but that ability for them to feel like this is a place to come and be together.
SPEAKER_03I think on that note though, they have their church that they all go to together. Like it's it is their specific space that they go to. They all have their own different restaurants and bars that they go to separately from that church. Because we had no idea that these geopolitical things happened, they walked in and we were nice to them. We had no reason to be mean to them because they're just people coming in, they want to have a beer. And they're like, they're nice. And it just became second church for them. And honestly, even to this day, three and a half years later, I don't know which faction they belong to. I just know that they don't like each other. And I know that's really bad. It's just it's just what it is. It's like I know which groups don't like each other, but I don't know which I know like a couple of them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I don't like I don't know which which group is North Ethiopia's uh or central or Ethiopia's.
SPEAKER_03Or Eritrea, or like I know that they don't like each other in the grand scheme of things, but they are friendly, they'll nod their heads at each other. Yeah, but they will not sit next to each other. Like that's that's just what I know.
SPEAKER_04I wish I could say the same for my idiot sisters-in-law. I won't even nod my head at them.
SPEAKER_03That's okay, that's their garbage it's very similar to my like house, like my parents' house. Don't sit the cousins next to each other, it's fine.
SPEAKER_02But but to put a final point, a bow on all this is that like breweries are like, hey, we're a community space. Are you a present member of your community?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. Because there's a lot of talking to talk, but very few are walking the walk. I'll say that.
SPEAKER_02If you're in Ethiopian neighborhood, are you welcoming to the Ethiopians who are like, hey, we like beer, but we just we're not a part of a craftier demographic.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_02If you're welcoming to them, they're here. And it's the same thing to like a Latino community that is like, hey, we we like beer. Are we in a neighborhood that welcomes us to a craftery that's in our neighborhood? Yeah, but if you're gonna say, like, hey, we're community focused, but you're exclusionary, exclusionary to certain uh groups of people, are you actually a community because those people are part of your community, and like that's not to say like you need to welcome people who are actively hostile, you also need to like understand like people are different and you get need to find that balance.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think there's there's a lot of breweries out there that are quite performative when it comes to that, and I think it is really refreshing, and I'm thankful that wandering leave does not fall into that category, and you are doing the right thing.
SPEAKER_02I really appreciate that.
SPEAKER_06And it does make a difference that you guys are here, like for good or for worse. You guys are here all the time and you interact with everybody who comes in. Yeah, that sets a tone for your staff, that sets a tone for everybody who walks in the door.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, all of our regulars see my good days, but they see my bad days. Yeah. Uh especially his bad days. Yeah, I I I I wear my stress on my face. I can't help it anymore. He's only 26.
SPEAKER_06It's only gonna get worse, Matt. It's only gonna get worse. Oh, dog.
SPEAKER_02I'm only 26. I look like a bulldog. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But it is like we truly are here a lot, and so we've gotten to know our regulars. They see us when we're happy, they see us when we're stressed, they see us when we're sad. They they know us really well. And there are times where we're like, we're super chatty, we want to talk to them, and they were super engaged. They want to ask about the beers and we tell them all about it. And then there's times where we're like, just please leave me alone. I do not want to talk to you. Unfortunately, my desk is right there next to the the to go beer. Uh I so I don't get to hide my face very often. I'm just like right there all the time until I go home.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, but like, but like again, that that's kind of part of it. Like the breweries have always been like that quote unquote third space.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And if you want to call yourself a third space, you have to be part of your community. And if you're not, then what are you doing? You're just trying to sell beer and might as well be making tours.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I do think the the third space, but but also like beer has always been a unifier of populations. I think that like throughout history of like truly beer, like uh hence definitely it's gonna be a thousand years old, it is a unifier of space.
SPEAKER_04I'm gonna tell my wife that's what we're doing for my 61st birthday. Dude, you're 79th. 79th, 89th, whatever. Yeah. Bring my ashes, Matt, will you? And like sprinkle them on the parking lot.
SPEAKER_03But like Germany does it right, like they have beer halls. Yeah. It's the beer hall mentality where it's like you don't have to know the person next to you. Like that's why we have such a big bar. It's like I can't tell you the number of times I've had a random one person sit down and they sit down to a next to a regular and then they have a conversation, and they would just like have a conversation for like two hours, and like someone's like, Oh, I'm just having the one beer. And they have having like three beers because they're talking to somebody that they wanted to have. Yeah, like it's it's great. Like it is something like it gives me a little bit of a joy that I didn't think I had left in me. I am a very pessimistic person in general, unfortunately. Having somebody that normally You're not wrong.
SPEAKER_04The first time I met you, I'm like, is this man dead inside? Just kidding.
SPEAKER_03The answer is not you're right. The answer is yes. Um I hide it sometimes.
SPEAKER_04Where do you find joy? What gives you joy?
SPEAKER_03Her name is Joy. Oh, Joy.
SPEAKER_04Oh, the lady hiding behind the Fikish over there. Come on over. Don't be a stranger.
SPEAKER_02It's the Vietnamese Vietnamese restaurant that uh That's right.
SPEAKER_03Thai tie. Shotgun? Or not shotgun. Jesus Christ. I mean I'll do it. I'm in if you're in. Shout out Joy's Richfield, go there. It's delicious. Highly recommend Thai restaurant. It's fantastic. Go. Right off of 494 in Lindale.
SPEAKER_06I was gonna ask if it was that one.
SPEAKER_03Yes, it's delicious. Go.
