Interview with a brewer: Lost Abbey in San Marcos, CA
The next victim in our Interview with a Brewer series is Tomme, head brewer at Lost Abbey in San Marcos, CA. We actually heard about Tomme and the rest of the motley crew through M BeerPix, who are staunchly loyal to the brewery. Before we get into the meat of the interview, a few words about Lost Abbey (pilfered from their website):
Rooted in the Monastic and artistic Belgian brewing traditions, The Lost Abbey brewery project is the brainchild of Vince and Gina Marsaglia, former head brewer of Pizza Port in Solana Beach Tomme Arthur and Jim Comstock of Comstock and Associates who formed the partnership responsible for the stewardship of these beers.
If you’ve missed previous editions of this series, I encourage you to catch up. Enjoy!
1) What were the steps that led you up to the decision to start Lost Abbey?
Vince and Gina Marsaglia (the owners of Pizza Port) had this idea in their heads for a very long time. It just grew over the years as something that I was constantly thinking about. I grew up Catholic and as such, it all made sense to me. With all of the Belgian Style Beers that I was producing in Solana Beach, it seemed like a natural extension.
2) What is your favorite thing about what you do?
Pretty much all of it. I truly enjoy the challenges of running the business, brewing the beer and fostering creativity throughout the processes so I don’t get bored. My least favorite thing to do is stand around and bottle beer. That part isn’t too much fun. And since the majority of our business right now is bottles, we do a lot of standing and bottling.
3) From what I can gather, Port Brewing does all of the actual brewing. How did you arrive at the decision to utilize Port Brewing instead of building a free-standing brewery? (obviously running Port Brewing played big into the decision, but was it primarily a function of cost and excess capacity)
We actually own both brands and made a conscious decision to brand the brewery as Port Brewing Co (a known entity and offshoot of Pizza Port) and produce The Lost Abbey beers. In many ways, I think more breweries should investigate this style of production. We get to realize two separate styles of brewing in one building and also keep things interesting from a production standpoint as we are making more than three styles of beer. This can also be a major pain in the ass as we have issues with inventories and the like with so many different bottles.
4) What marketing tactic has been the most beneficial to you? If “word-of-mouth,” what’s the SECOND most beneficial?
The most beneficial thing we have done has been sticking to our roots. We cut our teeth at the Pizza Ports by making the most interesting and flavorful beers that we wanted to drink. When we opened a larger production facility, we didn’t go after the volume based 6 pack business that traditionally accompanies a new project. We held fast to our roots of small batch unique beers and our business is thriving on this model. It is word of mouth and it very much comes from producing eclectic and highly sought after small batch beers.
5) How has your work at White Labs influenced the work you do now?
Working at White Labs was more about developing a relationship with Chris and Lisa that continues to be there today. We know that our brewing needs can be met by their lab and they know that our beers afford them a glimpse (locally) of some unique processes.
6) When working with things like oak barrels and Brettanomyces, how does the brewing process change?
The process is very un-Germanic at the core. We do not seek to replicate each nuance to the exacting Mercedes like consistency. We use oak and wild yeasts to give us varying perspectives. Our job as brewers is to p ck out the strengths in each barrel and use them accordingly. The goal for our oak aged beers is to keep the perspective and respective flavors similar but not always look for exacting replication.
7) What considerations led you to purchase used equipment from Stone as opposed to new equipment?
It was the right sized system in San Diego at the right price. We had been talking about doing this for some time and when they announced the sale of the brewery, we were the first ones they had in mind. It has been a great purchase for us since day one.
8 ) How does a batch size translate when scaling up from something like a 5 gallon batch to a 30 BBL batch?
I haven’t brewed a five gallon batch of anything in a very long time. When I was in Solana Beach, I used to scale recipes from 10 gallons to 1 barrel and then work up from there. If you work at home on any sized system but start with percentages, then it can be done. Spicing is the most delicate up sizing part and for that, I ask lots of questions of my friends.
Interview with a brewer: Black Raven Brewery in Seattle, WA
These interviews with professional brewers have been incredibly insightful for us. I realize the posts are long, but there’s a lot of interesting stuff in there. This third installment in the Interview with a Brewer series is compliments of Beaux Bowman, one of the two founders of the Black Raven Brewery, which will be opening next year in Seattle. Visit their website and sign up for their mailing list to find out more of their dirty doings. First, a little background. From their website:
The Black Raven will be a production brewery [in Seattle] with a retail taproom. We will be the Eastside?s home to world-class, small-batch brewed ales & lagers. We also will feature a continually changing hand-picked selection of other notable Washington State beers. And most importantly, home to local beer lovers who want to be a part of a community that enjoys great beer and great friends.
