Latest / The Brewery Underground Podcast | Craft Beer Interviews, Reviews and Beer Travel / Best Day Brewing | Non-Alcoholic Craft Beer with Founder Tate Huffard & Head Brewer Jeremy Rudolf | Episode 132

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Best Day Brewing | Non-Alcoholic Craft Beer with Founder Tate Huffard & Head Brewer Jeremy Rudolf | Episode 132 · The Brewery Underground Podcast | Craft Beer Interviews, Reviews and Beer Travel

• 0:01
  Stand by for the Brewery Underground podcast.
• 0:39
  We are kicking off the summer season on the Brewery
• 0:43
  Underground podcast. And you know, Scott, summer
• 0:47
  summer's a big deal for us because we're probably going to
• 0:50
  be hanging out at breweries. We're going to probably be
• 0:52
  somewhere drinking some beer. But you know what?
• 0:56
  There is also a possibility that we may be drinking some other
• 1:00
  options as well. You don't say.
• 1:04
  I do. Say.
• 1:06
  Let's and we're the area we live in Nashville, summer can be
• 1:10
  defined in April. That's true.
• 1:12
  As far as the weather goes. It's really hit us here in the
• 1:15
  past couple of weeks and it's gotten really hot.
• 1:19
  Kind of kind of true to form, you know, here.
• 1:22
  And it's before the actual summer hits on the calendar.
• 1:24
  We feel it. We do feel it, yes, and we're
• 1:27
  going to be filling it a lot over the next couple of months.
• 1:30
  But it is our pleasure today to welcome in from Best Day Brewing
• 1:34
  Tate Hufford. He is the CEO and founder and
• 1:37
  Jeremy Rudolph the head Brewer. And we're bringing these guys in
• 1:41
  because we are talking NA today on the Brewery Underground
• 1:45
  podcast. And gentlemen, welcome.
• 1:48
  We're very glad to have you. Great to be here.
• 1:50
  Thank you. Thanks for joining us.
• 1:52
  We, we talk about, we like to cover all facets of beer,
• 1:56
  whether it be yeast. We had a yeast episode.
• 1:59
  It's not out yet. We'll be out when this comes
• 2:00
  out. We've had grains on, we're
• 2:02
  working on hops. We're talking about different
• 2:04
  Brewers. This is another one of those
• 2:06
  things NA beer and it's come up in many of our conversations
• 2:09
  with Brewers is having NA beer. So this kind of fits that bill.
• 2:13
  We like to inform and maybe educate.
• 2:14
  So I think this is another one of those episodes.
• 2:16
  Yeah, well, it's a brave new world we're living in.
• 2:19
  I'm glad that NA beer is on the list.
• 2:21
  Yeah, it it, it really goes into that.
• 2:24
  We've been doing this podcast now for about 3 years and almost
• 2:28
  every time we do an episode with a Brewer or a brewery owner,
• 2:33
  they talk about how the marketplace has changed so much
• 2:36
  and people are looking at a lot of different options and they
• 2:39
  certainly want them. You know, First off the bat, we
• 2:41
  have to thank you guys because you all sent us a lot of NA beer
• 2:46
  and I will, I will say it's a plethora and we certainly
• 2:50
  appreciate it, man. I've been, I know Scott and I
• 2:52
  have been drinking them over the past week or so.
• 2:55
  In fact, I I am drinking your culture right now and I think I
• 3:02
  think the culture has become my favorite.
• 3:04
  So this is the second time. So drinking it in the brewery
• 3:06
  underground glass here. But cheers fellows, and
• 3:11
  certainly appreciate it. Yep, I've got the the Galaxy
• 3:14
  Ripple the Imperial IPA and I was saving this one for this.
• 3:18
  I've had a couple of the ones previously but this one is
• 3:21
  excellent. This is a really great beer.
• 3:23
  Another one that stood out for me too was the Mexican Lager.
• 3:28
  Electro line. Electro line, yes.
• 3:32
  Yep. Really good beer and I've still
• 3:34
  got a couple more. I haven't had the Koch yet.
• 3:36
  That one's a good. One season of Electro line.
• 3:38
  Humidity in Nashville, that extra lime, That's that's that's
• 3:42
  the ticket. It's good and you get that lime
• 3:44
  and you get that sea salt in there too and it just makes it
• 3:47
  perfect. It's very, very crushable.
• 3:49
  Yeah, yeah, just kiss it. Steve would go back to what
• 3:51
  Steve said about getting all the beer.
• 3:52
  I think he got a tracking number and he goes it's £31.
• 3:58
  Yeah. Yeah, thank you.
• 4:00
  Therein. Therein lies the problem with
• 4:02
  shipping deer. It's a share size.
• 4:05
  Oh yeah. It's a share side.
• 4:07
  Well, we came prepared on the on the episode.
• 4:10
  Like I said, we've been drinking them over the last couple of
• 4:12
  days. I did have the Electro lime
• 4:14
  about three nights ago. As you said, it's a great time
• 4:17
  of the year, especially here, you know, in the Nashville area,
• 4:20
  it's already in the 80s, almost hitting 90.
• 4:23
  So certainly a great crushable beer.
• 4:25
  So we, we definitely appreciate it.
• 4:28
  You know, Tate, you founded Best Day Brewing a few years ago.
• 4:31
  And as we kind of said, the beginning, it really just seems
• 4:34
  like it's a perfect time to start up a company like this
• 4:39
  because the marketplace has changed so much.
• 4:42
  Yeah. Well, yeah, you know, Best Day
• 4:45
  started in 2021, but I really got got the idea to do this in
• 4:51
  2016 thereabouts, which I would say it was less than a perfect
• 4:56
  time to to do it, which is why it didn't start there.
• 5:01
  But but yeah, I really stumbled into this category because, you
• 5:05
  know, I don't come from the world of of beverage.
• 5:09
  I actually come to this world just as someone who loves beer,
• 5:13
  probably not as much as you guys, but you know, I'm a
• 5:16
  everyday drinker and, and, you know, I just had a always had an
• 5:22
  appreciation for what beer does and all our culture.
• 5:24
  You know, I'd really like nothing else.
• 5:26
  It brings people together. And that could be, you know,
• 5:29
  backyard barbecues, it could be, you know, piece of joints,
• 5:32
  concerts. You know, I, I'm out here in
• 5:35
  California and, you know, we really enjoy our beers after
• 5:39
  surfing in a parking lot, right? And they're just, they're just
• 5:41
  endless ways to that beer brings people together.
• 5:44
  And, you know, and, and really the story where this whole
• 5:48
  thing's comes from is, you know, in my 20s, I didn't really have
• 5:53
  to think much about, you know, the, the, the trade off of
• 5:57
  quantity of beers to hangover in the morning.
• 6:00
  And that all started to change pretty quickly in my 30s.
• 6:03
  And, you know, you, you add in a couple newborns into the mix
• 6:07
  and, you know, you add in early mornings at work and just all
• 6:11
  the things that, that begin to stack up in life.
• 6:13
  And, you know, you throw a hangover in that equation and it
• 6:17
  just starts to sting more. And so, you know, I just found
• 6:21
  myself for the first time kind of just like taking a pause and
• 6:25
  just being like, OK, like Monday to Thursday, like, can I cut it
• 6:29
  out during the week? And I think that's kind of the
• 6:31
  toe in the water for a lot of people.
• 6:34
  And, and, you know, I think you it only takes one night of good
• 6:38
  sleep to make you realize like, oh, OK.
• 6:40
  Like there is a change there. But at the same time, you know,
• 6:44
  I was noticing that I was also, you know, pulling back from all
• 6:48
  of those things that beer really, you know, facilitates in
• 6:52
  the, you know, the social aspects of life, right?
• 6:54
  I was saying no to a lot of those things.
• 6:56
  And that felt like a just that felt like a real trade off,
• 6:59
  right? Like, you know, OK, I can, I
• 7:01
  could sleep better, but if I'm not doing anything social, you
• 7:06
  know, that it didn't feel like a great, great trade off to me.
• 7:10
  And so, you know, I was, I was exploring all the alternatives
• 7:14
  that people have and they, you know, you're, you're sparkling
• 7:18
  waters and you're, you know, your kombuchas and stuff like
• 7:22
  that. A lot of great products out
• 7:23
  there. Not at all like drinking a beer,
• 7:25
  right? Like they just do not hold the
• 7:27
  same cultural relevance in terms of bringing people together.
• 7:31
  Like hardly. I don't know anyone who's got
• 7:33
  together in a parking lot after surfing and just had a bunch of
• 7:36
  kombuchas. It just, it doesn't, it doesn't
• 7:38
  happen. And it's so very
• 7:40
  serendipitously. My father-in-law who lives in
• 7:45
  Minnesota, come out to California.
• 7:48
  He, he, he's your typical O'doul's drinker who kind of
• 7:52
  went to that category, went to that brand very reluctantly, you
• 7:56
  know, feet first kicking and screaming.
