Latest / Clean Water Conversations / Craft Beer, Clean Water, and Lancaster Water Week: Pour Man's Brewing

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Craft Beer, Clean Water, and Lancaster Water Week: Pour Man's Brewing · Clean Water Conversations

0:00
SPEAKER_02: Clean Water Conversations is sponsored by Chesapeake Conservancy, working to conserve and restore the natural and cultural resources of the Chesapeake Bay watershed for the enjoyment and inspiration of this and future generations.
0:14
SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Chesapeake Conservancy, and now on to our show.
0:30
SPEAKER_02: Hello everyone, and welcome to Clean Water Conversations, the podcast where we have casual discussions about creating clean and clear water right here in Lancaster County.
0:39
SPEAKER_02: I'm Ken.
0:40
SPEAKER_04: Hey everybody.
0:41
SPEAKER_04: I'm Alison.
0:42
SPEAKER_02: Allison.
0:44
SPEAKER_02: Cheers.
0:45
SPEAKER_04: Cheers.
0:46
SPEAKER_02: We'll get back to that.
0:49
SPEAKER_04: Water week is upon us.
0:52
SPEAKER_02: It is.
0:53
SPEAKER_02: It is running June 6th through June 14th.
0:56
SPEAKER_02: This is the ninth year of it.
0:57
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
0:57
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
0:58
SPEAKER_02: And this is my second water week.
0:59
SPEAKER_02: I think we established last year it was my first.
1:02
SPEAKER_02: How many have you had now?
1:03
SPEAKER_04: Uh tw uh all of them.
1:08
SPEAKER_04: They're so fun.
1:09
SPEAKER_04: I'm not going to miss any.
1:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's true.
1:11
SPEAKER_02: There's a lot.
1:12
SPEAKER_02: And I was going through the list of events for this year, and I realized how many I went to last year.
1:18
SPEAKER_02: Like, holy smokes, did I do anything else that week?
1:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I sat on a stream and did a live stream.
1:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:25
SPEAKER_02: What was your favorite event last year?
1:27
SPEAKER_04: My favorite event was First Friday.
1:30
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
1:30
SPEAKER_04: And actually, I'm going to say the ones that I like last year, there were definitely some good things, and I'm, but I'm starting to blend the years, as you would imagine, from all of them combined.
1:40
SPEAKER_04: And so I'm specifically remembering the kickoff of the Soil Your Undies campaign at First Friday.
1:47
SPEAKER_04: Did you see that?
1:48
SPEAKER_04: No.
1:48
SPEAKER_04: What is that about?
1:49
SPEAKER_04: Oh my goodness, it's one of the best.
1:51
SPEAKER_04: So Lamot Garber was standing in the center square in downtown Lancaster, and he's got a display of basically disintegrating underwear.
2:00
SPEAKER_04: And it's part of the quote, Soil Your Undies campaign for soil health because a landowner would physically bury a pair of underwear months or weeks in advance.
2:10
SPEAKER_04: And then we we planned it so that landowners would get that.
2:13
SPEAKER_04: They would bury it.
2:14
SPEAKER_04: And then during water week, you unearth that.
2:17
SPEAKER_04: And depending on your soil health, it really would soil your undies.
2:21
SPEAKER_04: It would disintegrate them based on your soil health.
2:24
SPEAKER_04: So it's to show how important it is to have microbes and worms and all the things you need for soil health.
2:30
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
2:30
SPEAKER_04: But to see Lamont standing with a display of underwear for water week in downtown Lancaster, that's one of my one of my memories.
2:38
SPEAKER_02: If if anybody could pull that off and still look cool, it's Lamont.
2:42
SPEAKER_02: For sure.
2:43
SPEAKER_02: Good point.
2:43
SPEAKER_02: For sure.
2:45
SPEAKER_04: Dan, what was your favorite water week event last year since you went to so many?
2:49
SPEAKER_02: I I did actually.
2:50
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I think it was the uh the the Sacred Habitats Nature Walk that Mike led.
2:56
SPEAKER_02: I talked about that when we talked to Mike and Natalie from IPC, uh, interfaith partners for the Chesapeake.
3:01
SPEAKER_02: Almost got it.
3:02
SPEAKER_02: Oh man.
3:03
SPEAKER_02: Mike led that led that tour, and that's where I kind of got into birds is was because of that tour, and that was that was really neat.
3:10
SPEAKER_02: And that's going on again on uh Friday, June 13th.
3:14
SPEAKER_02: So of this year, yeah.
3:15
SPEAKER_02: Yes, of this year, and it is at Hope Episcopal.
3:18
SPEAKER_02: So all of the events you can find on Lancaster Conservancy's website, LancasterConservancy.org slash water dash week, and then click on on events and that will give you.
3:30
SPEAKER_02: There are actually six of them that are sold out as of the time of this recording.
3:34
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
3:35
SPEAKER_02: So uh definitely popular.
3:36
SPEAKER_02: You definitely want to get in there and register.
3:39
SPEAKER_04: And bring a friend, because the benefit of Water Week is reaching new audiences, is exploring Lancaster, but also sharing it with new people.
3:48
SPEAKER_04: So during Water Week, one of the things that is a big part of that is the Clean Water Fund.
3:53
SPEAKER_04: It's this collaborative fundraising tool that we all have built with the Lancaster County Community Foundation.
3:58
SPEAKER_04: And so during Water Week, you can see some of the projects that were awarded in the past.
4:02
SPEAKER_04: But June 1st is the deadline for draft applications.
4:05
SPEAKER_04: So if you're interested in applying for any project that may need$1,000 or up to$25,000, the Clean Water Fund is your place to go.
4:14
SPEAKER_04: And people will review your draft application and get you feedback about it before you actually submit it.
4:19
SPEAKER_04: So the final deadline is July 1st.
4:22
SPEAKER_02: And that is awesome stuff.
4:23
SPEAKER_04: That is awesome stuff.
4:25
SPEAKER_02: That is the that is the most shameless segue I think I've ever done.
4:29
SPEAKER_02: It's terrible.