SPEAKER_04Well, I can't think of a better way to start off season two of the Brewery Adventure than a nice, really uh robust beer conversation with uh Matt and Robbie. Back for the ownership crew beer at the wandering leaf.
SPEAKER_06I feel a lot less bad about not having an actual like plan for this. It's fine.
SPEAKER_02You're dealing with two people who have raging ADHD. There's no way that this is gonna go the way you planned it.
SPEAKER_06No, this was perfect. This was everything I wanted. I've I'm so happy that you guys joined us. I hope that you come back and do it again because I feel like there's more stories.
SPEAKER_02I mean, you guys are here all the time. There's no way we can't. It's a state of the state.
SPEAKER_03We're just always gonna plug in two extra microphones.
SPEAKER_062026.
SPEAKER_03That's right. We'll be there. I'm just putting it in there right now. All right.
SPEAKER_06Where can people find Wandering Leaf online if they want to connect with you guys?
SPEAKER_03Wanderingleafbrewing.com. Or at Wandering Leaf Brewing on Instagram. Don't remember our Facebook handle by assume is the same.
SPEAKER_06Dan, where can people find you since you're mid-yon?
SPEAKER_04Besides past my bedtime. I was up late playing um Civilization 5 last night. Whoops. If you uh go to you want to hear a one pine stand, my other podcast, you can just search that up on any podcast format. And if you want to read. Napster? Yeah, let's bring that back. I mean, I'm trying to bring back Capri pants, so why not Napster too? How about LimeWire? Even that one. Uh if you go to a1pintstand.com or just search up a one pintstand on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Mastodon, and Blue Sky.
SPEAKER_06They gave you the appropriate look for Mastodon. Yeah, what's Mastodon? It's the same look I give you. Exactly.
SPEAKER_04It's an up-and-coming thing.
SPEAKER_06He joined it because of one person.
SPEAKER_04One person is an old person.
SPEAKER_06I'm sure they're a good person, but it's still like You met him at the Ratskiller.
SPEAKER_04He was with Mitch, Dan.
SPEAKER_06Dan's great. Yeah. But you joined, uh, you joined a whole social platform because of one person.
SPEAKER_04If somebody tells me that's where they get their information, I'll be on there.
SPEAKER_03But what about Reddit?
SPEAKER_04Oh, I get a lot of a lot of clicks from Reddit and a lot of hate from Reddit. Oh my god. A-M-T-E-H-R-Y-A-N. That person? I think they either need to get a more comfortable couch or eat less bran. Because my God, I would. What a cranky son of a bitch that person is. I hope they uh I do I hope they find joy. Is that you?
SPEAKER_06I guess you've been trolling you this whole time.
SPEAKER_03No, I I do browse the Minnesota beer subreddit and I see your posts every now and then, and it gives me a little bit of joy to see dum dums commenting in the most shitty way. And how often people are like, well, fuck you. Not to you, but to like the guy that's commenting on your post. It's so great. Yeah I love the like social intricacies of the internet.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there's a lot of wacky stuff out there. I'm sure people can guess my handle if they browse the brewery subreddit. Yeah. Because I post there quite a lot. And like asking questions or just commenting and going, like, hey, does anybody else have an uh alpha compass 25 candy line? Because what the fuck am I dealing with?
SPEAKER_03Again, hearkening back to the brewer, the brewery like community is very commu like like community focused. Like they do, they will tell you exactly what you're doing wrong, so long as you pose it in a way of what am I doing wrong? Because they want to tell you.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, they're just not sure they can.
SPEAKER_03No, no, no, no. No, they want to tell you, but when they say you as an expert that you're the expert, they want to tell you they're wrong.
SPEAKER_02If you just pose yourself as an idiot and like, hey, I will accept your advice, good, bad, or ugly, just tell me what's going on, you'll get a deluge of information. We're like, I know better than everybody else, it's crickets.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, outside of hate comments.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So Courtney, where can people find The Brewery Adventure?
SPEAKER_06The BreweryAdventure.com with T H E at the front, the brewery adventure, or on Instagram, The Brewery Adventure. And it should be where they can find us, Dan, because you are the co-host of this brewery. You've been the co-host for a whole year. I don't know at what point you realized you were the co-host.
SPEAKER_03Don't forget about onlyfans.com slash Robbie Reisdorf. Put all your money in there. It's very important. It's all feet picks.
SPEAKER_01Wait, who's just the gnarliest feet you've ever seen? It's Ben Holton's feet.
SPEAKER_04Post boot. Why do you wear size five women's cap shoe all the time?
SPEAKER_01Oh my god. Um yeah. Sorry, onlyferns.com.
SPEAKER_02Only ferns, yeah. Yeah. Ben Holton as he pulls his feet out of his boots. Like this very swampy grossness.
SPEAKER_06Uh all right, this is where we'd normally do a cheers. I think you need the you need a beer. We're gonna do a cheers. Thank you guys again so much for being here.
SPEAKER_02Hey, hey. Cheers, gay.
SPEAKER_06We got it, we got it.
SPEAKER_02Kaboom. Warm. My favorite.
SPEAKER_06Did you actually drink that? Oh my god, that's been sitting here forever.
SPEAKER_07That's the one that we need.
Podcasts we love
Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.
A One Pint Stand
Dan Beaubien
Treasures of our Town
Craig (Seemyshell) and Joshua (Geocaching Vlogger)
Official Munzee Podcast
Rob Vardeman & Craig Michell