• 7:59
  But there was no other option at the time.
• 8:00
  I mean, there were, they were kind of a handful of those old
• 8:03
  guard brands, right? And, and so he'd come over with
• 8:06
  a six pack and he'd kind of choke down 1 and park the other
• 8:09
  five in my fridge. And so, you know, the light bulb
• 8:12
  moment for me was, was opening up that fridge and seeing the
• 8:15
  beers that I love drinking, which might have, you know, 4%,
• 8:17
  five percent, 7% alcohol, you know, I've always thought like,
• 8:21
  what's the right beer for the right occasion?
• 8:23
  But you know, no matter what beer, for whatever occasion, I
• 8:27
  want great beer and I want a cool brand that has a purpose.
• 8:31
  And when you look at the O'doul's next to those beers, it
• 8:34
  occurred to me like, man, no wonder no one's drinking this
• 8:37
  stuff. Like the beer is God awful and
• 8:39
  the brand is, I mean, how many, how many brands, how many
• 8:43
  products out there forget about just beer, How many products
• 8:47
  like when you actually consume that product have a negative
• 8:50
  signal to everyone else? Like not many.
• 8:52
  So, you know, in terms of a beer experience, I thought, well,
• 8:58
  what if we could just invert that whole thing?
• 9:00
  Like, why? Why can't we make a great
• 9:01
  tasting beer that happens to have no alcohol in it?
• 9:05
  And for me, the brand story there was what kind of clicked
• 9:08
  from the beginning that it wasn't at all about sobriety or
• 9:11
  abstinence or preachiness or saying, you know, we should all
• 9:14
  be drinking less alcohol or alcohol is bad.
• 9:16
  It wasn't about that at all. It was just about the moments,
• 9:20
  you know, the occasions in our day that really deserve a great
• 9:23
  beer. But you could make the case that
• 9:25
  the alcohol isn't necessary, right?
• 9:27
  It's just about the lifestyle. And it's about opening up that
• 9:31
  spectrum of beer that I've always, you know, kind of had
• 9:34
  fun navigating where where do I want to be on the spectrum?
• 9:37
  But that it just, it was like the more I was knocking that
• 9:41
  around, I was like, yeah, that end of the spectrum should
• 9:43
  exist. It shouldn't just stop at four.
• 9:45
  It should, it should go all the way down.
• 9:47
  And if you do that with great beer and a fun brand, good
• 9:49
  things are going to happen. And that was a that was my
• 9:52
  hunch. And and so, you know, it took
• 9:55
  the better part of 4 1/2 years to get from that idea to the
• 9:58
  starting line because, you know, the I was just convinced like
• 10:03
  none of this was going to be real.
• 10:05
  If, you know, the world didn't need a slightly better O'doul,
• 10:08
  this had to be great beer on its own.
• 10:11
  And and that's, you know, that's where Jeremy enters the equation
• 10:15
  because, you know, I certainly didn't possess the chops to
• 10:20
  actually do that. But but Jeremy very much does.
• 10:25
  And he, you know, you guys are teasing the beers right now.
• 10:28
  I think, you know, to Fast forward where we are today and
• 10:33
  as a category, I get really excited about, you know, as far
• 10:37
  as any beers come, I still think we're in the very, very early
• 10:41
  innings of this whole thing. And we can get into why, but
• 10:44
  it's it's pretty interesting to see just how far this has come
• 10:50
  from the O Duels and from the the NA beer of the last 90
• 10:57
  years. It couldn't be more different.
• 10:59
  Yeah, it's a really relevant point, a lot of points really of
• 11:02
  you want beer, you want even NA, you want it to taste good,
• 11:06
  right? The product, the product is bad,
• 11:09
  People aren't going to buy into it.
• 11:11
  About two years ago when we really during the podcast, we
• 11:15
  started hearing so much about things are shifting right and we
• 11:21
  would talk to a lot of brewery owners about they were adding
• 11:24
  seltzers and ciders. So I did like 2 years ago, I did
• 11:27
  this thing during the summer on the podcast.
• 11:30
  I'm going to try all these seltzers and I'm going to try
• 11:33
  all these ciders. Now.
• 11:34
  There were a couple of ciders I liked.
• 11:36
  I could not find any seltzers out there that I would really
• 11:40
  want to drink again. Just was not my thing.
• 11:43
  And so I was really excited when when Best Day came to us, you
• 11:47
  all came to us and sent us his beer and I started drinking it
• 11:50
  and I'm like, yes, absolutely it.
• 11:53
  The taste is there for each one of them.
• 11:55
  And I these are ones, as you kind of said in the beginning,
• 11:59
  you want to sit and drink. Yeah, well, a lot of hard work,
• 12:03
  blood, sweat and tears went into that.
• 12:06
  And I know we're going to get into it in a little bit, but
• 12:10
  yeah, there's just, there's no question, right, That, you know,
• 12:13
  and you, you can see it in the data, right?
• 12:15
  Like .3% of total beer volume has been relegated to NA beer
• 12:20
  forever. It's been totally stagnant.
• 12:22
  There has been no innovation. There's been no intentionality
• 12:26
  or care or, you know, any, any sort of real calories devoted to
• 12:32
  making great beer. So nothing's happened there.
• 12:35
  But you know, you put some love into that, right?
• 12:38
  And you come at it with some passion and, you know, a, a real
• 12:43
  point of view about what this should be.
• 12:45
  And lo and behold, you know, people are going to figure out
• 12:48
  how it fits in middle life. And for everyone, it's
• 12:50
  different. And that's kind of the cool
• 12:51
  thing that we get to see. You know, people fit it in their
• 12:53
  day in all sorts of different shapes, ways and forms.
• 12:56
  But yeah, it's just, you know, it.
• 12:59
  It comes down to the quality of the beer without question.
• 13:02
  During that 4 1/2 years and Jeremy, maybe this is where you
• 13:05
  you come in, was part of that process.
• 13:07
  How are we going to do it? How are we going to brew this,
• 13:11
  this the science part of the making an NA beer as in do we
• 13:15
  strip the alcohol? Do we make it without the
• 13:17
  alcohol to start with? Are there different processes
• 13:20
  and and and with that part of the process and getting started?
• 13:23
  So from 2016 to 2021, I wasn't around.
• 13:27
  So when Tate kicked it off in 2021, he was a Wildman with a
• 13:32
  station wagon and working some some some early innovation on
• 13:39
  his own. That's where, you know, Colson
• 13:41
  West Coast came from. They were before my time tweaked
• 13:45
  them since, Yeah, I mean, Tate was working through all kinds
• 13:48
  of, you know, kitchens to baby breweries to all kinds of stuff
• 13:52
  that brought us along the way. So he can, he could speak more
• 13:54
  to the the details as far as he wants to go down that learning
• 13:57
  curve. But, you know, we're still
• 13:59
  learning. So it, it, it definitely started
• 14:02
  very small and it's it's gone. But Jeremy, you went.
• 14:05
  You came from where you a place number of places where you were
• 14:09
  brewing beer for years. Now you're brewing NA.
• 14:12
  How is it? How much has that been a
• 14:14
  learning curve for you over the years?
• 14:16
  The the cool thing about NA was I wanted to do it for a bit and
• 14:21
  you talked about trying all those seltzers and ciders out.
• 14:24
  The equipment that we use now is actually commonly used in a
• 14:27
  certain form to Polish the base alcohol that's in a lot of hard
• 14:32
  seltzers. And so when I worked with Oscar
• 14:37
  Blues and a whole group of breweries back in the day, one
• 14:40
  of the pieces of equipment that we were investing in was for
• 14:42
  hard seltzer. And so if you put a beer
• 14:46
  through, you know that machine, you get alcohol out one side and
• 14:51
  you get non alcoholic remnants on the other side.
• 14:54
  So if you put a beer into it, you get non alcoholic beer out
• 14:56
  of it. So, and you'll see nowadays in
• 15:00
  the last year they, they launched finally a a non elk
• 15:04
  Oscar Blues beer. You, you know, using that
• 15:07
  equipment. But for the longest time it was
• 15:08
  all for seltzer. And now they're they're
• 15:11
  partnered up with monster. So they make a lot of the
• 15:14
  monster seltzer stuff still. But I, I started learning that,
• 15:18
  you know, we can do this and also saw the light in early 2020
• 15:23
  that NA beer has a space and you know, this, this equipment does
• 15:29
  an amazing job essentially neutralizing the flavors of
• 15:33
  seltzer bases so that when you add the flavor, all those fruit
• 15:37
  flavors in that come through really brightly.
• 15:39
  So that's, that's the system that I've been working off of.