4:30
SPEAKER_02: That having been said, what's on your list of awesomeness?
4:33
SPEAKER_04: My list of awesomeness, um, in addition to all of the Waterweek events, I would say we had a really great collection of events last week with um our municipal audience because stormwater is one of the big parts of our countywide action plan or CAP success.
4:51
SPEAKER_04: And one of the top items that was on there is a renewed Act 167 plan.
4:56
SPEAKER_04: And that may mean nothing to a lot of people, but it is this tool for everybody across the county.
5:01
SPEAKER_04: So we need input from everybody across the county.
5:04
SPEAKER_04: And there were six different events and six different watersheds last week just for municipal partners and their engineers and elected officials.
5:11
SPEAKER_04: So it was really great to have so much engagement there.
5:13
SPEAKER_04: And then also the academy, the watershed leadership academy, is rolling right now, and we're getting some pretty amazing field visits and experts that are coming in, sharing their knowledge.
5:24
SPEAKER_02: It's been awesome.
5:25
SPEAKER_02: It's been a lot of fun and very educational.
5:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
5:27
SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
5:28
SPEAKER_04: Glad you're in it.
5:29
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
5:29
SPEAKER_04: And what's on your list of awesomeness, Ken?
5:32
SPEAKER_02: I have a big, big project at the beginning of every year, and that is doing the year in review from the previous year.
5:37
SPEAKER_02: So I am almost done with the year review 2024.
5:42
SPEAKER_02: It'll be coming out very, very shortly.
5:44
SPEAKER_02: So check out our website.
5:46
SPEAKER_02: It'll be there.
5:46
SPEAKER_02: It's neat to go back and see all of the really amazing things that happened last year.
5:51
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you've been working so hard to build this narrative of the local success, and that is a collection of all of it in one spot.
5:58
SPEAKER_02: So And our partners are awesome.
6:00
SPEAKER_02: You'll see when when you look at it, just how how awesome our partners are in the charge towards clean and clear water by 2040.
6:09
SPEAKER_04: You got it.
6:10
SPEAKER_02: Hey, and speaking of clean and clear water by 2040.
6:12
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, these guys need it.
6:13
SPEAKER_02: Yes, they most certainly do.
6:16
SPEAKER_02: We are talking with Ryan Foltz and Sam's son, two of the owners of Poor Man's Brewing, and they are doing something special for Water Week.
6:26
SPEAKER_04: We'll go back to that.
6:27
SPEAKER_04: Cheers.
6:29
SPEAKER_04: Do you have parts of your year that are bigger for products or people, or how's it work?
6:37
SPEAKER_01: Summer and the holidays are always the busiest for us.
6:41
SPEAKER_01: Beginning of the year, that's usually a slower time.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: January, February is always slow for us.
6:47
SPEAKER_01: But the holidays, everyone's buying gifts.
6:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the beer's gifts.
6:51
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
6:51
SPEAKER_01: Summer, I mean, sitting outside and having a beer, it's always good.
6:55
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: There's kind of like weird little microwaves in between it too.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: Like people are a creature of habit, so anytime their habit changes when, say, like school year starts and people are getting back into the swing of having that routine, they stop going out to eat, they stop going out for beer as much.
7:11
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: So you hit like a couple week window where it slows down, and then summer break starts, kind of the same thing starts, and then people go on vacations, and then all of a sudden we start selling cans like crazy.
7:20
SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah.
7:21
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we try to predict it, but it changes every year.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: It's not even worth it.
7:25
SPEAKER_04: I love that you said we tried to predict it.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: It's a guess at at best.
7:30
unknown: Yeah.
7:31
SPEAKER_02: So let's get to know you just a little bit better with our icebreaker.
7:37
SPEAKER_02: Your icebreaker question is what is the worst job you've ever had?
7:41
SPEAKER_02: And then I'll also ask, what is the best job you've ever had?
7:45
SPEAKER_01: You want me to start or you're the wor my my worst job I've ever had was probably it was a factory job.
7:52
SPEAKER_01: I I won't say the name, but it was very repetitive.
7:55
SPEAKER_01: It was second shift.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: It was and I was probably early twenties.
8:01
SPEAKER_01: So trying to have any life outside of that was really tough.
8:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: Best job, it's it's what I'm doing now.
8:08
SPEAKER_01: I mean the the flexibility, the relationships that that I've built just throughout the years has has been great.
8:14
SPEAKER_01: And especially having you know three kids at home, to be able to have the flexibility too to hang out and see and see them more has has been a huge push.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna cop out.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, but I haven't really I haven't had a what I would think a crappy job.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: Like maybe I've just been really lucky.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: Like I've had jobs that I've woke up and be like, man, I don't want to go to this today.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: But overall, none of them have really been really been bad.
8:39
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
8:39
SPEAKER_00: I haven't had a a ton of jobs.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: I started off you know with your typical high school jobs at grocery stores and that kind of stuff.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: Went from being a mechanic into a like management position for mechanics.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: And they were they all kind of taught me different things to get to where I am now.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: And I think I've going back, I wouldn't get rid of any of them or switch them for something else.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: And then like Sam said, my favorite job is the one I have now.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: It's changed.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: My job as at Poor Man's has changed almost every year since we started.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: You know, at first it was it was brewing and managing the company and bartending, and then more people came on and it was brewing and managing, and then it was brewing and that just brewing, and then it was I was managing people while we were brewing.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: And now I really only get to brew when our brewer is on vacation, and for the most part, just kind of coordinating and making sure everyone else has what they need to do their job and just kind of overseeing everything, which is which has been a bit of a mental struggle for me for the first few months, and then now that I've settled into it, I've really taken enjoyment to it, and I like wouldn't change anything.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: My two business partners are my two best friends, and you know, we joke around and a mix-in work conversation continuously.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: Like my my wife also works for the company, and she'll like be in the office with us on a Monday, and she jokes about how we will interchangeably switch between talking about golf to something about work, to talking about golf, to talking about our kids, to talking about work.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: And like the conversation never really feels like we're talking about work, it all just gets mixed together.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's just it's just really seamless right now.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:08
SPEAKER_02: So, how did you guys get started?