One thing that has drawn us to Black Raven is their laser-focus on a particular neighborhood. Much like what Brooklyn Brewery did for Brooklyn and what we are hoping to do for Atlanta’s westside, Black Raven wants to become an integral part of the Eastside community. But I’m rambling…
1) What were the steps that led you up to the decision to start a brewery?
As many brewers out there, my decision to pursue a brewery came before actually working in the industry. I had just completed a business degree and knew that I had no interest in the whole suit and tie thing. Home brewing was a recent hobby of mine at the time and my thirst of knowledge (and better beer) grew. For the previous eight years I had been working for Kodak wholesale processing labs as a quality control technician. I realized quickly that many of the tasks performed and skills developed (pun intended) over the years were strikingly similar to professional brewing. It didn?t take long to figure out that beer taste a lot better than C41 developer when it got splashed in your face. So really the decision to open a brewery started there, it was always the goal from day one. I just lacked one thing, the experience and the knowledge necessary to become a professional brewer. So upon graduation, I packed it up and moved to Seattle to break into the business. Seven years later, I am lucky enough to be able to make that step into ownership.
2) What is your favorite thing about what you do?
I would say the best part of being a brewer is doing what you love. I know that is kind of the easy answer here but it is true. If I had an infinite supply of money, I would be doing the same thing. OK, well maybe part time because I really enjoy underwater photography and scuba diving as well. If I could only figure out a way to combine those things! As far as brewing is concerned, I really enjoy the dynamic nature of the work. It seems like there is always something new to learn and new challenges to tackle. This is one of the primary reasons for pursuing the ownership direction. The attraction of creating not only new beers but a whole new company from the ground up is powerful. That my friends is exciting, scary, challenging, and fun all in one wild ride. I think this is where my business degree will start to pay off as intended.
3) Why are you guys so focused on a particular area of Seattle? I ask because we feel the same way about the Westside of Atlanta.
We are actually pretty stubborn about our location here on the eastside of Seattle. There are many reasons but the main driver is based on market demand vs. supply. There are no brewpubs or production breweries with taprooms here in Redmond. We have a large population of craft beer savvy customers begging for something like this to return. Microsoft world headquarters is right here and those folks love craft beer. There have been a few small brewpubs here in the past several years, I actually brewed at one of them for about a year and a half. Both previous businesses failed not from lack of demand but from internal ownership strife. We also live here in Redmond and believe in the idea of working in your own community when at all possible. Commuting is no fun and we both have grown tired of it. Working and living here also has given us insight into the local market and we feel good about our understanding of what the consumers here want.
4) What have you done to “get the word out” prior to opening your doors? Are you happy with the returns that these efforts have delivered?
I am fortunate that my seven years of professional brewing has been in this area. Over those years I have been active in the brewing community and developed many friendships with industry peers and local craft beer lovers. We have a very strong brewer?s guild in Washington and many loyal Washington beer fans. At this point, I still do not have a physical location but I am close to signing a lease. That being said, it is difficult to promote for something that you can?t nail down a timeline to. People get tired of hearing ?any day now, soon?. I worry about the ?boy that cried wolf? syndrome if we promote too much right now. I have created a website (my backup career if the brewing thing bombs) to get some information out and to populate our email newsletter roster. I also have given some tidbits of information to the local beer centric media outlets to let people know we are coming, get some name recognition started. Many local craft beer fans know who I am and what I am working on from my previous brewing gigs. Word of mouth goes a long way in this business.
5) What is one thing about the brewing industry that you wish you had anticipated going in?
I think I am lucky on this front because I can?t think of anything. I had researched this career path extensively before embarking on it. There really were not many surprises, and if there were, they were positive ones. Now the one thing on this new project that I did not anticipate correctly was the difficulty in finding a location to lease. The Redmond market is tough right now. Commercial vacancy rates are very low and demand is high. Breweries are a hard use of space because of their infrastructure demands. Landlords are hesitant to have you cut up their buildings when they know next week there will be someone else wanting the space with little to no changes. We have been actively searching with a leasing agent, ready to sign a lease, since January 2007! Many prospective sites have fallen through for various reasons outside our control.
6) Given the emphasis on small batches, what are your aspirations when it comes to distribution?