• 15:42
  And then after I left that group, I've been working with
• 15:47
  Tate to actually help source cans and things like that with
• 15:52
  one. One of the things I love doing
• 15:54
  is being part of a large brewery was helping small breweries,
• 15:59
  things like crawler cans. We used to sell crawler cans to
• 16:01
  everybody. We buy the truckload and sell
• 16:02
  them, you know, a cup of sugar kind of thing.
• 16:04
  So Tate came and was like, hey, I'm getting killed on shrink
• 16:07
  sleeps, what can you do for me? These guys are cool.
• 16:10
  And then I, I jumped the fence and I went all NA and no looking
• 16:15
  back, no regrets. It's been fantastic on stop
• 16:18
  learning, which is my favorite thing is, you know, making
• 16:22
  mistakes is not fun, but learning is awesome.
• 16:25
  We've just had a great time evolving the process and
• 16:28
  continues to evolve. It's, it's been great.
• 16:31
  So that's, that's where I came from.
• 16:32
  It gave me a glimpse of NA and then I run into these guys that
• 16:36
  needed help on the packaging side and it's just evolved from
• 16:40
  there. Your website says you have a
• 16:41
  magic machine that removes the alcohol it is.
• 16:45
  Because you look at it, there's no sparks, there's no heat,
• 16:49
  there's no nothing. Nothing fancy happens.
• 16:51
  You watch beer go in and beer and come out one end and go in
• 16:56
  one end and then in the middle the alcohol falls out.
• 17:00
  And so it's it's a very high tech piece of machinery works.
• 17:06
  We work off of very a very tight kind of filtration like reverse
• 17:12
  osmosis where you have a very small pore size and alcohol
• 17:17
  happens to be very small. Water is small as well.
• 17:20
  So you get water and alcohol are pretty much the only thing that
• 17:24
  moves through that membrane and you retain everything else.
• 17:27
  So instead of trying to cause something to be distilled off
• 17:33
  you, you are able to retain all the beautiful esters and acids
• 17:37
  and proteins and color and everything in that beer through
• 17:41
  that process. And that's, that's really key,
• 17:43
  right? Because you know, we, we all
• 17:46
  over the years have tried a lot of NA beers that were
• 17:50
  underwhelming, right? And I typically, you know, for
• 17:53
  me as a beer drinker, you know, if I, if I was going to reach
• 17:56
  for an NA beer, like it was the, it was the sweetness, it was the
• 18:00
  kind of cooked off flavor or the worthiness of that beer where
• 18:04
  all of a sudden I'm doing something less than I want to be
• 18:07
  doing, right? The beer is less flavorful.
• 18:09
  It tastes like something else other than beer.
• 18:12
  It tastes like bad beer. And, and so that whole
• 18:14
  experience is something less. And I like that was not
• 18:19
  interesting. Like you, we're not solving any
• 18:21
  of the problems that we need to be solving if that was the case.
• 18:25
  And so you know what, what's what's really beautiful about
• 18:28
  this whole process that Jeremy's describing and the beers that
• 18:32
  that he's making is they have none of those flavors, right?
• 18:36
  They have none of those experiences that were typical of
• 18:42
  of of non alcoholic beer. And so first and foremost like
• 18:46
  it it we are making beer that tastes like beer and nothing
• 18:50
  else. And it, you know, it sounds very
• 18:53
  simple on the surface of it, but that's an extremely high bar in
• 18:58
  the world of NA beer and something that is fundamentally
• 19:01
  different than has ever existed. And we're even coming into the
• 19:05
  category, if you just think about the evolution from, you
• 19:08
  know, 20/16/2017 to where we are today.
• 19:12
  You know, the beers that we are putting out now are, are, are,
• 19:15
  are again, fundamentally different than, you know, the,
• 19:19
  the first wave of this kind of non alcoholic craft.
• 19:23
  And, and so again, you know, we come to this moment, we're like,
• 19:26
  man, this feels like on the one hand, we've been through, you
• 19:29
  know, it's taking an eternity to get here.
• 19:32
  But but at the, you know, on the other hand, you know, we we are
• 19:35
  just at the beginning of getting this out into the world in a
• 19:38
  meaningful way. Tate, how did those first
• 19:40
  conversations look when you had them when Jeremy was talking
• 19:44
  about you're in your station wagon and you had this beer and
• 19:48
  A, and you're going into various places and saying, hey, by the
• 19:51
  way, yeah. How did that all play out for
• 19:55
  you? You know, I, I think it comes
• 19:57
  down to like, you know, what, what I've believed from the
• 20:03
  beginning is that the, the way that we're approaching non
• 20:08
  alcoholic, and I alluded to it before, but like, you know, that
• 20:10
  this isn't about sobriety, that this is something totally
• 20:13
  different than, you know, than the world had seen, frankly,
• 20:17
  that that point of view. If, if we could execute on it,
• 20:23
  if we could do all the things that I believed in, it would be
• 20:27
  massive, right? We were never in this to be, you
• 20:31
  know, Sausalito, where I am, to be Sausalito's local non
• 20:34
  alcoholic craft beer. That was never the dream.
• 20:38
  I felt like we had a distinct point of view.
• 20:42
  And again, the hunch to take it all the way back to that fridge
• 20:45
  moment was that, you know, man, if we could crack this code,
• 20:48
  right, that this isn't about sobriety at all, right?
• 20:51
  This is about opening up more occasions to beer and that's the
• 20:55
  way people are going to come to non alcoholic beer.
• 20:57
  And if you, if you, if you look at where the, the reality of the
• 21:02
  category is, you know, I think just to put a pin in that for a
• 21:05
  second, the perception of non alcoholic beer is still one of,
• 21:09
  you know, lack of quality. And if is 1 of sobriety, because
• 21:14
  let's face it, we've got 90 years working against us.
• 21:16
  We understand that that's a challenge that we, we, you know,
• 21:18
  we embrace fully. But but the reality of we're non
• 21:22
  alcoholic beer now couldn't be different, couldn't be more
• 21:24
  different. So, you know, we know that
• 21:26
  something like 92% of the people that are drinking NA beers, 92%
• 21:31
  of them are still drinking, they're just drinking
• 21:34
  differently, right? And, and we also know that most
• 21:38
  of the volume that's coming into this category is coming from
• 21:42
  water and sparkling water and soda and in these these non beer
• 21:49
  occasions. And that is really music to our
• 21:55
  ears because our brand was born there, right?
• 21:58
  Our brand is perfectly aligned with the way that people are
• 22:02
  actually participating and drinking these beers.
• 22:06
  So, you know, that gets us really excited.
• 22:09
  But to come back to that moment, there was a whole lot of selling
• 22:12
  that that was actually going to happen.
• 22:13
  Yeah. And, and but you could also, you
• 22:16
  know, Yeah, you could, you could see it, right?
• 22:20
  You could see these like, you know, Wellness trends, right,
• 22:25
  that people are actually starting to care about what goes
• 22:27
  in the body in the form of food and and drink.
• 22:30
  And people are actually starting to, you know, you know, move
• 22:33
  their bodies in certain ways and exercise and track sleep and
• 22:37
  wear things that monitor heart rate variability and all this
• 22:41
  kind of stuff. And so you got to put all that
• 22:43
  stuff together and you can say, man, you know, do we think that
• 22:47
  all of America is going to go sober overnight?
• 22:50
  Absolutely not, right. Do we think that, you know, if
• 22:53
  we can make a great beer that, you know, people are are caring
• 22:56
  about, you know, how they drink and, you know, want a different
• 22:59
  option? Sure.
• 23:00
  Yeah. That was very plausible.
• 23:03
  But again, it came out to making a good beer.
• 23:06
  So there was definitely a leap of faith that Jeremy and
• 23:09
  everyone else, you know, who's on this ship had to take.
• 23:13
  But I think, you know, disruptive brands and disruptive
• 23:16
  categories, it's all about that leap of faith.
• 23:19
  Are you guys feeling the effects of craft beer in general or are
• 23:23
  you guys part of that solution that's helping craft beer and
• 23:26
  craft breweries? You know what I mean?
• 23:29
  Because that you're you are that maybe another option within a
• 23:31
  brewery or another place, you know, breweries are kind of
• 23:34
  hurting and craft beer is kind of hurting you guys.
• 23:36
  Are you guys on the opposite side of that you feel like?
• 23:38
  Well, you know, I, I, I think that for basically ever.
• 23:44
  And it didn't matter if we were talking to retailers or
• 23:48
  distributors or breweries, non alcoholic beer.
• 23:52
  Well, I mean, after we got laughed out of the room, it was
• 23:55
  thought of as a threat. Like, man, OK, that thing is
• 23:58
  growing. We didn't think it was going to
• 24:00
  grow. And it's a threat because those
• 24:02
  guys are here, you know, taking our lunch, right?
• 24:05
  They're, they're telling people that alcohol is bad.