10:10
SPEAKER_02: How did you how did you start brewing?
10:13
SPEAKER_00: So we both homebrewed before we met each other.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: And then it was just for me, it was kind of just like a I've always liked to cook or like tinker or like any any sort of like small thing that you can do instead of you know just buying it.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: I've always kind of been interested in.
10:26
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: And then when we met each other, we just kind of started homebrewing together, and that kind of spurred the whole, you know, us talking about you know, this would be kind of fun to do as a job sort of thing.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, that it was all from homebrewing, yeah.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
10:41
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
10:41
SPEAKER_04: All here in Lancaster?
10:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
10:43
SPEAKER_04: Thanks.
10:44
SPEAKER_02: That's very cool.
10:44
SPEAKER_02: What what was your first brew that you brewed together?
10:47
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember the first.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: That was probably.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: I know the first competition beer.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: The first beer we ever entered at a competition was a we now we still brew it like once a year.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: It's called Penny Pension.
10:58
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: Back then it used to be a pale ale, now it's an IPA.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: That was the first beer we ever entered at a competition together.
11:04
SPEAKER_04: Oh wow.
11:04
SPEAKER_04: And why a competition?
11:06
SPEAKER_04: Like what is the incentive or what's the part how does that fit in with brewing as a business?
11:13
SPEAKER_00: I think back then we were more so looking to get some sort of like criticism and critique from it.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: So like we would give the beer out to friends, but it's free beer.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: No one's gonna be like, this beer is horror.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: They're all gonna say it's fine.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: So we we wanted to get kind of some feedback, and we to start off, we entered in I think the smallest competition we could find.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: If I remember it was called C V Fall Fest.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: This was like wasn't very many in 15, maybe.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 14.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: And it was a I don't know how many people entered it.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: We didn't actually go to the announcements, and like we used to work together, so we were right next to each other at work.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: Like three or four days passed, we assumed we had lost.
11:48
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: And we had entered as Ryan Foltz and Sam's son, and we got a call from the guy, and he's like, Hey, I want to let you know you guys have won the homebrew competition.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: Um Ryan and you're he goes, Ryan and your Ryan, your son Sam.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: So we assumed that we grew together.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, that was fun.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: So that was the first the first competition.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: We cut we did a bunch for like a year and a half, two years after that.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: We entered in a ton of competitions after that.
12:20
SPEAKER_02: Oh wow.
12:21
SPEAKER_02: Now you said it was a C V?
12:23
SPEAKER_00: I think it was called C V Fall Fest.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: It was like a small fall festival sort of thing.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: Cumberland Valley?
12:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:29
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
12:31
SPEAKER_02: I I normally would have buzzed that, but it was way too far after.
12:35
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
12:36
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so you guys started brewing in Lancaster.
12:38
SPEAKER_02: Did you both grow up in Lancaster?
12:39
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
12:39
SPEAKER_01: I did.
12:40
SPEAKER_01: And you grew up in Africa.
12:41
SPEAKER_01: Africa, yeah.
12:42
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
12:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
12:42
SPEAKER_02: Lancaster County.
12:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's cool.
12:45
SPEAKER_02: That's cool.
12:45
SPEAKER_04: What's the biggest thing that's kept you here?
12:48
SPEAKER_01: Family.
12:49
SPEAKER_01: Family and just I don't know, just being familiar with the area.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: Just and knowing and loving it, so yeah.
12:56
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, home speed home.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: Yep, yeah, pretty much.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, same for me.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: I've just always liked this area.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: I have no real reason to want to leave and you know, everyone I know is here.
13:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
13:06
SPEAKER_02: So how did poor man's brewing begin?
13:10
SPEAKER_00: So from that first homebrew competition, we realized that we should probably put a name because that was not uncommon.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: Bax End for people to enter as like a homebrew name.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: So the joke was, I mean, we were two at this point, like 23, 25-year-old mechanics.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: We were pretty broke.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: So the idea was it was you know, we were brewing because it was cheaper than buying beer sometimes.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: So we were always saying we were two port-opener breweries.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: So we that's how poor man's brewing became the name.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
13:40
SPEAKER_02: And if you have not read the notes for this episode, it is P-O-U-R-Mans Brewing, so it's very, very clever.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: So that's that's kind of what spurred it.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: And then while working together, we kind of this was kind of the one of the bigger booms as far as breweries opening was kind of happening.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: And I went to Vermont and saw a ton of these really small, tiny breweries that were like nothing like a lot of the breweries that were opening in our area.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: They were really low budget.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: A lot of the people still had full-time jobs on the side, and this was just like their way of getting started.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: So it became a little more obtainable.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: We started talking about the idea of doing it together.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: It took, you know, a couple years from that point.
14:21
SPEAKER_00: We had like, you know, proof of concept was entering some beers and some competitions, yeah, giving beer out.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: We started to look for a place, and then we realized that, you know, even though we wanted to do it as low budget as possible, we still didn't have enough money yet.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: Right.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: So we actually both left the jobs that we were at together and got higher paying jobs, ones that also gave us a little bit more experience and not in the brewing industry, but in just kind of management and like being a bigger part of the business.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: Did that for a few years, saved some money, and that time in between there, we both had our first kids.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: So there was kind of a nice period where we took off for a little while from looking.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: And then the space that we first moved into became available.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: It was actually available for like six months before we looked at it, but it was just outside of our price range, so it wasn't showing up.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: And they dropped the price, and it's it's literally 200 yards from my house.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: Nice.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: So I actually went and looked at it, and it was like I was kind of moving around for work during the day, so I kind of stopped in between meetings, and I thought it was perfect.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: So I actually put a deposit on it before I even called Sam, and I was just hoping that he was gonna be cool with it.
15:18
SPEAKER_04: That is an example of trust, right there, everyone.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: Um, so that kind of just you know got us to the point where we had to do it.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: And then as we were getting open, we realized that you know, the part-time sort of gig wasn't gonna work, that we were gonna need to devote more time to this.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: And I I was at a point where my wife could financially support us, which was great.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: So I was able to leave my job and go full-time, and then only about six months in, Sam came on full-time then.