Small batches are a blessing and a curse. The brewer side of me loves them because you get to rotate the beer quickly and have lots of flexibility in regards to product range. The business side of me says it would be better to brew large batches due to economy of scale. Distribution is tricky, another blessing and curse. For obvious reason, the focus will be on selling as much beer as possible retail at the brewery taproom. My thoughts on distribution gravitate towards a focus on bottles more than kegs. I am not really excited about fighting for tap handles in the Seattle market, very competitive. I think the bottled beer market is more interesting and holds promise. We would start out packaging 22oz bombers and work our way into six packs later. Most likely the focus will be on specialty beers for this market. There is lots of growth and demand in that area of craft brewing. The margins on wholesale production are slim and profitability comes with volume. I think a good mix of wholesale and retail will better our chances of survival.
7) When constructing a brewery, what decisions have been the most important?
This I am in the process of finding out. At this point, I think it is critical to design for the future with success in mind. The brewery is laid out to easily grow from phase I into phase II with minimal infrastructure changes. We are really designing for 5 -10 years and then working backwards to facilitate a practical boot strap growth. The brewery is being designed for a 20 BBL system but the initial hot side will be 10 BBL. The infrastructure will be set for the 20 but short term adapted to the 10. We figure once we outgrow a 20 BBL system, the brewery will most likely have outgrown the space anyway.
This is a scary time to be entering into this industry. Even with seven or so years of professional experience, I still hold some reservations. The hop and malt crisis we are in does not seem to be going away anytime soon. Energy costs are going nowhere but up and a brewery is an energy hog, even with all attempts to reduce this. Green energy is a great solution but expensive to implement, it can use up most of your brewery budget before you even buy your brewery equipment. Stainless steel and other metals are becoming more expensive. Breweries are also taxed on barrels produced by the federal government and state government. On the state level, many states have raised these taxes substantially and our own state has tried to many times over the years (thank goodness for a strong brewer?s guild letting our lawmakers know we are here). The bottom line is the costs of running a brewery have increased dramatically and I don?t see that changing much over time. The reality is there are easier ways to make more money, but in my case, it is really where my heart is. Like they say, listen to your heart, and hope it is right!
Interview with a Brewer: Half Acre Beer Co
After such an informative interview with Steve at Beau’s All-Natural Brewing, we decided to make a little series out of brewer interviews. And so, we present to you our second such endeavor: an interview with Gabriel, founder of Half Acre Beer Company in Chicago, who we discovered through our friend Ted, brewer and drummer and all-around good guy. Half Acre is still young, which is one of the reasons why their input is so valuable. I couldn’t do as good a job introducing them as they could, so I’m just going to plagiarize from their website:
Half Acre Beer Company uses a grass roots approach to bring original beers to the community. We develop all of our recipes at home in Chicago, then work with friends in Black River Falls, WI to brew our beer. We can’t afford our own brewery as of yet, but brewing with friends allows us to minimize our physical footprint while maximizing the output of another great brew house close to home. Our beer is only distributed in Chicago, at the same bars, restaurants and stores we enjoy. We’re building our company one beer at a time and with hard work and support we’ll create the opportunity to build our brewery at home in Chicago.
So that about sums it up. The only thing left… is the interview:
1) What were the steps that led you up to the decision to start a brewery?
There were many things that led up to the decision, but I would say first and foremost would be the love for the community that surrounds craft beer and a passion for entrepreneurial endeavors. We researched the industry on a national level then focused on our city and figured we’s have a decent shot on getting it done.
2) What is your favorite thing about w at you do?
My favorite thing about what I do is making a quality product that intersects with people’s lives in a positive way.
3) What has been the most effective marketing tactic for you when first starting up? (If word-of-mouth is the answer, what has been the second most effective tactic?)
Tastings have been the most effective. It gives you the chance to meet your customers, the people selling your beer i.e staff at your points of sale, you sell beer in the process and the account where the tasting is being held is likely going to order more beer as a result. This isn’t a huge thing, but vital and tangible.
4) Why start off with a lager? Why not something easier to brew?
We wanted to do something a little different. We love ale and are working on one now for full-scale release, but we wanted to shake things up a bit and brew a lager that could maybe stand out.
5) What is one thing about the brewing industry that you wish you had anticipated going in?
One thing doesn’t stick out, but there are a lot of little things you just can’t have a feel for until you begin the process. Every stage had had little surprises.
6) How do recipes translate when moving from something like a 5 gallon batch to a 5BBL batch?
Going from small to large is touchy. As long as there is a lot of communication and you can supply the large scale brewer with as much detail about the process of achieving your 5 gal beer then you’re on the right track.
7) Why start off with contract brewing?