• 24:07
  It's a 0 sum game and and as I alluded to, like that's just not
• 24:15
  the case, right? We are here to expand the pie
• 24:19
  and, and we do that by by showing up in more occasions,
• 24:25
  more moments throughout someone's day and throughout
• 24:28
  someone's week, right? If we can get them to drink more
• 24:31
  beer on a Monday to Thursday, if we can get them to drink more
• 24:34
  beer throughout a day because they're having a lunch beer and
• 24:38
  their crack, they feel totally comfortable cracking open a beer
• 24:41
  at work. We're doing our part because all
• 24:43
  of that is incremental to beer sales overall.
• 24:46
  And and so once people understand that and they're
• 24:49
  like, Oh my God, those guys are great.
• 24:50
  Like let's have them in because they're here kind of pulling,
• 24:53
  pulling on the oars in the same direction to here try to, you
• 24:56
  know, grow beer. And that's what we're doing.
• 24:58
  And, you know, specifically to craft, you know, we do a hell of
• 25:01
  a lot of business around the country at breweries, you know,
• 25:05
  because let's face it, like, you know, if you're going to a
• 25:08
  brewery with your girlfriend or your wife or your family, not
• 25:12
  everyone's going to be a drinker, right?
• 25:13
  And so if those people can come in and, you know, opt in to that
• 25:18
  social moment, to that beer experience, coming back to the
• 25:21
  top of the conversation, the thing that beer does so well is
• 25:24
  it brings people together. But, you know, if not everyone
• 25:27
  is drinking and those people that aren't drinking don't have
• 25:30
  an option, it's, it's a hard, it's the creates a lot of
• 25:34
  friction in order to get them to, to the brewery.
• 25:36
  You know, them having a best day or two on the menu makes that
• 25:40
  whole thing, you know, just like lubricates that whole thing.
• 25:43
  And people can congregate and people can come to breweries.
• 25:46
  And so, you know, instead of a brewery, instead of a craft
• 25:49
  brewery saying we're going to go out on our own and, you know,
• 25:52
  endeavour to make a great beer. And and then they realize pretty
• 25:55
  quickly, it's really easy to make a shitty non alcoholic beer
• 25:59
  and it is very hard to make a great one.
• 26:01
  And they're like, we're going to stay in our lane.
• 26:02
  We're going to make great beers ourselves, but we're going to
• 26:04
  have you guys for the NA option. And we don't threaten their
• 26:07
  business. We complement their business.
• 26:09
  Yeah, and we've heard that's one of the.
• 26:11
  Biggest accolades, I would say as top accolades for us is when
• 26:15
  a quality full strength brewery carries our beer.
• 26:18
  That's like the biggest pat on the back is like people that
• 26:22
  drink beer and love drinking beer buy our beer so they have
• 26:25
  more beer offerings. It's, you know, they're not
• 26:28
  trying to fake it. They're just, and they, they,
• 26:30
  they do realize that, you know, it's, it's something they don't
• 26:33
  want to get into. There's beyond even making it
• 26:36
  taste good. There's NA, beer is a different
• 26:39
  critter because you took the alcohol out.
• 26:41
  So there's all kinds of other safeguards you have to be on top
• 26:44
  of. So that's kind of goes into the
• 26:47
  why the heck does something with less alcohol cost the same or
• 26:50
  more, you know? It's like.
• 26:52
  How come, how come having less takes more and and that's just a
• 26:56
  hidden truth behind it. It's unfortunate.
• 26:57
  We would love if it costs less to make, you know, but, but it,
• 27:02
  but, but it also, it also stands in those things that are back in
• 27:06
  that price also stand in the way of, of doing a good job on your
• 27:09
  own too. So it's awesome when we walk in
• 27:13
  the brewery because I mean, we meet up in so many places, go to
• 27:15
  so many markets. We always go into breweries to
• 27:18
  check them out. Love breweries And it's, it's
• 27:21
  there's, it's just the most fun, puts the biggest smile on my
• 27:24
  face to see our, our beer there and, and, and the staff's
• 27:28
  drinking it. Other people are drinking it.
• 27:29
  And yeah, it's not a, and in that instance, it's not as a
• 27:33
  sober thing. It's a, you know, so we can
• 27:35
  drink more beers thing. That's great.
• 27:37
  Absolutely. We've heard many Brewers
• 27:39
  themselves talking about that they drink it during the course
• 27:41
  of the day, right? Or, or, or a term that I really
• 27:45
  recently just heard and I think it was Dave Thibodeau that said
• 27:47
  it. Zebra striping.
• 27:49
  Yeah, because you got to have a cool name for it, right?
• 27:54
  Of course I was like, what is this cool thing?
• 27:56
  And it's like, you know, you have a, you have a maybe an
• 27:58
  alcohol beer and then you have a non alcohol beer and you go back
• 28:01
  and forth with it and you're pacing yourself through the
• 28:03
  course of the day. And I can also say I did this
• 28:05
  the other day to kind of experiment.
• 28:06
  I think it was maybe Saturday or Sunday.
• 28:08
  And at the end of it, I was like, I feel pretty good.
• 28:10
  I. Know I feel like OA 2 after
• 28:12
  after having this, I'm like I could, I could, I could hook
• 28:15
  onto that. I'm curious because you guys
• 28:16
  talked a little bit about this a few minutes ago, but I'd love to
• 28:19
  hear the response from you both. When, when was the aha moments
• 28:24
  for you guys with this when you're going, OK, we got
• 28:28
  something here. We're really starting to see
• 28:30
  things take off. Yeah, I guess my my bar for what
• 28:34
  qualifies as a great beer is definitely different than
• 28:37
  Jeremy's. But let's just say I cycled
• 28:40
  through a lot of not great beers.
• 28:42
  And then there was one, right. There was a moment where where,
• 28:47
  you know, and it was it was a country mile behind where we are
• 28:51
  today, but it was it was a proof that there was, you know, there
• 28:55
  was really a bear there like, Oh my God, OK, That's that's sure
• 28:59
  as hell is different than anything that I've tasted on the
• 29:01
  market. And it, and that was a real,
• 29:06
  that was a real eye opener for me, you know, because I was
• 29:08
  doing this nights and weekends and, you know, it was, it was,
• 29:16
  it was a very frustrating thing because I just don't have the
• 29:18
  background in understanding, you know, the, the brewing process
• 29:22
  to the extent that, you know, I could, I could crack that code.
• 29:25
  So it was a whole lot of trial and error.
• 29:29
  But yeah, there was, there is definitely one moment where I
• 29:31
  was like, damn, that was, that was different.
• 29:34
  And then of course, you know that that that only convinces
• 29:38
  you to quit your job and do it. And then you're like, Oh my God,
• 29:41
  now I'm selling cases of beer out of the back of my back of my
• 29:45
  car, which is a whole nother daunting task.
• 29:48
  But, you know, and then on that front, you know, once, once I
• 29:52
  had it and I was I was selling cases.
• 29:58
  There was just so much validation that was happening
• 30:00
  and points that really mattered to me, right there was the on
• 30:03
  Prem and, you know, restaurants and bars just being like, thank
• 30:07
  you. Like, of course we would take
• 30:09
  this in and and they really got behind it.
• 30:12
  And, you know, slowly but surely, you know, retailers got
• 30:17
  behind it too. Whole Foods, you know, here in
• 30:20
  California took a really early bet on us and that was amazing.
• 30:25
  And that was, you know, the local buyer here really given us
• 30:29
  a shot. And you know, if you, if you
• 30:31
  look at where Whole Foods is now, you know, almost 1/4 of
• 30:35
  their beer sales are non alcoholic.
• 30:38
  That's amazing, right? As nationally we're now 2%
• 30:42
  thereabouts, right? But again, it had been non
• 30:45
  alcoholic beer forever had been .3%.
• 30:48
  So to go from .3% as kind of a indicator on where things were
• 30:52
  to now in places like Whole Foods that have really gotten
• 30:55
  behind it in a meaningful way to be, you know, 1/4 thereabouts,
• 30:59
  It's just a, it's just an incredible, I mean, it's a
• 31:02
  tectonic shift at consumer behavior.
• 31:05
  On the cans, and I think it's on all of them, it says contains
• 31:09
  less than .5% ABV by volume. Is that the kind of the US
• 31:14
  standard? Anything under .5% is kind of
• 31:16
  considered in a. So non alcoholic has to be below
• 31:20
  .5%, alcohol free has to be below .03%.
• 31:26
  So as close to 0.00 as you can get.
• 31:30
  So you'll see some beers say 0 and they are, but they're also
• 31:33
  point something. They don't mention that.
• 31:35
  And then you'll look at Heineken and it says 0.0 and that's it.
• 31:39
  That's it. An alcohol free kind of
• 31:41
  standard. Our beers are 0 point and we
• 31:46
  don't keep it right at .5 because we wouldn't want to be
• 31:50
  wrong. So it's 0.4 something we have a,
• 31:54
  you know, we have a specific target that's in there you want
• 31:58
  to keep as I mean, alcohol does a lot for beer.