15:45
SPEAKER_04: Wow, that's amazing.
15:46
SPEAKER_04: And did you start it with that like your vision when you went to the place?
15:50
SPEAKER_04: Was it for a brewery, a brew pub?
15:53
SPEAKER_04: Like, what was the thing that came to mind that made you say, Yes, I want this now?
15:58
SPEAKER_00: It I think it was the just the ability, like it just was the first space we looked at that could work.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: We wanted a spot that was kind of an industrial sort of basic feel, but had enough space to seat like 50 people.
16:10
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: And that's that's about how big this was.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: In hindsight, the building's layout was really inefficient because it was kind of like a bunch of small rooms.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: So our tap room was one big room, but then like there was a small room we used as a kitchen, a small room that was storage, a small office, a small canning room, a small brewery room.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, so we we we very Swiss army knifed it for the first five years, and it worked, but you know, there were some other factors that we didn't like.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: We were originally starting, we our plan was always just to be a brew pub.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: We wanted to just brew beer and serve it in-house.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: And then COVID happened and I was wondering where that fell in all of this.
16:47
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: So when we were only about two and a half years in when the shutdown happened, and at that point we weren't canning beer except for like a handful of hand-filled cans from you know, just to put into a fridge or our our tap room.
17:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: And we we had to pivot like basically instantly and figure out some sort of way of selling beer.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: So we were hand canning beer off a manual seamer.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: So it was it was taking us, it was taking us hours a day.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: We would get in at like 3 a.m.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: And then we'd hand we were delivering beer to people's houses is how we made ends meet.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: But through that, we started a wholesale.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: And what we thought was like, and it is, I'm not trying to say it's easy, but what what what we thought was going to be something we never wanted to do because it was so difficult was something we actually found out we really loved.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: Um so I think Sam found Sam's not from a sales background, but Sam found that he liked to make the connections with people.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: I I've always liked to, I've always been like a numbers person and a personal challenge sort of thing.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: So like the idea of like we can produce more and more and more beer out of this this space.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of where we just went with it.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's been it's been just a constant growth and how much beer can we continue to put out and maintain the quality since then.
17:56
SPEAKER_04: Oh man.
17:56
SPEAKER_04: We were just talking about that some that this morning, Ken, about salesmanship and some of the conservation-related trainings that we've offered.
18:04
SPEAKER_04: So, what is it about sales that really drew you in or maybe you realized through the process?
18:09
SPEAKER_04: I don't know.
18:09
SPEAKER_02: Or does it not feel like sales at all?
18:11
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's true.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't really feel like sales at all because it's a product that I see and behind in love and enjoy, and and being able to have that our product out at other places and seeing it out and see other people enjoy it is is is what I really like too.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: Um Yeah, so it's it's really yeah, really not feeling like like sales when I'm out there.
18:32
SPEAKER_01: It's it's always fun making the connection, making new friends, and just growing from there.
18:38
SPEAKER_04: How about the people?
18:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:40
SPEAKER_04: Nice, nice.
18:41
SPEAKER_04: So Lancaster has this great network of people and partner organizations.
18:46
SPEAKER_04: So is there a network of brewers, whether it's in Lancaster or nationwide or something related to your industry specific?
18:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's like multiple levels.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: So like industry-wide, you know, across the country, we have the Brewers Association of America, and then and that they do a lot of you know high-level legislation sort of stuff and work with our federal taxes and federal licensing.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: And then there's the Brewers Association of Pennsylvania, that's our state guild.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, they do the same thing, but on a state level.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: And then they have you know symposiums and all sorts of seminars and stuff throughout the year where you can, you know, go learn from industry professionals that they hire.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: And then on a local level, the Lancaster County has a brewers guild.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: I was actually the founding president of it and did three years as president, helped get it off the ground.
19:32
SPEAKER_00: And then I think now it's about coming up on probably five years in.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: But it's it's a nice small organization of I think there's the prerequisite is you have to either brew in Lancaster County or have a taproom in Lancaster County.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: It's just beer, so you you know, cideries and wineries are excluded.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: That way you can kind of just, you know, everybody's you know more similar.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: Um and then they meet quarterly as a whole group to just to discuss any issues or you know, like maybe some sort of programs that might help each other.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: And then there's usually two collaboration beers a year that they put out that are all called countywide, and most of the breweries that are part of it all serve the same beer then.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: And then they operate an ale trail, which is like a passport program that you can go around to that that comes out every year.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: So I had our terms were three years.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: I I could have came back for a second term.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: I started to kind of we had moved into downtown Efrada for poor man's, and I started to get more involved in some local organizations, and I thought, especially with my kids' activities and things, and you know, the meetings were in the evening and it was just getting a little bit harder for me to make it to everything.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to refocus to some stuff that was more local.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: So that's the only reason I kind of stepped away.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: But this the program is you know hasn't skipped a beat and it is still going really well.
20:46
SPEAKER_04: Wow, congratulations on kicking that off and yeah, creating such an amazing connection tool.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was cool.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: But when we it was it wasn't just me initially, it was a lot of other breweries involved.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, I was probably the reason I wound up being president is because I was probably the least experienced and the one dumb enough to volunteer to do it.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: Um but I had visited a meeting in Pittsburgh for the BOP, the statewide breweries association of Pennsylvania.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: I got you.
21:14
SPEAKER_02: Very good, very good.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: So they had the Alleghenies chamber for their guild was there, and I was like, oh, we could definitely do like I think there was 30 members.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: Like Brewery has, I think at that point, Lexer had like 25.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: And I was thinking we could probably do the same thing.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: So we came back and I had started talking to Rob from our town and Mike Brewbaker from Mooduk Brewery, and they kind of all had the same idea.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: So it was uh a lot of people had the same idea, it just took a little bit for us to get it off the ground.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: And none of us had ever started a nonprofit or anything like that before either.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: So it was a lot of research we had to do.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:46
SPEAKER_04: All those other fun elements.
21:47
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
21:48
SPEAKER_04: Wow, wow, really.