We started contracting because it was the only way we could get rolling without taking on large amounts of debt or outside investors. It’s also an opportunity to build awareness and demand so by the time we do have our brewery we’ll be able to put its capacity to use right off the bat. We didn’t want to create a tiny brewhouse and have to expand in a couple year – nor did we want to build a big brewhouse and bear the weight of debt with very low production numbers. These types of decisions are the biggest you’ll make, and we prefer the feel of an organic process that slowly builds.
8 ) How has your experience with contract brewing been?
Contract brewing has been great. We’d prefer to have our own brewery under our own roof, but it wasn’t in the cards. I could still be working my old job, but instead I have a beer company and the chance to really build our brand and build that brewery before long. We’re lucky, though. Most contract relationships are very formal and lifeless. We’ve hooked up with friends that have a small brewhouse that can regularly brew fresh beer for us with little bullshit involved. They’re talented and passionate about what they do and how we’re involved with it. Most contract deals – at least around here – are with bigger houses that will crank out 100bbl+ at a time, and that’s not great for a little company just getting off the ground.
Interview with a Brewer (Part II)
We now present Part II of our 2-part interview with Steve Beauchesne of Beau’s All Natural Brewing. Steve started a brewery in Ontario with his father (see picture at left). For those who have not yet read Part I, it is well worth it. And for those who have no idea what is going on, MNB has begun to seek interviews from other homebrewers turned brewers.
The ultimate goal, of course, is to enter commercial brewing while committing as few mistakes as possible. We pick up with Steve with a question on something we hold near and dear, blogging:
4) Why the decision to blog? How has blogging been helpful?
I think that part of what makes beer interesting to beer drinkers is the story behind it. Learning about the trappist monks making Chimay or the origin of Pilsner Urquell or the trials that Dogfish Head went through is a part of the whole experience. To me, blogging was a very easy and very honest way to start to craft the story behind Beau’s All Natural Brewing Co. It is helpful, but like most of the marketing we do, it doesn’t have specific results I can point to. I can’t say sales are up x% because I blog, but when I talk to people for the first time, quite often they’ll ask me a question about something I’ve written about on the blog. That’s kinda cool.
5) What is one thing about the brewing industry that you wish you had anticipated going in?
We did a really good job of estimating costs and a horrible job of estimating how long things took. Our installation went on for something like 7 months, while we pulled our hair out trying to get it done.
6) How do recipes translate when moving from something like a 5 gallon batch to a 5BBL batch?
Not very well. We went from a homebrewed pilot recipe to a 20BBL batch and it definitely took a few batches to get it where we wanted it. Even moving from one system to another of the same size can create very different results we’ve found. We were honest about it to our customers and explained that these first few batches would have absolutely no consistency, as we tried to nail what we wanted it finally end up as. Most people understood this and were actually excited to try each batch to see how the taste evolved. A small minority felt that we should not sell our beer until it was exactly how we wanted it, but I figure there’s no point in trying to please absolutely everybody…we promised that we would make interesting and tasty beer but we never promised that the very first batch would be exactly what we intended.
7) When constructing a brewery, what decisions were the most important? If you had to build another brewery (and you probably will if you keep winning awards), what would you do differently?
The most important one that we made was that we weren’t going to comprimise anything when it came to the quality of the beer. The more difficult decisions were the ones that supported the first…I don’t know how many bars told us initially that there was no way they were going to pay extra for a beer they had never even heard of before and the pressure to price it lower was enormous. If we had buckled, it would have put us in a tail spin (less revenue means spend less on the beer which means the beer inevitably isnt as good).
The second decision was to take challenge of being ridiculously small and turn it into a virtue. When someone asks me my title, I never say I’m Vice President…I say I don’t have a title, cause we’re way too small for that. My business card reads “How’s it going, I’m Steve Beauchense. I help my dad run a great brewery.” The reason it works is because it’s honest. People are so used to marketing spin that when, instead of saying “let me check with my office manager,” I say “let me check with my mom” they are absolutely stunned.
If I could do it again, I’d have more money to start with. Small cash flow has slowed our potential growth (as it stands we’re growing at 30%/month, so I shouldn’t complain I suppose) and made many projects happen slower than they could have. I wouldn’t change much else though. We’ve made some goofy mistakes along the way, but nothing too serious…I remember we made a dispensing unit when we just started out and bought a $150 cooler, then cheaped out on the cooling coil and the stupid thing looked awesome and foamed all the way through our special events….but we learned, now we spend $25 on a cheap cooler and buy the most expensive cooling coil and the thing can pour non-stop in an August heat wave without a problem.