• 32:01
  So taking alcohol out of beer requires a lot of compensation
• 32:05
  in the profile of the beer. The body of the beer is made-up
• 32:08
  in many ways by significantly by the alcohol.
• 32:12
  Alcohol contributes a lot to mouthfeel and body.
• 32:15
  And you think it's just a solvent that gets you drunk Now
• 32:18
  it it, it does a lot in those beers.
• 32:20
  So we don't, if we don't have to, we don't take it all the way
• 32:25
  down to to full 0. Let that little bit helpful.
• 32:29
  It really does play an important role.
• 32:31
  Nice. I do know that some foods
• 32:34
  naturally can have alcohol in them, and I think it's kind of
• 32:37
  under that range to in that range, right?
• 32:39
  Under 8.5%, like your bananas or OJ or bread or.
• 32:43
  Something you're hitting them right on the head.
• 32:45
  Some of the tape mentioned kombucha before can have, you
• 32:49
  know, naturally occurring. Sometimes it accidentally has
• 32:51
  way too much. The yeah, fruits especially have
• 32:54
  a way of, of generating a little bit of alcohol here and there.
• 32:58
  So orange juice is a very, very common culprit.
• 33:01
  I think I remember seeing some kind of video on YouTube but
• 33:04
  it's probably in Africa and some some animals will will go up to
• 33:07
  this tree which got this ripened fruit on it and they get drunk
• 33:11
  off of it because it's ferment. Juice out you you leave your
• 33:16
  orange juice out you will get more than NA level alcohol out
• 33:19
  of it. You might have trouble seeing,
• 33:22
  but it it will it will produce some some some serious piece of
• 33:26
  alcohols. You got elephants?
• 33:30
  Might be. Better off putting it in your
• 33:32
  gas tank, but it it it, it will happen.
• 33:35
  I was gonna I had it. It's kind of a joke in the
• 33:37
  question, one of the questions and it was going to be, hey, you
• 33:39
  take the alcohol out. Where does the alcohol go?
• 33:41
  But I think there's actually some science.
• 33:43
  Yeah, like you just said, said something about like ventilation
• 33:45
  or something, right. Like is there, is there a
• 33:47
  process to is it or just steam off?
• 33:49
  And that has to go somewhere, doesn't it?
• 33:50
  No, it it doesn't. So it doesn't.
• 33:52
  So if you use distillation, which like Heineken 0, they
• 33:56
  actually distill it, it goes through heat process, process.
• 33:59
  So it goes up just like, you know, making whiskey, you're,
• 34:03
  you're volatilizing the alcohol. We don't do any of that heat
• 34:05
  treatment to the beer because it can degrade the beer
• 34:09
  caramelizes, it denatures it. So what we do, nothing goes
• 34:14
  above the fermentation temperature.
• 34:16
  So we are taking out alcohol and water, putting, putting water
• 34:21
  back in and leaving the alcohol out.
• 34:24
  What happens with the alcohol that comes off?
• 34:27
  It can be used for for many purposes.
• 34:29
  It can go into a classic waste stream and go right into like a
• 34:32
  bio digester where like yeast and trube and all the things
• 34:37
  from the brewery outflows go and they get, you know, consumed.
• 34:41
  It can be used as processed water.
• 34:44
  You can, you know, it's, it's got, but it it doesn't come out
• 34:48
  high strength. It's not like 30% ABV kind of
• 34:52
  stuff. You're actually passing the beer
• 34:55
  through a couple of times. So it actually dilutes over time
• 34:58
  and you're, you're playing a game with the the water table
• 35:01
  there. But it can go on other products
• 35:03
  too. You can't fortify beer, like you
• 35:06
  can't add alcohol to beer, but you can use with alcohol in it
• 35:10
  and other processes throughout the brewery.
• 35:12
  So if you manage it in other ways, you can capture the
• 35:16
  beginning alcohol and it would be high percentage and you could
• 35:19
  make something like a hard seltzer out of it.
• 35:21
  I believe that's been done, but we don't do it.
• 35:24
  But yeah, there's all kinds of uses for it without having to
• 35:27
  just, you know, have a a waste stream as the as the guaranteed
• 35:31
  route of it. It can be so we can't walk in
• 35:33
  and get by. Like a bucket of alcohol that
• 35:36
  you haven't used. I mean some, some facilities.
• 35:39
  Will distill the the water and alcohol that comes out like you
• 35:42
  can send it to ethanol plants and they will distill it down
• 35:45
  and take take the the ethanol out of it.
• 35:48
  It it totally can be done. It just, you know, depends on
• 35:51
  the facility. Yeah, something is for it, Yeah.
• 35:55
  Something else I, I learned recently and and I was curious
• 35:59
  when I talked to you guys was there are yeast strains now that
• 36:03
  produce very little if if not any alcohol in them.
• 36:07
  Is that something you guys are kind of considering and looking
• 36:09
  at have used in conjunction with your processor?
• 36:12
  Yeah, it's it's one. Thing we knew when we invested
• 36:15
  in the equipment that we have is that the technology around non
• 36:19
  alcoholic beer, as it continues to gain in popularity, the
• 36:22
  technology would evolve rapidly and there will be all kinds of
• 36:26
  options along the way. So we keep we play around with
• 36:29
  that stuff all the time. It's been around for a while.
• 36:32
  More and more strains are coming out that people are using for
• 36:35
  different styles of beers and things like that.
• 36:37
  There's some award-winning beers made by that method.
• 36:39
  There's other things that go into those products to to get
• 36:42
  them all the way there. But the yeasts that will make,
• 36:46
  you know, low percentages of alcohol are there.
• 36:48
  They don't match the flavor profile that we're after it.
• 36:53
  They kind of serve a purpose to not create alcohol where we, our
• 36:58
  purpose is to make beer and then figure out how to make it not
• 37:01
  have alcohol in it. So it's a different approach
• 37:04
  ones using beer ingredients and making something not make
• 37:07
  alcohol. We're making beer and taking the
• 37:10
  alcohol out and, and it really does no matter what you, no
• 37:14
  matter what yeast you try not fermenting things all the way
• 37:17
  out changes what's left, you know, changes or doesn't change
• 37:21
  what's left behind. So there's a noticeable
• 37:24
  difference in, in many instances, there's so many
• 37:26
  different kinds of beers, though, that some of them are
• 37:30
  pretty OK, some of them are pretty good.
• 37:32
  And others, you're like, this one's not really beery, you
• 37:36
  know, and we love, we love how our process, every beer is
• 37:41
  beery. There's a very common thing
• 37:43
  people say your beer is really beery.
• 37:46
  Wow. Because, and, and the reason
• 37:48
  people say that to us is because they've had other stuff and
• 37:51
  it's, and it, they might like it, but it's, it just doesn't
• 37:55
  hit that beery note. And we're, we're after 100%
• 37:59
  Beery 100. Percent beery love that.
• 38:04
  That should be a T-shirt, but yeah, you're right, that but
• 38:07
  that yeast. Can impart flavors into the beer
• 38:10
  and especially, you know, specific styles you want it for
• 38:12
  the right style of beer so that that makes sense yeah like, I
• 38:16
  mean we we. Use true to style yeasts for our
• 38:19
  stuff like we make, you know, Belgian style white.
• 38:22
  We use a true whit yeast. We we wouldn't be able to do
• 38:25
  that. We would have, you know, if we,
• 38:27
  if we wanted to brew to under .5, we would have to use one of
• 38:31
  the, you know, standard NA strains that does not possess
• 38:35
  any of the phenols that typically come out of that whit
• 38:39
  yeast. So we, we use all, all authentic
• 38:42
  yeasts like our kolsh uses a kolsh yeast.
• 38:44
  We don't fake it with an ale yeast going cold or a lager
• 38:47
  yeast going high. But our, our pilsners are all
• 38:50
  Augustine or lager yeasts. We use, I mean, everything's
• 38:54
  genuine. We use all the American ales.
• 38:57
  When we do a whit, we use a whit yeast.
• 38:59
  Half of Eisen's use half of Eisen yeast.
• 39:01
  It's we are we are brewing full strength beers with all, you
• 39:05
  know, all non-GMO fantastic true beer ingredients and and and
• 39:11
  love the way the stuff comes out.
• 39:13
  Tate, you mentioned. Whole Foods being a part of, you
• 39:17
  know, you're growing and were they also a little instrumental
• 39:22
  in when you're growing? Hey, we, we want that.
• 39:25
  We want other options as well. Did they did they have any part
• 39:30
  of that of you wanting to expand into some of what your other
• 39:33
  beer options that you now have, you mean in terms of like?
• 39:36
  Our offering our our lineup of beer.
• 39:38
  Oh yeah, yeah, 100% yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:40
  We, we, yeah. They, they, they, we talk to
• 39:45
  them all the time and we've got a very good relationship with
• 39:48
  them and other retailers and, and distributors for that
• 39:51
  matter, but especially on the retail side because they're so
• 39:54
  connected to the consumer that you know, they, they, they.
• 39:57
  And to this day, you know, they, they have a we, we, we meet with
• 40:03
  them often. We listen to the feedback that
• 40:05
  they have. We listen to the the
• 40:07
  opportunities that they're seeing in the market and you
• 40:11
  know, it's a great partnership because they know that we'll
• 40:13
  we'll lean into that. Yeah, I would love to hear.
• 40:15
  I would and I'd. Love to hear a.
• 40:16
  Little bit more about some of the offerings that you do have
• 40:19
  and what feedback you've gotten even from people that like to
• 40:23
  drink those. And maybe they're drinking that
• 40:26
  style of beer and they say, hey, I'd like to have something NA on
• 40:29
  this child type of style. Jeremy, do you want to talk?
• 40:32
  Through the the lineup of beers, sure.
• 40:34
  So. The original 2 are the the Kolsh
• 40:38
  and the West Coast Kolsh is a just very approachable,
• 40:41
  flavorful but but crisp and refreshing beer that you
• 40:45
  mentioned. It's our up there as our most
• 40:49
  award-winning beer and in all the big, big competitions that
• 40:53
  matter to us. And then West Coast has been
• 40:58
  winning some great accolades this year as well.
• 41:00
  It's an all Cascade hoppy amber that hits right in the middle of
• 41:07
  we we get people that say I, I don't like Ipas to people that
• 41:11
  say I'm an IPA drinker and I love this stuff and that it
• 41:14
  seems to be quite a quite a it hits right in the middle.
• 41:18
  Nothing overly assertive, nothing too mundane that just
• 41:23
  you know, you get the hops. It's got a good backbone to it.
• 41:26
  And then hazy was the third beer that came out and that one was a
• 41:31
  great fun beer to make. Uses a lot of, you know,
• 41:35
  tropical and assertive hops. It uses Azaka, El Dorado and
• 41:43
  Mosaic in, in very healthy and unhealthy quantities throughout
• 41:48
  the process. So that's a, you know, that's a,
• 41:52
  a brew house Whirlpool dry hop, just pounds and pounds per
• 41:57
  barrel of, of hops. It's great that we create
• 42:00
  alcohol because alcohol helps in the extraction of hop hop oils
• 42:04
  and things get good, good transformation there.
• 42:08
  So we get really good genuine hop flavors and aromas through
• 42:12
  that. Hazy's my my favorite beer.
• 42:15
  Just it's just one of those ones.
• 42:17
  It's just tasty. I love the number one thing
• 42:19
  people are after in a in a product is flavor.
• 42:23
  The flavors vary, but the number one thing they want is flavor
• 42:26
  and that that beers super tasty. Our first seasonal that came out
• 42:31
  was Electrolyme. The the busy looking can you
• 42:33
  were holding up before this guy was, was our our first foray
• 42:38
  into doing a like a rotator or a seasonal program.
• 42:44
  We hadn't done any loggers yet. And we started kicking around
• 42:47
  the idea of rice lager, Mexican lager, this then the other
• 42:50
  thing. And I was like, you know, just
• 42:51
  one of those things that people really enjoy as a flavor.
• 42:54
  And I personally have have a great love for is lime.
• 42:59
  And I'm a tequila drinker at times and I just love tequila
• 43:03
  soda with a ton of lime in it. And that got to, you know, an
• 43:08
  homage to the old Corona with a lime in it.
• 43:10
  You know, we all we all know it well.
• 43:14
  And so we played around with a wonderful Mexican lager recipe
• 43:19
  and then started bringing in all kinds of different lime
• 43:22
  products. And we use a a few a pure lime
• 43:25
  puree and sea salt and just try to kiss it enough that you
• 43:30
  notice not enough to make it a lime drink.
• 43:33
  You know, keep it a beer and and keep it refreshing.
• 43:36
  And so that one that was my aha moment was after we released
• 43:41
  that beer, the doing all the development work on flavouring a
• 43:44
  beer and keeping it beer and then the reception by the public
• 43:49
  where we had no choice almost but to make it a full time beer.
• 43:53
  It was so well received. And just the just the people
• 43:57
  that didn't drink NA were so many.
• 44:00
  Like what do you mean this is NA Like they were just like to just
• 44:03
  blown away by it. And so that got us into it
• 44:05
  started winding up behind bar counters and stuff because you
• 44:08
  know, we don't do draft things and just create so much inroad
• 44:12
  for us. And it's just just a wonderful,
• 44:16
  wonderful beer and it's it's it's up.
• 44:19
  You know, just it's doing great this year.
• 44:21
  Every year it every year it just explodes around this time.
• 44:25
  So that's that's the four core. And then on top of that, we we
• 44:31
  brought Galaxy Ripple into full time at the beginning of this
• 44:35
  year. It was a seasonal as well.
• 44:37
  And we wanted to complement our two traditional IPA's that the
• 44:42
  West Coast and hazy and do something that really had a
• 44:46
  punch to it. It's tough to balance the
• 44:49
  bitterness in, in an, in an NA beer.
• 44:52
  You can have a lot of them and they're thin and the, the
• 44:55
  bitterness is really brash and harsh.
• 44:57
  So we worked really hard to have a lot of flavor in the backbone
• 44:59
  of it. And we're like, we're building
• 45:01
  an Imperial IPA here. And, and it really was we
• 45:04
  instead of a £3000 malt load into this weep load, the mash
• 45:08
  ton over 5000 lbs. I mean, it truly builds an
• 45:12
  Imperial IPA. And then it's Galaxy and
• 45:15
  Victoria's Secret hops all through it.
• 45:17
  And then that's our our first foray into using some of the
• 45:23
  some of the hot products that are coming out now that are very
• 45:25
  popular where instead of using like whole pellets or whole
• 45:29
  cones, there's specific hop oils that can be used at the end.
• 45:34
  So that use a little bit of Galaxy product that's gives that
• 45:39
  top note on there to help make sure that the aroma really comes
• 45:42
  through on that beer. And then the latest beer, which
• 45:48
  is our current seasonal is our light American Pilsner.
• 45:51
  It's called wild American. It's the this guy right here.
• 45:55
  It's our first beer with a gold lid, just, you know, hits on the
• 45:59
  red, white and blue and has that white can with a gold lid.
• 46:04
  Classy pilsner premium American pills look to it and and it
• 46:10
  drinks right up there with them. This one just happens to have
• 46:13
  less than 1/2 percent alcohol in it and only be 30 calories.
• 46:17
  Lot of work in again, paying attention to what good light
• 46:22
  American pilsners taste like and trying to work backwards because
• 46:26
  if you start with something that tastes great, you take the
• 46:29
  alcohol out of it. It tastes different a lot.
• 46:32
  A lot of good fun learning in this.
• 46:33
  It's loaded up with a lot of specialty malt and comes through
• 46:37
  with a great amount of flavor. It's just, you know, it's a
• 46:41
  challenge to to fight the wateriness as you build these
• 46:45
  beers. So you'll and, and went to
• 46:48
  combat that, you usually have to contribute to body, which is
• 46:51
  sugars, carbohydrates, calories. So there's a there's a very fine
• 46:55
  line into getting this. Pulling the alcohol out pulls
• 46:58
  calories out. So it does help, but it doesn't
• 47:00
  doesn't get you to zero. And if you get to 0, then then
• 47:03
  it's, you know, sex in a canoe, as they say.
• 47:06
  So it's so this is, this is the latest one.
• 47:12
  It's not a full time beer, but this is the one that's full time
• 47:15
  in our mix pack. So we now have three light
• 47:18
  styles, 3 classic styles with the Kolsch Electro Lime, which
• 47:22
  is a Mexican lime lager, and then light American pilsners in
• 47:26
  one mix pack. And then three IPA's are all
• 47:29
  nestled together in our newest 12 pack.
• 47:31
  So we'd have a second 12 pack, which is IPA variety that's just
• 47:35
  rolling out around the country. And we're coming up on 2 beers
• 47:38
  that I'll be drinking next week. One of them is an innovation
• 47:43
  that we had fun with making a mango IPA called Endless Mango.
• 47:47
  And the second one, as you talk about some of our retailers and
• 47:51
  just feedback from people affecting what we do, we have a
• 47:55
  council of distributors of retailers that that, you know,
• 48:01
  send us information that we distill down and help make
• 48:04
  moving forward decisions. And one of them that came out of
• 48:07
  that process was and we're making an Oktoberfest.
• 48:10
  So we also have an Oktoberfest that's coming out.
• 48:13
  So you know, true Marzin style beer, brew it in March, let it
• 48:17
  let it lay smooth and crisp, but that just faint little nuttiness
• 48:21
  to it just fantastic beer. So that'll start landing in just
• 48:25
  in the retailers at the late part of July to, to sell in, you
• 48:31
  know, starting in August, it'll be on shelf in the, in the true.
• 48:34
  What the heck's going on? Why is the Oktoberfest at the
• 48:37
  store in August? It's, it's, it's so it's gone in
• 48:42
  October. It's, you know, it's a talking
• 48:44
  point with us all the. Time we're talking about
• 48:47
  Oktoberfest, we love it. So we'll we'll definitely be
• 48:50
  looking forward to getting that. I know we mentioned Tate in the
• 48:53
  beginning of the the podcast that, you know, we're kicking
• 48:56
  off summer. We thought this would be perfect
• 48:58
  because it sounds like the sales for you guys in the summertime
• 49:02
  really go up. Well, yeah, I mean it's.
• 49:04
  It's beer drinking season for sure.
• 49:07
  And and so we, we are a part of that wave and I think we are
• 49:13
  more and more relevant as a part of that wave in in people's, you
• 49:17
  know, in people's summer. And you know, again, it's like,
• 49:20
  I, I think about this actually not as you know, well, are more
• 49:27
  people drinking less in the summer?
• 49:29
  And like, does this mean, you know, more people overall are
• 49:31
  drinking less all the time? I don't get bogged down in that.
• 49:34
  What what I think is truly happening here is more people
• 49:38
  are finding more time in their day for a beer and that beer
• 49:42
  fits because it's non alcoholic, right.
• 49:44
  So if you think about the summer, you know, you're you're
• 49:48
  day drinking all the time. There, there endless
• 49:50
  opportunities for drinking a beer during the day, whether
• 49:52
  you're talking about golf, whether you're talking about in
• 49:54
  a chair, whether you're talking about being out on a boat.
• 49:58
  You know, these are all beer drinking occasions.
• 50:00
  And if you look at those coolers now, right, there's just non
• 50:03
  alcoholic beer in the coolers. And often times it'll be the
• 50:07
  most drunk beer because you could shrink a lot of them, as
• 50:10
  we discussed, they're not going to get you drunk.
• 50:12
  And so, you know, called deepest striping, called whatever you
• 50:15
  will. But, but, but, but people are
• 50:17
  just have it. They're, they're, they're
• 50:19
  bringing this into their normal repertoire and they're finding
• 50:22
  more time for drinking, drinking best days throughout their day.
• 50:26
  And so, you know, we see that that that hit in the beginning
• 50:31
  of the year, which is becoming more and more muted, which we
• 50:34
  all know is dry January. It's still very much a thing.
• 50:38
  But the interesting thing is like, whereas dry January, you
• 50:42
  know, since 2018 or so was all about, can you do 30 days, 31
• 50:47
  days sober? And that was it right Then the
• 50:49
  conversation was over and it was like, OK, back to normal
• 50:52
  drinking habits. Now it's 12, 12 months out of
• 50:55
  the year, right? And now it's, you know, summer
• 50:57
  because, because it is so occasion based, definitely
• 50:59
  peaks. But the, the, the, the, the
• 51:03
  important thing there is that this is not a one and done.
• 51:06
  You know, as you as you look at the the way that the year
• 51:09
  unfolds, it's a 12 month out of the year, 7 day a week.
• 51:13
  Just great opportunity for drinking more beer.
• 51:16
  But how many times though during?
• 51:17
  Dry dry dry that dry. January.
• 51:21
  Are you sure there isn't alcohol in your?
• 51:23
  Beer, Steve. No, you have 10.
• 51:26
  Of them, it's like having one full strength.
• 51:27
  So I think you know how many times during.
• 51:30
  Dry January Do you hear people say I have not had your NA?
• 51:36
  Now I'm hooked all the time. Dry January Yeah, yeah, all the
• 51:39
  time, all the time. And that's the.
• 51:41
  Key right? That's the moment where you know
• 51:44
  it it you you could be a skeptic, you could be a hater on
• 51:49
  non alcoholic beer, right? You're going to that one moment
• 51:52
  that you try is is everything, Because if you have a really
• 51:55
  terrible beer, it's like, see, I told you this is like this back
• 51:59
  to the days of o'doules. No one's going to drink it and.
• 52:03
  Whereas you know if you if. You crack open a, a Galaxy, all
• 52:06
  you have to do is smell it to be like, Oh my God, that is totally
• 52:09
  different. You know, and, and, and you have
• 52:11
  any one of our lineup of beers and you're going to be convinced
• 52:15
  that like, oh, and then, and then you could just see it,
• 52:18
  right? We, I don't, I don't know what
• 52:20
  the swearing policy is on this podcast, but but we have, you
• 52:24
  know, we literally call it the Oh fuck moment.
• 52:26
  And and you know, we have sampled hundreds of thousands of
• 52:30
  beers at this point. And and you know, that
• 52:33
  interaction is so prevalent that it has its own name, the oh fuck
• 52:38
  moment. And it's when someone cracks
• 52:39
  open that beer and they taste it and they're just like, oh fuck,
• 52:42
  that's different. And then, you know, the beauty
• 52:45
  is like, then it's on them. Then they're because immediately
• 52:48
  they'll tell you like, Oh my God, I can have that my Tuesday
• 52:51
  night, right? I got, you know, a guy's poker
• 52:55
  night or whatever. And you know, it's been really
• 52:57
  hard for me to go there because I want to wake up on Wednesday
• 53:00
  and feel good and we end up drinking a whole bunch or what,
• 53:02
  whatever it is. I'm just making up this this
• 53:04
  situation. But but it's just an unlock for
• 53:07
  them to be like, now I can go, that's great and I'll share them
• 53:10
  and then they share them and everyone else has that same
• 53:12
  experience. And then sure enough, like
• 53:15
  that's how these things spread, right?
• 53:17
  But it it spreads with that first sip because it just, it
• 53:21
  just has to be good. We had on early on.
• 53:24
  We. Had a local place called Honey
• 53:25
  Tree Meatery on on the podcast and their local meatery here in
• 53:29
  Nashville and we had them on and we talked about that Bud Light
• 53:33
  commercial. You guys probably remember from
• 53:34
  a few years ago where the guy, you know, the king, the guy
• 53:37
  walks up to the king and he goes working on this really cool me
• 53:40
  lately and he drops him through the floor because he was talking
• 53:43
  about me. Anyway, I think there was a
• 53:45
  misconception about me. We learned when we kind of the
• 53:48
  same thing. We had the me, we went there.
• 53:50
  We realize this, this stuff is amazing.
• 53:52
  It was awesome. We might have bought into that
• 53:55
  misconception early on. This might be that same thing.
• 53:57
  There's a misconception going in, but then when you have it
• 53:59
  and you realize you're like, holy shit, this stuff is really
• 54:01
  good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 54:03
  And it's super powerful. When you do the the whole 180
• 54:06
  experience, because then you take a hater and you make them
• 54:08
  into a advocate, an evangelist. Yeah, totally.
• 54:12
  I know. I know we got to let you go.
• 54:14
  We got a bunch of this. Can we talk real quick about
• 54:16
  your maybe some of your awards? We're one.
• 54:18
  We're getting close to an hour. Is that OK?
• 54:19
  We bring up the awards. Yeah.
• 54:21
  Gladly. OK.
• 54:22
  Yeah, OK. I'm just looking at time here.
• 54:23
  I didn't want to. Keep you guys 1 sitting right
• 54:25
  above Jeremy's head. OK.
• 54:29
  Well, you. Guys, you guys have won.
• 54:30
  Get there. You guys have won.
• 54:33
  A bunch of awards. I got a whole list of them here.
• 54:34
  But Jeremy, there's one right behind you.
• 54:36
  It looks like GABF or is that World Cup GABF?
• 54:40
  Yeah, I got 1. Of those who's.
• 54:43
  Who's GABF? OK.
• 54:45
  Yeah. Last year, GABF.
• 54:47
  World Beer Cup? Oh yes, there you go.
• 54:51
  Best of Craft Beer Awards. In US beer open, like those are
• 54:55
  those are the four that, you know, we really like to put our
• 54:58
  best foot forward in. And and these beers are, you
• 55:03
  know, these beers are often times like right from the
• 55:07
  market. I mean, I live in Fort Collins
• 55:08
  and these beers that doesn't always work out to go to the go
• 55:12
  to the brewery and taste, you know, 1212 batches in a row.
• 55:16
  So this this stuff is not, you know, in any way tweaked for
• 55:21
  judging. It's, you know, retail
• 55:24
  packaging, just great beers and just soup.
• 55:28
  I mean super proud of them. Like the I mean that coach that
• 55:31
  one was, you know, was 3 month old Kolsh, just Kolsh, you know,
• 55:36
  do a good job, you know, all the way through.
• 55:39
  I mean every, every, every touch point throughout making that
• 55:42
  beer all the way through canning it and putting it in a carton
• 55:45
  and then the treatment all the way to the retailer into your
• 55:47
  house, you know, is an opportunity to ruin something
• 55:50
  and heats the enemy, oxygen's the enemy.
• 55:53
  So just, you know, great job done preserving that product and
• 55:59
  putting it in that little 12 ounce time capsule.
• 56:01
  And and then, you know, people from around the world judging it
• 56:05
  and and telling us that we did a great job.
• 56:08
  You know, the we got a bronze, you know, so we did get third,
• 56:12
  but but that was we were the only American brewery to get,
• 56:15
  you know, for the classic NA style.
• 56:18
  The other ones were in in China and like Slovenia or something.
• 56:22
  Wow, you know, it really was a world stage thing and so it's
• 56:26
  just really fun to enter those competitions a little bit of a
• 56:29
  nail biter sometimes confusing when, when you don't win
• 56:33
  back-to-back and things like that.
• 56:34
  Sometimes you win back-to-back and it feels great.
• 56:36
  Like it's just cool. I, I, I really enjoy the
• 56:39
  competitive side of it because you learn a lot.
• 56:42
  We get a lot of notes back, lot of great feedback and it's
• 56:45
  interesting to see how you know, 3 professionals sitting side by
• 56:49
  side can pull, you know, completely polarizing things out
• 56:53
  of out of products. So it's it's it's it's fun and
• 56:57
  rarely disheartening. You guys have actually won some
• 57:01
  awards for overall. Business too, and you could
• 57:03
  maybe talk about them a little bit like 2025 Brewbound Rising
• 57:06
  *2024 Best of Craft Beer Awards, Midsize Brewery of the Year gold
• 57:11
  Medalist, talk about some. I mean, that's great for the
• 57:13
  overall business too. Yeah, it it is and.
• 57:16
  You know, I it's, it's always feels good to get recognition,
• 57:22
  but you know, again, like we, we've just, we've had a pretty,
• 57:25
  pretty crazy high ambition with this whole thing from the get
• 57:28
  go. And you know, as we as we scale
• 57:33
  that mountaintop, I think it's it's, it is nice to get get
• 57:37
  noticed. And I think, you know, part part
• 57:40
  of that is, is the appreciation that, you know, these these
• 57:44
  things like building something like this sure as hell ain't
• 57:47
  easy, right? And, and there, there's, there's
• 57:51
  a lot of, it's a roller coaster and there's ups and downs and
• 57:54
  there's constant challenges and problems to solve and, you know,
• 57:57
  gaining distribution in 48 states, you know, coming from
• 58:04
  what started in the back of my car is a, you know, it's a, it's
• 58:08
  a monumental kind of push. And, you know, we've been really
• 58:15
  blessed, or I've been speaking selfishly, very blessed to have,
• 58:19
  you know, a team of just incredible people that are all
• 58:24
  super motivated by, by the, the task that we're, we're trying to
• 58:28
  achieve here. And you know, Jeremy is, is at
• 58:31
  the top of that list. And you know, he's responsible
• 58:34
  for the great beer that is in that 12 ounce time capsule.
• 58:38
  But you know, it's, it's, it's, we can make really great beer
• 58:43
  and if it goes nowhere, it, it doesn't do the world much of AA
• 58:48
  benefit, right? We, it, it's, we make great beer
• 58:51
  and then we've got an incredible team that gets it out in the
• 58:54
  world. And that's an extremely
• 58:56
  complicated ball of yarn. So yeah, it is nice to get
• 59:03
  noticed in that whole endeavour. Yeah, yeah.
• 59:06
  It takes a lot of work to get the.
• 59:07
  Beer in people's hands it's, you know, but people say how they
• 59:11
  love our branding and they love the liquid and all that and you
• 59:14
  know, it's, it's you got to get it passed all the way into the
• 59:17
  hand and then, yeah, that down in their belly and, you know,
• 59:21
  it's. So it takes a lot a lot of
• 59:23
  people working behind the scenes.
• 59:25
  We've got a lot of, we've got a lot of people working directly
• 59:28
  for best day out out in the field and a lot of hard work,
• 59:33
  you know, making sure the packaging makes them look good.
• 59:36
  And it's, it's just non-stop hard work.
• 59:38
  Every day there's a new challenge, which is just another
• 59:42
  great way to to learn and improve.
• 59:44
  And we've got awesome people on top of it and just really,
• 59:49
  really happy to get to do what we do.
• 59:51
  Very cool. Your your websites.
• 59:52
  Got a beer? Finder on it too so I think you
• 59:54
  put your zip code to your city or something and you can find
• 59:56
  we've done it there's plenty around here we can get it at you
• 1:00:00
  can get it yeah yeah there's better you can also order it
• 1:00:03
  online too you. Know that's the other thing in
• 1:00:06
  30. Eight of the states in the US,
• 1:00:08
  you can get it delivered right to your home.
• 1:00:10
  You can get it from Amazon, you can get it from us.
• 1:00:12
  It's we've got a network set up to try and get this beer to
• 1:00:15
  everybody who wants it. So we do a lot of events and
• 1:00:18
  people get to try best day beer and they're like, where can I
• 1:00:20
  get it? And they might not live in the
• 1:00:22
  most convenient, you know, metro radius.
• 1:00:25
  And it's like, we'll we'll we'll bring it with your toothpaste,
• 1:00:29
  you know, on the Amazon and, you know, you DoorDash it Instacart.
• 1:00:34
  Like there's just great access our stuff even better access
• 1:00:37
  than full strength beer, which is, you know, a little bit of an
• 1:00:40
  accolade for us. But yeah, we've got great
• 1:00:43
  access. The beers fresh.
• 1:00:45
  Yeah, it's it's a it's a whole other side of the world that I
• 1:00:48
  get to help help coordinate and make sure that people can can
• 1:00:51
  get good fresh beer. But beer finders great goes down
• 1:00:54
  to the store level, goes down to the flavor level.
• 1:00:57
  You put in whatever you want, whether you want to go get it
• 1:00:59
  with dinner or you want to go buy it from a from a store.
• 1:01:02
  It it the beer Finder works works quite well.
• 1:01:05
  Very, very accurate. Well, Scott and I think alike.
• 1:01:07
  Because as we all been talking, I was on your page and there is
• 1:01:13
  there's one within 6.2 miles of my house and I know where
• 1:01:16
  exactly it is to go now and get bad days, right?
• 1:01:22
  Something funny Steve told me. And I didn't.
• 1:01:24
  As we kind of preparing for this and before we got the beer, he
• 1:01:27
  goes, Steve goes, you've had some best day.
• 1:01:30
  And he had looked at my own tap. I'd had three.
• 1:01:32
  We had gone to a beer fest. I don't know.
• 1:01:34
  Was it 2025 or 2024 you guys were there?
• 1:01:38
  I don't cut by. Apparently I had three of your
• 1:01:39
  beers there at one of the beer fest here locally, so I thought
• 1:01:42
  that was cool. So guys, we don't want to keep
• 1:01:44
  you forever. And then we said an hour.
• 1:01:46
  We went past that a little bit. Anything we didn't touch on you
• 1:01:49
  guys want to talk about? No, it's been really.
• 1:01:51
  Fun, Yeah, thank you guys for having us on.
• 1:01:54
  Really just really appreciate the.
• 1:01:57
  The opportunity to, you know, speak about what we're doing and
• 1:02:00
  get, get, get people in the know of, of what really is going on
• 1:02:04
  with this NA stuff. You know, there's lots of non
• 1:02:06
  alcoholic beverages and people drink non alcoholic stuff, but
• 1:02:11
  it doesn't mean beer, you know, I mean the soda and the water
• 1:02:15
  are are NA like there's a lot of it, you know, NA stuff.
• 1:02:20
  We make NA beer. And what's so special about it?
• 1:02:22
  Well, it's a a big process, and if and if you love the way beer
• 1:02:26
  tastes, we we do that process for you.
• 1:02:29
  Yeah, we appreciate you've turned us on to it.
• 1:02:32
  It's it's wonderful. It's brewery underground podcast
• 1:02:35
  recommended is best day brand so we recommend it to anyone.
• 1:02:39
  I've got 6 styles I may or may not share with any of my other
• 1:02:43
  friends. I'm just so worried I'm not
• 1:02:44
  going to share. They're going to go.
• 1:02:45
  Buy it now. That's right.
• 1:02:48
  But we we totally recommend. It thank you very much for
• 1:02:50
  joining us Yeah, thanks guys take care yeah, I just.
• 1:02:53
  Want to add something real quick too I.
• 1:02:54
  Just wanted to say thank you and I know as you said, it's hard
• 1:02:58
  work, but it's really cool to see a success story and you guys
• 1:03:02
  have really taken off and hopefully we'll have you back on
• 1:03:05
  again sometime. Let's do it anytime.
• 1:03:07
  Thanks. Guys for the underground.
• 1:03:08
  Podcast. Cheers, cheers.