21:50
SPEAKER_04: Congratulations.
21:50
SPEAKER_04: That's that's amazing.
21:52
SPEAKER_02: You started brewing a special batch of beer for Lancaster Water Week three years ago.
21:57
SPEAKER_02: First of all, what was the impetus of Behind that I guess the question that I'm asking is, how does clean water and beer connect?
22:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, so they approached us and they had already been brewing this with different breweries.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: I think we were the third, like us in our town have been the third and fourth breweries to be involved.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: And the idea behind getting two breweries involved was thinking maybe we could get one that was not, you know, in the city and we get one that's in the city so we can kind of cover the whole county a little bit better.
22:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
22:26
SPEAKER_02: Clever.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: And we brewed each year has been kind of a different concept, but we brewed two different beers the first year under two different names.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: And the whole point of the project is to release a little bit before Water Week kind of launch up and you know, kind of build hype for Water Week, and then they have this product that can be available at different bars and help spread the word for it.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: And obviously, we couldn't brew without clean water.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: We've actually looked at buildings that were in areas that just didn't have clean water, and the logistics of not having clean water available and having to truck in water basically just completely ruined any business that a brewery could do.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:00
SPEAKER_04: Oh wow.
23:00
SPEAKER_04: Tell us more about that.
23:01
SPEAKER_04: You mean like the water from the drinking water authority in that location?
23:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: So not maybe a well.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we've never looked at one that was on a public sewer, especially public water that was not usable, but we have looked at ones that were on a well.
23:14
SPEAKER_03: On private, yeah.
23:15
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: And like wells that are near, you know, places that might have had runoff from cornfields or anything like that.
23:20
SPEAKER_03: Right.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: And we've had them come back where it's like, no, no matter what you do with this water, it's not going to be usable for consumption.
23:27
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
23:27
SPEAKER_00: So we'd had to truck in water, and that, you know, that increases the cost tenfold.
23:31
SPEAKER_04: That's a severe business limitation.
23:33
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:34
SPEAKER_04: Wow.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: So the importance of it is an Ephra has, I think, a really great water source for brewing.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: Um, Lancaster County in general has some really great brewing water.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh water when you think of for brewing, you want preferably middle of the road predictable when it comes to the pH of the water.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: Um, so like what we're getting in is is is hard water that's higher pH, which is historically what beer is normally made with.
23:59
SPEAKER_02: That's acidity.
24:00
SPEAKER_02: I have no idea what pH actually stands for.
24:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
24:02
SPEAKER_02: And we'll let that one go.
24:03
SPEAKER_02: I don't know either.
24:04
SPEAKER_02: I had no idea.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, the water is is is really suitable for brewing.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, without it, it's not something that we'd be able to do our job with.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: So it's it was kind of a no-brainer for us to to want to be able to be involved in the project.
24:20
SPEAKER_02: Now you had mentioned a teaming up with Rob from Our Tone Brewing.
24:26
SPEAKER_02: You mentioned how you guys kind of connected.
24:30
SPEAKER_02: Now, this year is something entirely different with you with your brewing for water week.
24:35
SPEAKER_02: Tell us a little bit about that.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so this idea actually started way back in the first year.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: We brewed a dark lager and Rob brewed a pale ale, and we thought we could kind of get people to do a black and tan with the two cans.
24:48
SPEAKER_04: Um I can remember the picture.
24:50
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
24:51
SPEAKER_04: The conistoga coming into the coca.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: So that was kind of the whole concept back then.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: And then in year two, we kind of decided to make two pretty similar beers, one that was lager yeast and one that was ale yeast.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: And then in year three, we were trying to think of something new.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: And we also thought that maybe having the two separate beers might have been kind of confusing people a little bit, and maybe it'd make more sense if we made one beer.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: So the idea came to basically build a recipe together.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: So we took a your standard pale ale recipe, a lot of times will have one, maybe two malts in it.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: So we did two malts, really traditional.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: It's pilsner malt and Vienna malt.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: And then we usually, in a pale ale recipe, some of them might have one, two hops.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: So we did two hops, one cascade and one citra, and then we split it up.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: So poor man's we brewed with all pilsner malt and all cascade in the kettle, and we didn't dry hop at all, and we used a lager strain of yeast, which is traditional for poor man's.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: We use lager strain in all of our beers.
25:47
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: And then at our town, Rob brewed a beer with all Vienna and Citra, and he did a big dry hop since we didn't do any dry hop in ours, and he used his house ale strain.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: Um, so we brewed a 15-barrel batch, a barrel is 31 gallons, so a 15-barrel batch is a little under 500 gallons.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: We finished our beer entirely and put it into a holding tank, a bright tank, and then Rob did the same thing with his beer and then kegged it off, which he had 10 barrels of, brought it to us, and then we pushed his kegs into the bright tank with ours, mixed them, that way they're all blended together, and then canned the beer all together.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: So it's a really unique thing.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: It was two different beers brewed separately with the idea that when they're brought back together, it would finish one final product.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: And it's really cool because it actually turned out like the way in our heads it it would.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: A lot of times these projects don't work that way.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: Um, but it does taste like the pale ale that we kind of envisioned split separately.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: And you can also taste the house character from each brewery in it, which is really, really unique.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: And I've never had a beer like that before.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: But you can I Rob's beers have a house flavor, our beers have a house flavor, every brewery has a house flavor, and you can taste both of them in this one beer.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: It's really cool.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: And that beer is called Ripple Effect.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: Nice.
26:59
SPEAKER_04: A true watershed moment.
27:00
SPEAKER_04: It is.
27:01
SPEAKER_02: Oh, jeez.
27:03
SPEAKER_02: You've been hanging out with me too long.
27:05
SPEAKER_04: A little bit.
27:06
SPEAKER_04: What are some of the places you guys are really excited to share this?
27:10
SPEAKER_04: Like, who needs to know about Ripple Effect?
27:13
SPEAKER_04: I'm thinking of your people and the connections that you've made.