8) Do all of your friends and family expect free beer now? Yeah, I thought so…
Yeah, but I owe most of them more than they’ve received. I’ve been truly blessed with the most kick-ass friends (especially my wife) on the planet and they have come through time and time again for me and the brewery. I owe many, many people many, many beers to even the score.
We would like to thank Steve one last time for enlightening us. I don’t know how realistic it is to expect his beers down in Georgia in the next few years, but if you’re ever up North (I don’t know why anyone would be, but just in case), throw back a Lugtread for me.
Beau’s All Natural Brewing reveals all! Or, rather, drops some knowledge on us.
So we’re starting a brewery. Big whoop. We thought we would take this opportunity as future entrepreneurs to try to learn from fellow microbrewers. And so we present to you the first in what will hopefully be a series of interviews with legitimate brewers. Brewers who get PAID to brew.
I realize we’re not known for our long posts here at MNB, but I encourage you to spend the time to read through this sucker. There’s a ton of good stuff here. And so we present, unedited and uncut, the first half of our first interview: Steve from Beau’s All Natural Brewing Co.
We found out about Steve through his blog, How to Start a Brewery. I won’t prattle on about him, however. I’ll let him introduce himself:
I’m Steve Beauchesne and me and my dad started a brewery and called it Beau’s All Natural Brewing Co. We invited the rest of the family and some close friends to join us. We’re located in a tiny farming town in the most Eastern part of Ontario Canada. Our beer is named LugTread after the tire treads on a small tractor and is brewed using certified organic malts and local spring water. We’ve been open just over a year now and so far we’ve won three awards, had a tonne of fun and sold some beer along the way.
Now to the questions!
1) What were the steps that led you up the decision to start a brewery?
Well, firstmost, I’ve been passionate about independant breweries for longer than I’ve been legally allowed to. I grew up in VankleekHill, where my Dad ran a c mpletely unrelated business in the textile industry. Everytime I came home with a case of a craft beer that he didn’t recognize he would say “you know, someone should open a microbrewery in Eastern Ontario” and we’d joke about it for a bit. Well, as I’m sure is the case in the U.S., the entire textile industry in Canada has moved offshore and one by one all of my Dad’s customers went bankrupt. I had moved to the big city and was working as a business plannning manager in the Ontario Government and one day my dad came up to visit. I took him out to a local pub and we were enjoying a pint when he broke the news to me that he was going to have to close his doors because the last of his customers had gone broke.
After a stunned silence, I asked him what he planned on doing, to which he replied “I think we should open a microbrewery in the building”. After a longer stunned silence I replied that I was willing to sell my house, quit my job and move back home to help him. We spent the rest of the night dreaming about the brewery we were going to open.
The next morning we sobered up and started looking into the possiblity seriously. We went on brewery tours, we read books and articles and I started building a business plan. We hired a brewer on as a consultant and started working on recipes and began looking for money to actually start. We contacted the Ontario Craft Brewers Association and they offered a lot of help as well. I quit my job and we started taking in cash and things really started snowballing from there. We hired our consultant on as our brewmaster and eventually we started actually making and selling beer.
2) What is your favorite thing about what you do?
Oh man, that’s a tough one. This job has ridiculously long hours, I’m still making less than half of what I made at my former job (I went 10 months taking no salary at all) and I love almost every second of it. I guess if I had a favorite, it would be at the end of the brew day when Matt ( our brewer) is just finshing cleaning up and we have a beer and talk about plans for the brewery. Its one of those few super calm, reflective moments and it usually feels really good.
3) What has been the most effective marketing tactic for you when first starting up? (If word-of-mouth is the answer, what has been the second most effective tactic?)
Ha, that’s funny…word of mouth is what happens when your marketing is effective, I think. It is by far the best thing a small brewery can have in its favour, but we certainly don’t rely on it, we generate it. In our case, it is generated when we talk one-to-one with our customer, a potential new customer, their mom, etc. When we started off we set an advertising budget of $0 and a beer promotional budget of $70,000. We didn’t think anyone would switch beer just because they saw our logo in a newspaper, so we were at every special event we could get into, handing out samples and talking about our beer. every new account was offered a sampling night for their customers, we’ve offered seminars for our accounts staff, etc. Anything we can do to get a glass of our beer into a customers hand and explain what makes ours special. Keep in mind, that this really only works because we have a kick-ass beer. From our ingredients to our aging time to the care we put into making sure its fresh, so we’re pretty confident that if our customer has taste buds, they are going to really, REALLY like our beer.
Keep posted for the rest of the interview. We broke it up because of length… and because it’s THAT GOOD. (Thanks Steve!)