27:16
SPEAKER_01: I think everybody in Langster County needs to hear about it.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but as for the connections, we've gotten Ripple Effect to a couple local distributors and restaurants as well.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to reach out more.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: So if you guys know anybody, let me know.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I mean, and anybody in Langster City or just in Langster in general that that wants to support you know the cause of the conservancy and get some really good beer out.
27:42
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
27:43
SPEAKER_04: Can we touch a little bit on St.
27:44
SPEAKER_04: Boniface?
27:45
SPEAKER_04: Because we're curious about that process too.
27:47
SPEAKER_04: Like obviously local in Africa, but tell us how that fits in with your expansion efforts and maybe it's part of that network growing too.
27:56
SPEAKER_01: For the expansion, we were looking to do some sort of expansion out of our other building because like Ryan was saying, the building was really chopped up.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: We're running out of space and we wanted to do something there.
28:05
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, just during that time St.
28:07
SPEAKER_01: Boniface came up for sale and we saw that as an opportunity to grow production for both brands all under one roof.
28:16
SPEAKER_01: Cut costs in a lot of areas, but also to have two different brands that we can showcase you know different styles of beers and get them out to Lancaster in different ways.
28:26
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
28:27
SPEAKER_04: What are some of the ways that two plus two equals five type approach?
28:31
SPEAKER_04: Like you're saying, it helps cut costs, but are there is there other ways that it really helps you guys grow your business?
28:37
SPEAKER_00: Kind of where we were moving in there is a lot of breweries were opening second or third tap rooms two or three years ago, and you've and sadly have seen a lot of those breweries close that second or third tap room.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: So that wasn't an avenue that we wanted to go down.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, we were already kind of operating in a not so ideal production space.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: So poor man's moved to Main Street into it's a called the Sprecker Building.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: It's a 1911 hardware building.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: It's two stories, beautiful hardwood floors, tin ceilings, not a space you turn into a brewery by any means.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: So when we looked at it, the plan was never we're gonna put a brewery in this building because it's historically preserved.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: It's just you you would ruin the building.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: So the plan was always, you know, that's gonna be our home base for tap room.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: And then as the brewery grows, we'll find a new production spot.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: So we kept our old location, turned it more into, you know, we brewed in the front of the building where it was a little more open.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: And then when Boniface came up for sale, we had the thought that, you know, if we were to do two different brands, that's not the same as two tap rooms.
29:38
SPEAKER_00: So we can operate the two tap rooms with totally, and that you know, that couldn't have been an easy cop out to say, you know, we could just change the beer's names and stuff.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: We brew completely different beers in completely different styles in completely different ways of brewing them, even.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: Like even our brew days for a boniface beer involved different techniques than our brew days for a poor man's beer.
29:58
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: And that all is very thoughtfully done to try to make the beers as different as possible because we're not trying to just take the you know, the route of deceiving people into thinking they're buying two different beers when they're the same sort of thing.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: So we have the two different brands and the two different styles of beer, so we can kind of hit all the styles too, because each of the breweries makes a lot of different stuff, and then we have two different food menus, two different kinds of vibes.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: Like our Boniface Tap room is more of like the kind of brewery you would expect to go into like 10, 15 years ago, where it's a little bit darker, it's kind of kind of got that warehouse-y sort of production feel to it, and it's got a pizza menu, and then you go into poor man's and it's in this kind of like bright, more open space that's a little bit more modern as far as looks go, but it's in a 1911s building and we do a like Philadelphia-style hoagie menu.
30:43
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: So they're both very different, and we thought that that was kind of the smartest way.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: But in the back end, because we share a production space and both beers are brewed there, you know, we have one delivery guy delivering both brands.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: We have our sales guys, Sam and James, selling both brands.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: Myself and the production staff mix both beers.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: So we really could we cut our production costs down significantly.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: And then when you're brewing them both together, obviously, just like everything else in business, the more you buy of something, the cheaper you get it.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: So combining the two productions, we can get all of our ingredients and our cans and all those sort of things.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: We can get them for a better price.
31:16
SPEAKER_04: That's great.
31:16
SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
31:17
SPEAKER_04: Do you have to source locally your other products?
31:19
SPEAKER_04: Like, can you get hops in Lancaster County?
31:21
SPEAKER_04: Can you get yeast in Lancaster?
31:22
SPEAKER_04: Like I'm thinking farm to fork type table restaurants, but is that true in brewing?
31:27
SPEAKER_00: You can.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, once it gets to the scale of professional brewing, it's really hard to get it where it's consistent.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: We were getting hops from York for a while.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: The things about hops is you have to grow so much of them to be able to make any money because they are they're there's per pound.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: They're not a very, very expensive product.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: And our climate in Pennsylvania is not the greatest for all hops.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's usually inconsistent.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: That farm is since closed, unfortunately.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: There is a few barley places, like there's a barley grown in Mount Joey that's used by a Pennsylvania malster that you can buy.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: We've used that in the past for some random one-off beers because we wholesale so much, the costs are just too much for us to do it consistently.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: So it's there is some things available.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit trickier to use because the consistency, unfortunately, is not always as good as it is coming from some of these malters that have been around since you know 1815.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: And they've kind of figured it out and can keep their costs down a little bit better.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: Um, but we do try to use a lot of local specialty ingredients as a as a way of you know getting those things in.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: So we make a orange, it's called orange pollinator.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: It's a half a bison with blood orange and orange blossom honey.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: The orange blossom honey comes from Lancaster County from Dutch Gold Honey.
32:36
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: And we have a couple other beers that are seasonal that use different local ingredients.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of the way that we've found to integrate them.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: Instead of switching out the main characteristics, we can switch out some of the smaller stuff.
32:47
SPEAKER_04: Is that the one that was supporting the Lancashire Farmland Trust?
32:50
SPEAKER_00: No, that one was knee high by July this year.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, yeah.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: That was a really cool beer.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: So that was 50 pounds of Pennsylvania sweet corn went into that beer.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: And you can't just use corn and get anything from it in brewing.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: So what we had to do is we husked all the corn, put it into a giant pot, and then we filled it with 190 degree water to steep it, let it sit for 15 minutes, drained it, cooled it down with cold water, and then we had to peel all the corn off of the cobs and then add that to the mash tun when we were brewing.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: And it it's really cool.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: You get like a subtle corn sweetness from it.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: We do a unique beer with them every year.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: Every year they come to a meeting with some sort of cool idea that I was like, this is so cool.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: Um and that one I think is probably my personal favorite.
33:34
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: Is a good one.
33:36
SPEAKER_02: I love the way that you guys are collaborating with organizations within the conservation world.
33:41
SPEAKER_02: You know, we like strict clean water partners, obviously, are partnering with organizations within the conservation world.
33:48
SPEAKER_02: And to see that in a different industry is really neat.
33:52
SPEAKER_02: I mean, if have you found that to be beneficial in ways that you didn't expect.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think for Sam and I and the rest of our production guys, we learn a lot during that whole process of you know different struggles that we didn't know were out there for these.
34:04
SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of information to be taken back from every time we brew with any of these organizations that we didn't know before.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: And then it's nice to be able to take that information and a lot of them do almost all of the work for us.
34:17
SPEAKER_00: So they approach us, they explain everything that they do and how important it is and why it needs to happen.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of them are just gracious to be able to work with us and find some sort of way for us to be able to raise a little bit of money for them.
34:29
SPEAKER_00: And then they do a great job of getting people out to the tap room to visit to buy the beer and you know, getting it pushed out in front of people.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: So as much as we want to take credit for you know doing these things for them, it is it is really nice.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: But they do a lot of the work.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: We just make the beer like we would do every day, but instead, you know, we get to put their name on it and learn a new interesting thing that we didn't know before out of it at the end of the day, too, and make some really cool relationships out of it too.
34:54
SPEAKER_04: What are some of the things you think that we all need to know about your industry and your needs and maybe from the business side, but maybe from those connections that you need in your industry or maybe just in your neighborhood?
35:07
SPEAKER_00: I think beer has kind of gotten a little bit of a history of I don't want to say being kind of like it's people think of beer as two different tiers of pricing.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: You have like the really cheap beer, then you have the really expensive beer.
35:18
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: We kind of try to fall right into the middle of those things.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: We we make a really high-end product, but we try to do it as cheap as we possibly can, so then we can then in return charge as little as we possibly can.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: We've always been a volume over just you know, a quick dollar sort of company.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: Um so I I think our biggest thing is like trying to get people to take a step back and you know, everyone is spending their dollars more cautiously than they ever probably have.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: And think about where your money is going when you spend it and how you can better impact your local economy with everything that you buy.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's not that much more expensive to buy beer from you know the smaller brewery in Ephra that's making beer for like Lancaster and the surrounding counties.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: Like we we sell a beer that literally is a pun on a macro beer called Poor's Light.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: And it's only a couple bucks more a case.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's a better beer, and then the money is staying right here in Lancaster County.
36:13
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's kind of the hardest thing is you know, trying to educate the consumers who a lot of consumers who don't drink craft beer think it's you know a little bit pretentious to get into and it's intimidating, maybe a little bit.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: We try to make that not the case at all.
36:25
SPEAKER_00: We're trying to make this as approachable as possible for anyone to try beer.
36:28
SPEAKER_00: Our tap rooms are very welcoming, and it's just a it's a smart way to spend your dollar instead of supporting, you know, a large company.
36:35
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
36:36
SPEAKER_04: What are some of your favorite ways to do the storytelling of of your team?
36:40
SPEAKER_01: It's really through through the product and and really doing events and all the relationships that that we've created throughout the years.
36:48
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just having certain events that we've done previously that highlight certain aspects of some of our team members that either one like to go fishing, so that you know the conservancy is a big thing there, farmland trust, just being able to go in back roads and seeing all the farmlands.
37:05
SPEAKER_01: So there's like little connections like that that our team has really been proud to be a part of as well.
37:11
SPEAKER_04: Thanks for so many ways that you support them.
37:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we talked about Water Week.
37:15
SPEAKER_02: Is are are you guys doing anything other than obviously the ripple effect?
37:20
SPEAKER_02: Is there anything else you guys are doing to celebrate Lancaster Water Week?
37:24
SPEAKER_00: Not specifically.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: We did kind of a launch with the beer when the beer came out.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: And then usually there's a bunch of different small social media pushes as different things come out from the conservancy that we'll try to reshare.
37:34
SPEAKER_00: And then the beer itself is available at different functions that have to do with water week throughout.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of like the beer always comes out pretty early, and that's a little bit they've always wanted it that way because it's a little bit more of a kind of like a soft launch to get people talking about Water Week and the importance of it.
37:51
SPEAKER_00: So it's once it's out there, it's kind of just a matter of making sure that we made enough of it to make sure it gets to all the things, and then just trying to you know have the conversation across the bar with whoever wants to talk about it.
38:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
38:03
SPEAKER_02: So what does the future look like for men's brewing in for St.
38:07
SPEAKER_02: Boniface?
38:08
SPEAKER_00: I think being a year, we're just over a year from purchasing St.
38:12
SPEAKER_00: Boniface.
38:13
SPEAKER_00: And I think right now we've just kind of figured out how to maximize what we're doing there.
38:18
SPEAKER_00: So at this point, it's more about you know trying to go an inch wide and a mile deep.
38:21
SPEAKER_00: So we're just trying to build as many relationships as we can in Lancaster with our wholesalers for the rest of the state.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: We signed a couple new contract agreements, which are really exciting, to be able to send our beer out to a different distributor is in the state.
38:35
SPEAKER_00: And I think from now, you're not gonna see poor man's making some big announcement that we bought some other brewery or we're doing some huge huge gap room in Lancaster City or anything like that.
38:45
SPEAKER_00: I think we're all we're all pretty content with we've we're settling in for kind of the grind at this point.
38:50
SPEAKER_04: Are there ways that we can help connect you with other parts of Lancaster's network?
38:53
SPEAKER_01: Really?
38:54
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just what you guys are doing here right now on the podcast and just social media and getting the word out.
39:00
SPEAKER_01: A lot of the times for us, the biggest push or the biggest connections that we've had is just word of mouth.
39:06
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
39:06
SPEAKER_01: So that's been huge.
39:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if you go into a bar and even if you don't see it on the menu, ask for a poor man's or a St.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: Bonapist beer.
39:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
39:13
SPEAKER_00: That that usually works.
39:13
SPEAKER_00: It's always it.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:16
SPEAKER_00: We've got a 200 some odd person mug club who are diehards for that.
39:22
SPEAKER_01: It's turned into a lot of draft accounts over the years.
39:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so word of mouth.
39:25
SPEAKER_01: I mean, when they go out there and and ask for our beer, even if they know it's it's not there, it's a chew-in just from that little conversation.
39:32
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
39:32
SPEAKER_04: Well, to all of the listeners who are Bay oriented, like Chesapeake Bay listeners that have a Lancaster-specific connection, there you go.
39:41
SPEAKER_04: You need to be asking for poor man's and how you can make sure you have it somewhere outside of Lancaster.
39:46
SPEAKER_04: Oh, congratulations on all your success.
39:48
SPEAKER_04: And uh huge thank you to the way that you have supported Lancaster and conservation in so many unique ways.
39:54
SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: Thank you guys for having us.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks.
39:58
SPEAKER_02: And now we come to my favorite part of the show, and that's trivia time.
40:05
SPEAKER_02: So I will ask you random questions, some of which you'll probably know, a couple maybe, maybe not.
40:12
SPEAKER_02: I think you'll do pretty well on it.
40:13
SPEAKER_02: And it's all about brewing.
40:14
SPEAKER_02: Either one of you can answer this, or both of you if you happen to say it at the same time.
40:19
SPEAKER_02: What is the German name for beer?
40:21
SPEAKER_02: The German word for beer.
40:26
SPEAKER_02: It's one of those questions is like, this is too easy.
40:32
SPEAKER_02: Which beer style is known for its light color and refreshing taste, and is typically served with a wedge of lime?
40:39
SPEAKER_02: Mexican lager.
40:40
SPEAKER_02: It is Mexican lager.
40:42
SPEAKER_02: Very good.
40:43
SPEAKER_02: What is the name of the oldest brewery in the United States?
40:46
SPEAKER_02: Yingling.
40:47
SPEAKER_02: It is Yingling.
40:50
SPEAKER_02: What is the name of the craft beer distilled on the White House grounds?
40:56
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
40:56
SPEAKER_03: I don't know that one.
40:57
SPEAKER_03: No.
40:58
SPEAKER_02: It is White House Honey Brown Ale.
41:02
SPEAKER_02: So, yeah.
41:03
SPEAKER_02: Who is the patron saint of brewing and beer?
41:06
unknown: St.
41:07
SPEAKER_02: Arnold.
41:08
SPEAKER_02: It is Saint Arnold.
41:11
SPEAKER_02: Which beer style is known for its smoky flavor, which is imparted by drying malt over an open flame.
41:17
SPEAKER_02: Roush beer.
41:18
SPEAKER_02: It is indeed Roush beer.
41:21
SPEAKER_02: And because because I said this is brewing, it's not specifically beer brewing.
41:26
SPEAKER_02: So what is the best way to brew green tea?
41:31
SPEAKER_02: Steve it.
41:32
SPEAKER_02: Hot water.
41:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
41:36
SPEAKER_02: Use water that is around 175 degrees and steep for two to three minutes.
41:42
SPEAKER_02: I didn't expect that you would know that specifically.
41:47
SPEAKER_02: Why is loose leaf tea better than bag tea?
41:51
SPEAKER_02: Or contact area?
41:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
41:55
SPEAKER_02: More specifically, loose leaf tea contains whole leaves, which provide contact area, richer flavors, essential oils compared to the what they just what I looked up said the dust found in tea bags.
42:09
SPEAKER_02: Finally, what gives copy luac, the world's most exclusive and expensive coffee, its unique flavor?
42:16
SPEAKER_00: Not the one that's eaten by cats and pooped back out.
42:20
SPEAKER_02: It is indeed.
42:21
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
42:22
SPEAKER_00: How did you know that one?
42:23
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
42:27
SPEAKER_04: I think I'll just go to poor man's and sit at the bar.
42:30
SPEAKER_03: That sounds better.
42:32
SPEAKER_02: Well, that is our trivia, and that is our show.
42:36
SPEAKER_02: If you want more information on Poor Man's Brewing, St.
42:39
SPEAKER_02: Boniface, where did they go?
42:41
SPEAKER_00: All of our social handles, St.
42:42
SPEAKER_00: Boniface Craft Brewing, a Poor Man's Brewing Company, Instagram and Facebook, and then our websites always have up-to-date draft lists and food menus.
42:50
SPEAKER_00: And keep an eye out for we're going to be launching a app here soon that has both brands under one app that you can get kind of a vlog and you can follow our draft lists.
43:00
SPEAKER_00: And you're going to be able to enroll in our mug club membership through that.
43:03
SPEAKER_00: That should come out this summer.
43:04
SPEAKER_04: That's exciting.
43:06
SPEAKER_02: That is amazing.
43:06
SPEAKER_02: And all of that information will be on the notes for the show.
43:10
SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much, Ryan.
43:11
SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much, Sam, for all that you do, for help actually helping the community and for being involved in Water Week and for making beer, which is my personal favorite part of all that.
43:22
SPEAKER_04: I'm pretty sure it's happy hour somewhere and it's ripple effect time.
43:26
SPEAKER_02: Off we go.
43:28
SPEAKER_02: We will be back in just a couple of weeks.
43:30
SPEAKER_02: Until then, take care.
43:32
SPEAKER_02: This episode of Clean Water Conversations is sponsored by Chesapeake Conservancy.
43:37
SPEAKER_02: Conserve, restore, and empower with data.
43:40
SPEAKER_02: And produced by Lancaster Clean Water Partners, striving for clean and clear waterways by 2040.
43:46
SPEAKER_02: If you have comments or suggestions for show topics or are interested in becoming a sponsor, please contact us at info at Lancaster Cleanwater Partners dot com.
43:56
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening.