Latest / The Brewery Underground Podcast | Craft Beer Interviews, Reviews and Beer Travel / Johnson City Brewing: Eric Latham & Anna McKay on East Tennessee Craft Beer | Episode 88

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Johnson City Brewing: Eric Latham & Anna McKay on East Tennessee Craft Beer | Episode 88 · The Brewery Underground Podcast | Craft Beer Interviews, Reviews and Beer Travel

• 0:39
  We have with us an old familiar face returning to the podcast.
• 0:43
  It is Eric Latham. He is owner of Johnson City
• 0:46
  Brewing in Johnson City, TN and also the president of the
• 0:50
  Tennessee Crown Brewers Guild. He brought some backup.
• 0:53
  Yeah, he was outnumbered last time, so now.
• 0:56
  He's not. Yeah, we got our secret weapon
• 1:00
  we got we got Anna McKay. She's our newly minted head
• 1:04
  Brewer at Johnson City Brewing. Yes, welcome.
• 1:08
  Yeah, welcome, Eric, welcome back.
• 1:10
  And Anna, congratulations on that, that new position, that is
• 1:13
  fantastic. Thank you.
• 1:14
  I appreciate that. Yeah.
• 1:15
  We're very happy to dive into that.
• 1:18
  We're very, very happy for you, Anna.
• 1:20
  We saw recently that you were officially named the head Brewer
• 1:23
  there and I mean that has to be a tremendous achievement for you
• 1:28
  because I know you started out with at the brewery a few years
• 1:31
  ago and worked your way up. Huh I.
• 1:34
  Did it was kind of a ideal situation for me where I started
• 1:38
  about six years ago with the with the company and was kind of
• 1:41
  able to train into production and then gradually apprentice
• 1:44
  under Eric into the brewing side of it.
• 1:46
  So it's been years in the making for this and it was, it was
• 1:49
  really special to be able to have the opportunity to step
• 1:52
  into this role. Yeah.
• 1:54
  And Eric, how proud you have to be of someone that you've seen
• 1:58
  come up through your brewery over the years and now is the
• 2:00
  head Brewer for you. Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:04
  Well, you know, you guys know this all too well.
• 2:07
  Is that we, we small breweries, many times the founders like
• 2:12
  Kat, my wife and I, you're the Brewers, you're the servers,
• 2:17
  you're the janitors, you're the, you know, the tour guides, you
• 2:21
  do everything. And so it's really a challenge
• 2:24
  to, you know, to hand off a position like head Brewer
• 2:29
  because you know that that's, that's the main one.
• 2:31
  You're making beer, you're selling beer.
• 2:33
  That's what you do. And it's a small business and
• 2:34
  everybody wears a lot of hats. So it would have had to have
• 2:37
  been someone very special to us. And you know, Anna's been with
• 2:40
  our company for over six years. She, she not only, you know,
• 2:44
  those are the insurance and outs of our brewery, which is behind
• 2:47
  me, but she understands the culture of our company, you
• 2:51
  know, which is about, it's about people and about growth.
• 2:55
  And, and we're, we're A-Team. And so she gets all that, and
• 2:58
  that's why she made, you know, it makes perfect sense to make
• 3:01
  her our head Brewer. Yeah, and literally you guys are
• 3:06
  joining us off like the brewery floor today, like you were
• 3:09
  brewing beer all day and now you're joining us on the
• 3:12
  podcast. Is that right?
• 3:16
  Yeah. Well, that's the cool thing is
• 3:17
  that we're actually in two locations.
• 3:19
  I'm at our production facility, but Anna's at our.
• 3:22
  We're about to open a new location on Walnut St. in
• 3:25
  Johnson City. So Anna, you're over at Walnut,
• 3:27
  aren't you? That's.
• 3:28
  Right. I'm over at Walnut and if you
• 3:30
  hear any loud noises, there's a couple people working on the new
• 3:32
  bar over here and a couple new walls are coming in and out.
• 3:35
  So I didn't, I didn't realize I'd have company over here.
• 3:39
  That's all right. We love the sound of
• 3:40
  progression. That's which is what that is.
• 3:43
  It's a new brewery's getting built out.
• 3:45
  Yes, please. We'll take it.
• 3:47
  I know I got a lot. Of the noise, by the way, you
• 3:50
  guys have just come off because you're at the brewery.
• 3:52
  You just came off a double. Would you call a double batch
• 3:55
  today? So yeah, so we have a Oh.
• 3:57
  Go ahead. Yeah.
• 3:58
  I was going to say we have a 7 barrel brew house right now and
• 4:00
  we have 57 barrel fermenters and then 515 barrel fermenters.
• 4:06
  So on the days that we have like some of our flagship beers like
• 4:09
  our our Peaches, our golden ale, our Apollo IPA, things like
• 4:14
  that, we'll do a double brew day like this.
• 4:15
  So we get a larger amount. So I'll come in in the morning
• 4:18
  and then Eric will come in around like 11 or 12 and start
• 4:21
  the second match to fill up those 15 barrel furnitures.
• 4:24
  OK, OK, so it so it just allows you to make more beer.
• 4:29
  To put out to the. Passes, yeah.
• 4:30
  OK. And then you and you do split it
• 4:32
  up then. Oh yes, yeah.
• 4:35
  I just want to put in our our time on a double alone and it's
• 4:40
  not for the faint of heart. It can be done, but it's better
• 4:43
  to do it as a team for sure. That's really new.
• 4:46
  Yeah, we're starting to do some I mean we're still, this is our
• 4:49
  11th year guys and we're still like small time and scraping and
• 4:52
  clawing and you guys know this about us is that we're big
• 4:54
  believers in the self distribution side of things.
• 4:57
  And so we've started slowly doing some distribution up and
• 5:00
  down I-40 there and a couple places around Nashville there.
• 5:03
  But yeah, it's nothing, nothing huge or anything.
• 5:06
  And we've still got a lot of ways to go as far as, you know,
• 5:10
  improving the the quality and consistency of our product.
• 5:13
  And that's the, that's the better thing about Anna too.
• 5:15
  There's a correlation with making her head Brewer and the
• 5:18
  beer getting better so. Well, I am currently, I am
• 5:24
  currently drinking, by the way. Yeah, I am currently drinking.
• 5:28
  Look what I'm drinking from Johnson City Brewing.
• 5:31
  Yep. And I've got one too and I
• 5:34
  picked it up today and it's brand new for me.
• 5:36
  And Eric, you probably dropped it off over at Main Street.
• 5:38
  It's your Oktoberfest. Main Street had it over there
• 5:41
  today. Yeah, OK.
• 5:48
  Well. We'll see, time will tell.
• 5:53
  I, I have no doubt. And, and Eric, I got to thank
• 5:56
  you because you gave me this beer.
• 5:59
  Not personally because I didn't get to see you, but when I was
• 6:01
  in Johnson City a couple of weeks ago, I, I actually walked
• 6:04
  in there and I was talking, well, I texted you and I'm like,
• 6:07
  Hey, I'm at your brewery. And then I walked up and I was
• 6:10
  talking to the guy that worked there, and he's like, by the
• 6:12
  way, Eric says to give you some beer.
• 6:14
  And I'm like, really? I'm like, well, thank you very
• 6:16
  much. And I also have something else.
• 6:18
  One of the biggest magnets I've ever seen in my life.
• 6:21
  Look at this. I came with props tonight.
• 6:26
  Right on there. It's funny you say that cuz I
• 6:29
  went to go grab it off my refrigerator for the podcast cuz
• 6:31
  I wanted to show you guys, to show everybody.
• 6:34
  It's like, by the way, here's one other thing that I got at
• 6:38
  your brewery and I and I, and I wanted to say, you know, I had a
• 6:42
  really fun time there. I really did.
• 6:44
  Of course, I came in for the, the Speedway classic at the
• 6:47
  Bristol Motor Speedway. And one of my goals was to come
• 6:51
  a day ahead of time because I was staying with some friends of
• 6:54
  the days after a little bit, an Airbnb a little bit away from
• 6:58
  Johnson City, but I spent the night in Johnson City And you
• 7:02
  know, one of the main purposes was to go to your brewery there
• 7:05
  and like get a little downtown area.
• 7:07
  And I really enjoyed myself, man.
• 7:09
  Really, really appreciate you visiting man.
• 7:11
  You guys taking the time to give a shout out to Tower Brewery
• 7:14
  and, and breweries our size, you know, across the state too,
• 7:17
  because you guys know all too well small business can be, can
• 7:21
  be challenging. And like I said, just appreciate
• 7:23
  you guys. Yeah, well, and, and it was
• 7:26
  funny because I loved the diversity on your tap room menu.
• 7:32
  And I think that goes back to both of you that brew the beer
• 7:36
  there because I'll, I'll read off what I got on a flight.
• 7:39
  It was the sea salt and lime logger, the wild Frontier
• 7:43
  logger. I also got your wild or your
• 7:46
  BlackBerry IPA and the, the Butterscotch Oktoberfest, which
• 7:52
  we want to get in Oktoberfest in a few minutes.
• 7:54
  And then I came back the next day and had the, the 1884.
• 7:59
  So I, I, I cleaned up at your brewery.
• 8:01
  Man, you guys had a lot of great beer and every single one I
• 8:04
  really love quite a bit. We do some, we do some weird
• 8:09
  stuff and that's kind of our history.
• 8:12
  And, you know, Anna's done a really nice job over the past
• 8:15
  years that she's been in production here because this
• 8:18
  year, for better or for worse, we're going to be producing the
• 8:21
  least amount of unique beers that we ever have.
• 8:25
  And we're still producing a lot of different kinds.
• 8:26
  But the first year we opened, we produced more than 300 different
• 8:30
  beers. And it just, you know,
• 8:32
  experiment, experiment, experiment, which, you know,
• 8:36
  coming from being a home Brewer, that's the fun of it.
• 8:39
  And so we're trying to as far as an identity, we're trying to
• 8:42
  figure out how do we, you know, make more of the beers that sell
• 8:45
  real well. But at the same time for the
• 8:47
  production side and for we Brewers allow still allow for
• 8:50
  some creativity and and Anna's been able to do some of that in
• 8:53
  production. Well, it's funny because I saw
• 8:56
  the other day on Instagram that you guys are going to be
• 8:59
  releasing a beer and maybe by the time this podcast comes out,
• 9:02
  it'll be out already called Biscuits and Jam.
• 9:05
  Can you can you tell me about that beer?
• 9:07
  Because that sounds really interesting to me.
• 9:09
  Yeah, Anna, why don't you tell them about it?
• 9:11
  Yes. So that one was actually pre pre
• 9:14
  me working for the company. I don't know when the first year
• 9:17
  was that you brewed that, but the unique one about that we're
• 9:20
  we're kind of known for a lot of our fruited things, but this,
• 9:24
  this one in particular doesn't actually have any fruit in it.
• 9:26
  That jam flavor comes from the French hop.
• 9:30
  It's a barbed Rouge hop and it has flavors and aromas of
• 9:33
  strawberries. And so the biscuits come from
• 9:36
  the multi, like the, the biscuity malt that we use in
• 9:38
  that. But then the actual, the actual
• 9:41
  jam portion of that is a hop, not a fruit.
• 9:43
  So that, that's a, that's a unique one that Eric came up
• 9:45
  with before I was there and we haven't been able to brew that
• 9:48
  one. I think this is the first time
• 9:50
  we'll have released that in a little over 2 years.
• 9:52
  So we're we're all excited to have that one.
• 9:54
  Back. Wow, Has it always been the same
• 9:56
  time of year when you guys have released that?
• 9:59
  No, that's, that's been varying depending on time of year.
• 10:02
  We used to try to release that during the fall, but then we
• 10:06
  throughout the year would release various red ales.
• 10:08
  And if you release too many of the same type of beer throughout
• 10:10
  the year, you kind of they kind of just over shadow each other.
• 10:13
  So we have a, we have a road bowler Irish Red that comes out
• 10:16
  for Saint Patrick's Day. And then we have a Cardinal Park
• 10:21
  red Ale that comes out during the summer a lot of the time.
• 10:23
  So it's kind of a picking and choosing between Cardinal Park
• 10:25
  and biscuits. And this year we were able to do
• 10:27
  biscuits. Talk about the one Eric, you
• 10:30
  texted me earlier today. You have one dropping today,
• 10:33
  right? If it hasn't dropped already.
• 10:37
  The big orange Creamsicle Double IPA.
• 10:39
  Are you kidding me? How delicious does that sound?
• 10:42
  Talk about that beer. Yeah, well, I can I can sit talk
• 10:48
  to that one just a little bit. Is that this week, you know,
• 10:50
  getting back into, we love college football, or at least I
• 10:52
  do. And it really the season started
• 10:55
  last weekend a little bit, but get really getting going this
• 10:57
  week and I think the Vols are going down to play.
• 11:01
  Was it Syracuse in Atlanta? And of course we have a
• 11:05
  university here. Steve, you may have seen it
• 11:07
  while you were driving by campus and that kind of thing.
• 11:09
  ETSU, which, and it's crazy, we got when Cat and I moved here
• 11:13
  something like 14 years ago, ETSU was, you know, kind of
• 11:16
  middling smaller school in the state school.
• 11:19
  But now it's just really exploded.
• 11:20
  Got a lot of students. And, and so we make a, we've
• 11:24
  made a special beer in honor of them called Blue and Gold at
• 11:28
  which of course is their, you know, their colors.
• 11:31
  And a lot of our employees over the years, you know, have gone,
• 11:35
  have gone to ETSU so that we're releasing blue and gold, a fresh
• 11:38
  batch. That's one of our flagships, but
• 11:40
  we're releasing a fresh batch of that this year.
• 11:42
  And then Big Orange Creamsicle is a double IPA, hazy double IPA
• 11:46
  and it's brewed with Mosaic and Zacca hops.
• 11:51
  It's got some cryo going on in there, but it's also brewed with
• 11:55
  orange juice, some milk sugar and I think that's it.
• 12:01
  So it's it's one that's mainly focused on the aroma and flavor
• 12:07
  of everything, but I'm I'm really excited about this one
• 12:11
  this. Sounds delicious.
• 12:12
  I saw a can a picture of the can too, it looks amazing.
• 12:17
  What's the ABV on that one? Anna, what do we end up with ABV
• 12:22
  on that? That one came out about 773 or
• 12:26
  75. That's where that one went.
• 12:28
  It used to be a little. Higher we actually brought it
• 12:30
  back a little bit because we, we want to be able to serve it as
• 12:34
  pints, especially if we're kind of releasing it as like a
• 12:36
  football beer. And so 8/5 pint is pretty,
• 12:39
  pretty identification. So we, we backed that one off a
• 12:42
  little bit and worked on the hops on this round and I'm I'm
• 12:45
  really happy with how this round came out.
• 12:47
  That's great. That's a really nice ABVI think
• 12:49
  for a double IPA. It's the sweet spot, I think.
• 12:52
  I got a question for you guys earlier and since you guys you
• 12:56
  guys know beer pretty well, right?
• 12:58
  You guys are craft beer enthusiasts and love to taste
• 13:00
  different things. So Anna and I were talking about
• 13:02
  this earlier and by the way, Alex, our assistant distribution
• 13:07
  manager just walked in here and we so we got some kegs that are
• 13:09
  cranking around. He just did a bunch of
• 13:10
  deliveries. But we were having this
• 13:13
  conversation earlier about styles, styles of beer.
• 13:17
  And let me ask you guys this. So we were saying that, you
• 13:20
  know, like Anna said earlier, that you can only release so
• 13:23
  many red ales or amber ales, you know, that kind of thing, else
• 13:26
  they start getting lost. But what one style of beer do
• 13:30
  you think that you could release a ton of and the public would
• 13:33
  still drink a bunch of them? For me, and I don't know if I'm
• 13:38
  in the minority, I love black Ipas.
• 13:41
  Well, and I love, I love Oktoberfest season.
• 13:44
  So when this season comes around, I'm a big Oktoberfest
• 13:47
  guy. And so even though I know
• 13:49
  sometimes they're not drinkable all year long, I wish we could
• 13:52
  find a way where they would be, because that's really the kind
• 13:55
  of kind of style of beer that I like.
• 13:57
  Although I will try almost anything.
• 13:59
  But yeah, black Ipas, as Scott said, are really good too.
• 14:02
  Black IPA is OK. Yeah, yeah, Blackstone, those
• 14:07
  guys make a good one. Have you ever tried Dark Matters
• 14:10
  or Dark Matters? Yeah, We did a chocolate
• 14:13
  milkshake like dark IPA, and that was a, that was a different
• 14:17
  style. We've done a Cascadian Dark too,
• 14:21
  which I really enjoyed. It was a, it was a, it was a
• 14:23
  dark IPA, but Cascade all the way through and fresh Cascade.
• 14:28
  But that's, like I said, that's a a beautiful and wonderful
• 14:31
  style, but you don't often see it on the tap lists.
• 14:36
  Yeah, Hell yeah. Yeah, it's phenomenal.
• 14:39
  That's a good thing. And a lot of Berbers just don't
• 14:42
  make them anyway. And when you see them, they're
• 14:44
  pretty rare. I actually remember when I first
• 14:47
  started working and I was in the tap room, you had just released
• 14:50
  a black IPA that was. And it was a very unfamiliar
• 14:53
  style to me when I first started over there.
• 14:55
  It was. It was interesting to try that.
• 14:57
  I it actually may have been a black milkshake IPA.
• 14:59
  Oh, wow. Yeah.
• 15:00
  Sounds very good. Yeah.
• 15:02
  Yeah, I mean, me going for it, like I know I won't be
• 15:06
  disappointed. I know it's going to be good.
• 15:07
  And like, hey, you guys have one, let's get it.
• 15:09
  Yeah, I get excited when I see those.
• 15:11
  Exactly. And I'd like to go back to you
• 15:13
  for a minute. Can you tell us about kind of
• 15:15
  your journey over the six years with Johnson Brewing and Johnson
• 15:19
  City Brewing and how you how your journey has been to get to
• 15:23
  the point where you're at now? Yeah.
• 15:24
  So I was a customer at the brewery before I started working
• 15:28
  there and hadn't been in and probably a couple years and
• 15:32
  stop, stop by and Eric's wife, Kat was working in the tap room
• 15:36
  at the time. And it was at the very start of
• 15:38
  her transition into being a firefighter.
• 15:40
  So she was, she was training for the like the school portion of
• 15:44
  that. And they were, But when she was
• 15:46
  catching up with me, she asked what I was doing.
• 15:48
  And at the time I was bartending in a local pizza spot around
• 15:52
  here. And so she like, her eyes lit up
• 15:54
  and she was like, huh, so you have your alcohol serving
• 15:56
  license. And I was like, I sure do.
• 15:58
  And she asked if I'd be interested in pouring there.
• 16:01
  And I'd always enjoyed their product.
• 16:02
  So I, I interviewed with Eric probably less than a week after
• 16:05
  that and started, started fairly soon after that.
• 16:08
  And then as cat transitioned into the firefighting, I, I took
• 16:12
  over some of the management of down of the downtown tap room.
• 16:14
  And at the time we only had one location.
• 16:16
  So it was just managing the people we had, We had a really
• 16:19
  small crew at that point. We still have a small crew, but
• 16:21
  comparatively I think we only had like 4 people on staff at
• 16:24
  that point or something and like that.
• 16:25
  And then from there, I think of fall of that year, so I'd been
• 16:29
  around for about 6 months. We started doing our first
• 16:32
  packaging off of a Blickman like single canner beer gun type
• 16:36
  situation. And I kind of transitioned into
• 16:39
  that a little bit. And then we had just started
• 16:41
  doing that packaging when COVID hit, which we didn't have any
• 16:44
  way of knowing that was going to happen.
• 16:45
  But that ended up being what got us through COVID was being able
• 16:48
  to do all the packaging. So I rapidly went from like a
• 16:51
  4/4 shifts a week in the tap room to like full full time
• 16:55
  canning to get cans out into the public.
• 16:58
  And so that's how my production journey started.
• 17:00
  So I was, I was able to maintain employment through COVID at the
• 17:03
  brewery by single canning like full time with my Co worker at
• 17:08
  the time. And then after, after we kind of
• 17:10
  made it through that transition period, that's when Boone's
• 17:12
  Creek was purchased was the summer of 2020.
• 17:14
  So our second location. And from there it was, we were,
• 17:18
  we were needing more product. And Eric was at that point still
• 17:21
  very involved in the, in the production side of it, but asked
• 17:24
  if I'd be interested in apprenticing into some of the,
• 17:27
  into some of the brewing side of that.
• 17:28
  Which when I walked in a little over a year before that, I had
• 17:32
  no idea that that would ever be a possibility.
• 17:34
  So winter of 2020, I started training with Eric on the brew
• 17:38
  system after being around and doing kegging and canning and
• 17:41
  various things in the production side of it.
• 17:43
  And from there, my goal was kind of just to alleviate some of the
• 17:49
  production pressure, the air cat on him so that he was able to
• 17:52
  not have to be doing all of the physical labor and all the
• 17:55
  administrative labor and all of that.
• 17:56
  And then it's kind of from there transition into just a gradual
• 18:00
  communication between he and I have being able to help a little
• 18:03
  bit with ordering the raw materials, transitioning into
• 18:05
  doing some of the brew schedule together.
• 18:08
  We still very much do it together, but it's it's kind of
• 18:10
  just been an organic process into taking the physical
• 18:12
  production side off so that he's able to work on the on the
• 18:15
  business and doesn't have to physically be in the business.
• 18:17
  You know, it's having to say, hey, I know you've had a really
• 18:20
  busy week, but I really need you on Saturday to dry hop this beer
• 18:23
  for me is, it's just, it's getting to the point where his
• 18:27
  time is valuable enough spent elsewhere that it's, it's nice
• 18:29
  to have someone who their job is to keep track of what's going on
• 18:33
  in the production side and make sure we have a consistent
• 18:35
  product, make sure we have a, a consistent team over there and
• 18:38
  that he can rely on us having consistency and product.
• 18:41
  Because in such a small business, one of the worst
• 18:44
  things you can do is have a beer that tastes great and then you
• 18:46
  run out of it and you never have it available.
• 18:48
  So we talked about that all the time.
• 18:50
  There's the tiers of consistency, availability and
• 18:53
  also like the uniqueness of what we put out as well.
• 18:56
  We've, we've gradually worked on that and it's been, I've loved
• 18:59
  the progression of that. I feel like it's been very
• 19:01
  natural. There hasn't been, there hasn't
• 19:05
  been like a period where I didn't feel like we were able to
• 19:07
  talk through kind of the direction of how things were
• 19:10
  going. And that's been, that's been a
• 19:11
  really special experience for me.
• 19:13
  Anna, what is the most fun part of your job?
• 19:15
  It's the most fun. Yeah, I want to know too.
• 19:23
  I still love I still love especially at this point because
• 19:27
  I don't I used to do like a hybrid for a while.
• 19:29
  I was still like a couple shifts a month in the tap room.
• 19:32
  At this point, we have a really solid team in our tap room.
• 19:34
  So I don't do that anymore. So I still love when I can get
• 19:37
  to an event that we're throwing at one of our locations and not
• 19:40
  have any responsibility related, but I get to look around on the
• 19:43
  property and see people really enjoy what we make.
• 19:46
  I am the first to say that I'm not like the beer expert, the
• 19:49
  brewing expert, anything like that, but I do love seeing
• 19:52
  something somebody enjoy something that like I got to
• 19:55
  help make that that's that's a really special part of it.
• 19:57
  Our week in week out is production is a really physical
• 20:00
  job. It can be like a mentally
• 20:03
  draining portion of it where you're just like you're in it
• 20:05
  doing the same things throughout the week.
• 20:07
  Your weeks look pretty consistent, but being able to
• 20:09
  see like the end result of that, I've always really enjoyed that
• 20:12
  a lot. Well, in an observation, since I
• 20:15
  was there on your Main Street location, is everybody there?
• 20:18
  I mean, that I ran into that. I was sitting there, you know,
• 20:22
  having a beer with whether they were local people, and some of
• 20:24
  them were. And then I ran into some fellow
• 20:27
  Reds fans the next day when I was in there as well.
• 20:29
  Everybody was having a good time, you guys.
• 20:31
  I mean, everybody was talking about how great that, you know,
• 20:34
  your beer was and how much they enjoyed it.
• 20:36
  In fact, there was a guy who I ran into from Cincinnati and he
• 20:39
  was asking me was I going to any other breweries in the area and
• 20:43
  stuff like that? And I said, yeah, I'm going to
• 20:44
  try to make a couple. And he was talking about your
• 20:47
  place and he said this was that was the number one place for him
• 20:51
  to want to go to based on reviews and things like that.
• 20:53
  And I said, well, I, I've also met the owner, not in person,
• 20:57
  but you know, through here. And I said it was my first stop
• 21:01
  in Johnson City and, and I wanted to get there as well.
• 21:03
  So it was just an observation that you guys had a bit of a
• 21:06
  cheers vibe in there when I went in there where, you know, just a
• 21:09
  just a great laid back place where everybody was enjoying the
• 21:12
  beer and having a lot of fun. Yeah, that that's our goal.
• 21:16
  There is that kind of cheers place.
• 21:18
  And I think a lot of breweries or small breweries have that
• 21:20
  goal, which is, you know, you feel welcome there.
• 21:23
  You feel like anybody's welcome there.
• 21:25
  And I mean, without getting specific, and maybe you guys
• 21:27
  have two, I've been to breweries before, which is like, here's
• 21:31
  your beer, give me the money and that's about it.
• 21:34
  Or, you know, we we're big believers in beer education.
• 21:38
  Like Anna said, we don't know everything about beer, but we'd
• 21:41
  like to think we know we can share a little bit of about it
• 21:44
  if we make it with our customers.
• 21:46
  And, you know, it's, it's, it's bigger than beer.
• 21:50
  It's more than just making and selling beer.
• 21:53
  It's about having community and feeling welcome.
• 21:56
  And, and thank you for that commentary, Steve, because
• 22:01
  that's what we're, we're trying to do.
• 22:02
  And as we grow, as we as Cat and I, who are the founders get more
• 22:06
  and more detached from, you know, every single day being in
• 22:09
  there, that's one of our concerns is that maybe, you
• 22:12
  know, maybe that that's kind of shine rubs off a little bit or
• 22:17
  goes away a little bit. And so that's good to hear.
• 22:19
  Appreciate you sharing. That we've been in places and
• 22:23
  you feel like you're bothering someone to order a beer like we
• 22:26
  have. Like, I don't think I just even
• 22:29
  want us here. Yeah, they don't.
• 22:33
  They don't speak. You know, you ask me questions.
• 22:37
  Yeah, that's something that's something we talk about too, is
• 22:39
  that the handing off of the head Brewer position was a really,
• 22:42
  really big deal. But the other thing that's tough
• 22:44
  is when you're not the face of the Eric used to be in there
• 22:48
  pouring all the time and I used to be in there pouring all the
• 22:50
  time. And that that person is the face
• 22:53
  of your company during the period of time that they're in
• 22:54
  there. And I think that our Tapper
• 22:57
  managers have done a really great job under like the the
• 23:00
  guidance of Eric helping along with those hiring processes of
• 23:03
  bringing people in who don't act like you're causing them a
• 23:06
  problem to be in there. We want people to feel excited
• 23:09
  to be in there and to feel welcome and to tell us all about
• 23:11
  their travel down from Michigan to see their mother-in-law or
• 23:14
  whatever's going on. So it's it's that's something
• 23:17
  that's I think been fostered and set an example by Eric and
• 23:21
  speaks a lot to the culture that he and Cat built when they first
• 23:24
  started it. You mentioned it.
• 23:26
  Whoever that person is or those people are is the face of the
• 23:29
  brewery. That role is very, very
• 23:31
  important. It's obvious, but man, it's so
• 23:34
  important. Yeah.
• 23:35
  You know, if you're talking to someone and you want, you want a
• 23:37
  good feeling that you've been somewhere and, you know, you
• 23:39
  talk to your friends about it after you've laughed, you're
• 23:41
  like, man, that was great. You guys should go there.
• 23:42
  Everybody's friendly and the beer was great.
• 23:44
  And it's part of that whole experience.
• 23:48
  Anna, is there a beer so far that you have brewed that's
• 23:51
  become your personal favorite? You know, I actually, it's funny
• 23:54
  you mentioned you had the sea salt lime on your flight.
• 23:56
  That was, we've been trying for a number of years to build kind
• 24:01
  of the beer that's really accessible for people to come in
• 24:03
  and say what tastes like a Bud Light, what tastes like a
• 24:06
  domestic, like what, what tastes like that.
• 24:07
  And a lot of times you have to kind of steer them in a
• 24:09
  direction that is close, but not like super close to that.
• 24:12
  And we're never, we're never going to be the big guys like
• 24:15
  that. But that Wild Frontier series
• 24:17
  kind of, that we're trying to build was part of that.
• 24:20
  And Eric worked for a long time to get sort of that, that base
• 24:23
  lager recipe down where we have a really simple grain build, low
• 24:26
  ABV, easy to drink. We, we started putting it in 6
• 24:29
  packs and then I had the opportunity to help build kind
• 24:32
  of like the summer series version of that.
• 24:34
  And so that sea salt lime is one that currently I'm, I'm, I'm
• 24:38
  proud of that we were able to put out there that the goal for
• 24:41
  that was to have a beer that tasted like you would already
• 24:43
  squeeze your own lime in it without having to squeeze your
• 24:45
  own lime in it. And it's just light and
• 24:47
  refreshing and tastes like summer in a glass.
• 24:49
  And that, that one was one that I'm, I'm really excited about.
• 24:52
  It's, it's, it sounds like a simple 1.
• 24:54
  And it is. And that was the point.
• 24:55
  But to achieve that and get that that drink ability was something
• 24:59
  that I'm proud of. But the ones I mentioned earlier
• 25:01
  had on a flight and I was like every single one I would have
• 25:04
  again. I mean, I would go back and
• 25:06
  definitely have it again. And that's always something you
• 25:08
  want. So to do the both of you, how
• 25:10
  much planning goes into now to where you want to take this as
• 25:15
  far as your beer styles, unleashing new beers and
• 25:19
  releasing new beers, you know, in the company couple couple
• 25:22
  months ahead of time. How does that work out for for
• 25:25
  the both of you now? But we're pretty fortunate at
• 25:27
  this point over the years to have built a fairly consistent
• 25:30
  release schedule throughout the year.
• 25:32
  Occasionally, occasionally we'll drop something just fully we
• 25:34
  knew that we've never had before, but we have certain
• 25:36
  beers that do come out at certain times and kind of give
• 25:39
  us a rough calendar for the entire year, which helps not
• 25:41
  only with the releases in the tap room, but also just sets
• 25:44
  yourself up for the brews schedule throughout the year as
• 25:46
  well. So Eric and I, I mean, we, we
• 25:48
  overlap a lot throughout the week Like it's, it's, it's not
• 25:51
  like I'm just over in production and never see him.
• 25:53
  And he sits in, sits in some office somewhere and only takes
• 25:56
  meetings like he's, he's in it and he does that as well.
• 25:58
  So we get, we get the chance to kind of be like, let's make sure
• 26:01
  we're remembering that pumpkin pie ale releases and we need to
• 26:04
  make sure that's on the schedule.
• 26:05
  And it's, it's a kind of constant back and forth.
• 26:07
  And even though that title of head Brewer has been handed to
• 26:11
  me that that doesn't mean that I'm over there kind of like just
• 26:16
  deciding what's going on with the beers we have.
• 26:18
  We have a good formula. I think we have good recipes
• 26:20
  already. And it's just working on
• 26:21
  improving the recipes that we already have and kind of
• 26:24
  capitalizing on some of those seasonal releases that we have.
• 26:29
  There you are. Go ahead.
• 26:31
  Go ahead, Eric. Yeah.
• 26:32
  I was going to say, Eric, does that feel like about true to how
• 26:35
  that process goes? Yeah.
• 26:38
  And that's the trick with, you know, with being a small
• 26:41
  business too, is that there's to the production side and what
• 26:43
  you've got to brew. And then there's there's the
• 26:45
  business side. You know, it's like a lot of
• 26:47
  people will come to us and say, I'd like to start a brewery.
• 26:49
  And I say, they say, what's what's the number one thing
• 26:51
  you'd tell me and say, well, there's a difference between
• 26:54
  brewing and the business of brewing.
• 26:56
  And so you know what we actually produce, I was affected by, you
• 27:00
  know, obviously trends and what sells through our tap rooms.
• 27:05
  And of course, we July was our biggest distribution month we've
• 27:10
  had in our 11 year history. So you know what are.
• 27:13
  Thank you. Yeah, yeah.
• 27:14
  And that's, you know, that's a round of applause for our entire
• 27:17
  team. We we added another full time
• 27:19
  person in production this year. We added a bigger canning
• 27:22
  machine. I think I sent you guys a video
• 27:24
  of the cans coming through and, and it's just it's, it's kind
• 27:28
  of, you know, it's, it's kind of measured growth.
• 27:31
  We're a growth company for sure, which is a little kind of
• 27:35
  against the trend of where the industry is going right now, but
• 27:39
  we're growing and doing it incrementally.
• 27:42
  And so there's a number of things that factor into from a
• 27:47
  business standpoint and how we grow and what our plans and
• 27:50
  vision is. And then, you know, what we end
• 27:52
  up producing and at the, you know, at the brew house.
• 27:56
  So it's a, it's a nice combination of things, what's
• 27:58
  going on with business and, and what are we got to make and that
• 28:01
  kind of thing. But it's, it's done a world of
• 28:04
  good for me to, for Anna to take on that position, especially
• 28:08
  with us working to open a new place.
• 28:10
  And as she said earlier, I, I, I'm able to work, work on the
• 28:14
  business instead of working in it all the time.
• 28:16
  And as you can see, I'm, I'm still, I'm still here, I'm still
• 28:19
  brewing, which I don't ever want to give up brewing and being
• 28:22
  part of that process because that was the fun of it.
• 28:25
  That's the whole reason I did this.
• 28:27
  But you know, we're more businessy than we've ever been.
• 28:30
  Kat and I are the founders and the majority owners, but we do
• 28:33
  have 34 own Co owners, shareholders that are mostly
• 28:37
  local here. And so I also spend a good bit
• 28:40
  of time doing investor relations and, and you know, all of it's,
• 28:45
  it's the most business it's ever been, but it's also still a
• 28:48
  whole lot of fun and, and we're able to not only grow as a
• 28:51
  company, but grow as individuals.
• 29:00
  Wonder if we could change gears a little bit Eric wasn't let
• 29:04
  long ago you walked across the state of Rhode Island.
• 29:09
  I watched I watched your journey over those several days and it
• 29:13
  was hot you don't have to tell you right it was it was hot all
• 29:17
  the way up there it's hot everywhere talk about that
• 29:20
  experience a little bit right. It was over several 3 or 4 days
• 29:23
  and it was like 100° every single day.
• 29:25
  But you know, and and you did it for a certain cause too.
• 29:29
  Yeah, that's right. Hey, and you guys, thanks to you
• 29:31
  guys, you guys, I think we're donors and supporting and
• 29:33
  sharing things and all that. Then really, really appreciate
• 29:36
  you guys. And that's I'll tell you.
• 29:41
  Well, the the crazy part was, is that so I may have told you guys
• 29:44
  this, the story goes is that I've done several long distance
• 29:47
  walks. I love going for a walk for, for
• 29:51
  causes, long walks for causes. And so, you know, a few years
• 29:55
  back I walked across Tennessee for Saint Jude.
• 29:58
  And 20 years ago this year, I walked ocean to ocean all the
• 30:01
  way across the United States for American Cancer Society.
• 30:04
  That was a long walking, done various walks along the way over
• 30:07
  the years and that kind of thing.
• 30:08
  But last year I told my wife Kat, I said, I, I'm getting the
• 30:11
  itch. I got to, I got to do a walk
• 30:13
  again. And she said, we, we can't have
• 30:16
  you leave for, you know, a month or whatever it is.
• 30:18
  And so she said it's either Rhode Island or Hawaii.
• 30:24
  I think we both would have liked to have gone to Hawaii, but that
• 30:28
  wasn't in the cards. And so we picked Rhode Island.
• 30:32
  And, you know, it's only, it was only 28 miles from the
• 30:36
  Connecticut border to the Massachusetts border.
• 30:39
  And it was only two days of walking, believe it or not.
• 30:42
  So I did, what was it, 15 the first day and 13 the second.
• 30:46
  But as you pointed out, the kicker was it was 104 and 105 on
• 30:52
  those subsequent days. And the guy on the radio said
• 30:55
  it's the hottest on record at that point.
• 30:58
  And yeah, and I mean, I lost, I lost pounds and pounds and was,
• 31:03
  I mean, I lost several toenails as well.
• 31:05
  If you guys want, I can, I can put my feet, I can take my broom
• 31:08
  boots off and show you my toenails It but we were on the
• 31:11
  couch. It'll ruin your dinner for sure.
• 31:15
  But the cool thing was we we were raising money for Saint
• 31:20
  Jude. I think we raised, I got to
• 31:21
  check because I got to I got to get out there on the old
• 31:24
  Facebook page. It's called Walk across Rhode
• 31:26
  Island. And I think we raised about 2000
• 31:28
  for Saint Jude. And The funny thing was I didn't
• 31:31
  tell you guys this. Yeah, 2000 bucks for Saint Jude.
• 31:33
  That's good, right? But we came back from it and
• 31:37
  there was a an influencer you guys may know him is like a
• 31:40
  YouTube guy named Ryan Trahan. Do you know that name?
• 31:43
  He very young people, like very like big on YouTube.
• 31:49
  Anyway, long story, our two daughters who are in 6th and 8th
• 31:52
  grade now, they said let's watch these guys and he and his wife,
• 31:56
  they're like in their 20s and they're travelling around to the
• 31:58
  Airbnb's. The best Airbnb's in the US are
• 32:01
  driving and raising money for Saint Jude.
• 32:04
  And of course they got corporate sponsors and everything.
• 32:06
  And I was probably raised 2000 for Saint Jude.
• 32:09
  And I think at the end of their, their little journey, not
• 32:12
  little, but big journey, they raised like 11 million or
• 32:16
  something like that. And my girls were like, Dad,
• 32:19
  why, why didn't you, you know, why didn't you raise 11,000,000?
• 32:25
  I was like, well, you know, we burn up with 100 and 405°.
• 32:29
  We, we, everybody's got to do their part.
• 32:36
  Oh, man, yeah, I turned, I turned 44 yesterday and I'm
• 32:42
  feeling every bit of it. I can't, I can't walk long
• 32:44
  distances like I used to. So yeah, I haven't thought about
• 32:56
  it too much. But yeah, I don't, I haven't
• 33:01
  really thought about that too much.
• 33:02
  But there's a, there's a lot of states, there's several states
• 33:04
  that I haven't spent a whole lot of time in.
• 33:06
  And for me, I like to walk at 4 miles an hour because I, you
• 33:10
  know, it, it takes life a little slower when we're living in such
• 33:13
  a fast-paced time. You get to meet people.
• 33:16
  And of course, why not do it for a good cause?
• 33:18
  So definitely thinking about it. But the, the Rhode Island thing
• 33:22
  and then, you know, in the hundreds of degrees got me
• 33:25
  thinking, Oh, let's say, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll think
• 33:29
  about that for maybe another year.
• 33:35
  That's it. Yeah, I tell you about a beer.
• 33:40
  Beer tastes really good after that though.
• 33:43
  You guys recently had a pretty cool social media post and maybe
• 33:47
  you've done them before, but Anna, you were featured on it
• 33:50
  and it was, you know where I'm going.
• 33:53
  I thought it was great. And I've seen this trend.
• 33:55
  One of the somebody else is throwing beer at you, right?
• 33:58
  Like right at your face. And you have to guess what the
• 34:00
  beer is. And there were three of them in
• 34:02
  the one I saw. I said day one something, you
• 34:05
  were three for three, you got them all, but the last one you
• 34:08
  threw actually threw the cup with.
• 34:10
  This was that plan. I have to, I have to step in for
• 34:15
  Blake on this because the if you watch it, it progresses to a
• 34:19
  little bit more enthusiastic, we'll say every throw and I
• 34:23
  actually. Wanted him to throw.
• 34:25
  Every cup, the way that he threw the last, but preferably at my
• 34:28
  chest and not at my face. And so he came out for the first
• 34:30
  one and you can only be dry for the first throw.
• 34:33
  So after that you're going to be wet and you're going to know
• 34:35
  that one of the beers already been thrown.
• 34:36
  So he's like, I'll just redo it. I'll redo it.
• 34:38
  And I was like, no, we'll just have to keep, we'll keep going.
• 34:40
  So his first one was so gentle, but it actually like barely
• 34:43
  splashed on me. Blake is very, he's, he's a good
• 34:46
  friend and also a very respectful guy.
• 34:48
  So he wasn't trying to like smash me with a beer.
• 34:51
  And at the end I said, Blake, we've gotten 2 beers and like,
• 34:53
  this is not bad. There's not a whole lot that's
• 34:55
  been going on. I need you to really throw the
• 34:57
  next one. And I think he, he did not
• 34:59
  intend for it to hit me in the face, but man, the end of the
• 35:02
  cup really hit the bottom of my nose and my forehead and just
• 35:05
  spewed off the side. That's funny.
• 35:09
  It was, it was a good time. We like, we like to occasionally
• 35:11
  do fun things like that and they often do end up in me being
• 35:15
  covered in some, some amount of beers that that trend is fun.
• 35:18
  We, we, we occasionally hop on whatever trends going around and
• 35:22
  I actually had no idea whether or not I'd be able to guess,
• 35:24
  especially on that first one. It just splashed on my chest.
• 35:26
  I, I had to go based off strictly off of smell.
• 35:28
  So it was, it was. It was a fun time.
• 35:31
  I was going to ask you, were you worried going into that you
• 35:33
  wouldn't get it right? I was, and you know, I was like,
• 35:36
  you know, if I mess it up, that's OK, we'll probably do
• 35:39
  another video of it. And I don't, you know, we do, we
• 35:42
  do a flight downtown sometimes. This was Blake's idea.
• 35:45
  Blake was the one who's throwing the beer where he'll do a
• 35:47
  mystery flight and he'll pour you 4 beers that he chooses and
• 35:50
  then if you can guess them correctly, you get a discount
• 35:52
  off that flight. And even that I think people
• 35:56
  occasionally, because we have such a large tap amount over it,
• 35:59
  especially downtown, it can throw people off.
• 36:01
  So I, I really wasn't sure with the throat, with the throwing
• 36:03
  just on my, my body. Hell, that was it worked out
• 36:07
  that they ever. We'll see if next time I'm able
• 36:09
  to get three more. Well done it really.
• 36:12
  It made for a good video. It really did.
• 36:15
  I did see one somebody else had done when I don't know who it
• 36:17
  was. I know it was a couple of
• 36:18
  buddies do it and the guy, he threw the he threw the beer out
• 36:21
  of me, threw the whole can in his face.
• 36:23
  Well, the impressive ones are when they'll do all domestics,
• 36:26
  so you're just distinguishing between like Miller and Yingling
• 36:30
  and like Bud Light. And that would be really, really
• 36:32
  difficult. I was at least able to know that
• 36:34
  we have some variety on draft and I could probably smell or
• 36:37
  taste something that was different.
• 36:39
  But I saw one where the a winery did it, which is throwing red
• 36:43
  wine is a lot more invasive than beer and the owner it was the.
• 36:46
  Owner So this would have been like Eric was.
• 36:48
  Wrapped. Up in a trash bag around her
• 36:50
  neck and they threw red wine on her and she was like.
• 36:56
  I told Steve recently that he could do that to me, he could
• 36:59
  throw the beer at me, and I'm surprised he's not taking it up,
• 37:02
  taking me up on. That yeah, we get our range and
• 37:04
  I, I, we just have to find some beer that we don't want to
• 37:06
  waste. We're certainly not going to do
• 37:08
  Johnson City beer. I mean it's too good to good to
• 37:10
  drink and throw on. Anybody.
• 37:12
  You know what? At least we'll have to find some
• 37:14
  some crappy beer out there. Well, they were getting it from
• 37:16
  the well though, so they probably had all, you know, as
• 37:19
  much as you wanted. Yeah.
• 37:20
  Yeah, for sure. Well.
• 37:22
  And if you do any video like that, you always have people who
• 37:24
  are like, what are you wasting that beer?
• 37:26
  Four. And it's like, well, it was 3
• 37:27
  pints of beer and we, we got a good video out of it and I
• 37:31
  enjoyed some of it. Some of it went in my mouth so
• 37:33
  that. And the grand, some of these are
• 37:35
  hoping that produces more people to go drink more beer.
• 37:38
  And then exactly you waste one. But you, you know, you gain, you
• 37:41
  gain some more followers or drinkers or whatever.
• 37:43
  So yeah, I enjoyed it. Hey, how much actually?
• 37:47
  Maybe one of my favorite parts of my job is that sometimes we
• 37:50
  do get to new things. But I saw this at day one.
• 37:54
  I was looking for more posts after that.
• 37:56
  I like is this going to be a series?
• 37:57
  Yeah, really it is. But we we might do our next one
• 38:01
  like next week or. Something, well, I have to.
• 38:03
  I have to let my clothes dry out a little bit.
• 38:05
  What? Are we looking?
• 38:07
  For Eric, we should have had somebody do that to you while
• 38:09
  you were walking and may have woke, woke you up a little more
• 38:11
  and motivated and keep going a little bit more, you know, throw
• 38:14
  some beer on the guy, you know? Yeah, I would have appreciated
• 38:18
  that, you know, have like a little a table every mile or
• 38:21
  something like that with some cups of I think my wife and my
• 38:27
  daughters would have actually really enjoyed splashing me in
• 38:30
  the face with, with beers. So that's, that's a good idea,
• 38:33
  yeah. That'd be great, yeah.
• 38:37
  Keep going, Dad. Hey, you know, we know, we know
• 38:41
  the whole beer trends and everything.
• 38:43
  It changes. It seems like it changes by the
• 38:44
  week. What, what beers are going to be
• 38:46
  popular now? How much brainstorming goes in
• 38:49
  between the both of you of like, where are we going to be at in
• 38:52
  six months? Is it is it becoming more
• 38:54
  difficult? Is it easier for you?
• 38:57
  How? How is it at this point?
• 38:59
  Yeah, we, we do some, we've, we've gotten to a point, you
• 39:04
  know, this is probably the first year that we've ever identified
• 39:08
  these are our flagship beers. And so we're producing more than
• 39:13
  ever of those flagship beers and we're selling those beers.
• 39:15
  So, you know, we've kind of identified what people like to
• 39:18
  drink either through our tap rooms or in our area.
• 39:22
  And, and that, you know, I'm not, I'm not so sure.
• 39:25
  I mean, you, you think you hear about, you know, the hazy Ipas
• 39:29
  all the time. You hear about, you know, pastry
• 39:31
  stouts now, pastry sours, you know, Zul and Southern Grist, I
• 39:37
  think are really good at, good at making those styles.
• 39:41
  And honestly, those two guys, you know, with, with with the
• 39:44
  acquisition, which which happened happening as we speak,
• 39:48
  they're if you said, you know, name the OR at least two of the
• 39:54
  hottest breweries in Tennessee. I mean, Zul and Southern Grist
• 39:58
  are putting out stuff that people are clamoring for.
• 40:02
  And so sometimes you look at breweries we do and we have, you
• 40:08
  know, we have the the luxury of being over the hill from
• 40:12
  Asheville too, which, you know, those guys have got 40 breweries
• 40:16
  and putting out all kinds of interesting stuff.
• 40:19
  But places like Burial over there, that gist, I mean, those
• 40:22
  guys can do some hazy Ipas and some really good pilsners and
• 40:26
  things like that. So sometimes you look to the
• 40:29
  other breweries and then sometimes you look good.
• 40:31
  Yeah, there you go, Apollo. And then sometimes you look at,
• 40:35
  you know, places like Kent Taylor, you know, over a
• 40:37
  Blackstone, those guys do a lot of traditional styles and man,
• 40:41
  those are good beer drinking beers and they do those styles
• 40:44
  really well. So, you know, I don't, I don't
• 40:47
  know that, you know, for a while there the brewing industry
• 40:50
  seemed like it was, you know, something new every six months.
• 40:55
  But it seems like it's, I don't know to you guys or maybe Anna,
• 40:58
  you can talk to this in your experience and what you're
• 41:00
  feeling. But it feels like that that kind
• 41:03
  of like rapid trend every six months or every year, like
• 41:06
  what's the next thing? I don't know, it feels like
• 41:08
  that's slowed down just a little bit.
• 41:10
  I. Think that it has, I think
• 41:12
  there's been, we've seen a little bit of a plateau and like
• 41:16
  the next hottest thing. I think at this point, I, I
• 41:19
  don't know when craft beer was the health that the the biggest
• 41:24
  and most booming probably in the early 2000 tens 2000, whatever
• 41:29
  that period was. But I would, I would say that at
• 41:31
  this point it's leveled out and, you know, to kind of go back to
• 41:34
  the initial question that we asked you at the beginning,
• 41:36
  what, what do you think could be on a tap list at all times?
• 41:38
  And it's going to do well. One of the ones that I see
• 41:40
  everywhere I go is that you'll go somewhere and it'll be out of
• 41:43
  24 taps, 12 will be some version of an IPA.
• 41:47
  And that's kind of an ongoing joke in the craft industry
• 41:50
  sometimes that like, oh, they released another IPA, but they
• 41:53
  do sell and they do they do well and you can release 13 different
• 41:57
  variations, kind of a of a similar type of IPA and people
• 42:01
  are still going to come and want to try it.
• 42:03
  And I, and I also think that we're seeing a little bit of a
• 42:06
  return to some of the more traditional pilsners and loggers
• 42:10
  and easy drinking beers, a little bit of that.
• 42:13
  I think that high ABV craze has maybe worn off a little bit.
• 42:16
  You still have the enthusiasts who that's what they want, but a
• 42:18
  lot of times people want a 4 1/2 or a 5% beer and something
• 42:22
  that's just going to be enjoyable for one or two or
• 42:25
  three, but is something that they're familiar with and it's
• 42:28
  not going to like blow their socks off necessarily.
• 42:31
  We still like to toy with the creativity of all of it and I
• 42:33
  think Johnson City Brewing in particular is kind of known for
• 42:36
  that. Like nothing is off limits.
• 42:38
  We just released a Sauerkraut Oktoberfest, which is a once a
• 42:41
  year type thing. It's very, very small amount,
• 42:44
  but it's something that we do every year and it's something
• 42:46
  that we've become known for, at least locally and we still do
• 42:50
  things like that. You get Steve, did you get the
• 42:53
  transfer? Was it, was it on tap when you
• 42:59
  were at the tap room? The Sauerkraut.
• 43:01
  Tap it was not, but we we wanted to jump in the Oktoberfest a
• 43:06
  little more on the on the podcast because here we are in
• 43:08
  Oktoberfest season. And I was really fascinated, as
• 43:11
  I mentioned when I came in there, because I did have the
• 43:14
  butterscotch Oktoberfest and I think you also had your other
• 43:18
  traditional Marzen in there as well.
• 43:21
  And I was curious as to the idea behind a butterscotch
• 43:25
  Oktoberfest because I would never thought about that.
• 43:28
  And I thought, wow. And, and I could taste the
• 43:30
  butterscotch, but I thought it was a great combination with the
• 43:33
  Oktoberfest beer. And in fact, we were at a place
• 43:37
  called Deep South Growlers, which is a tap room here in
• 43:40
  Nashville. And one of the locations are
• 43:42
  right around the corner from Scott's house.
• 43:44
  And Abby Anderton, who is the daughter of one of the owners, I
• 43:48
  was telling her about it. And she's like, that sounds
• 43:51
  tremendous. Talk about that.
• 43:53
  The idea behind the Butterscotch Oktoberfest?
• 43:58
  Yeah, I think that was, I want to say that was either the first
• 44:01
  or second year that I worked there.
• 44:03
  We kind of developed that one a little bit.
• 44:04
  That was that was a little bit based off of a lot of times,
• 44:07
  especially at that point in the brewery brewery, we would
• 44:10
  release a base of something and then some variation off of that.
• 44:14
  And so often when we would release plan our release
• 44:17
  schedule, we'd say what's the what's the thing that we want to
• 44:19
  try a small amount of. And I think the goal with that
• 44:22
  one was kind of like the the like butter beer, like Harry
• 44:25
  Potter, like that, that idea of like a light and kind of like
• 44:29
  sweeter version of like a traditional style.
• 44:31
  I think we talked about caramel for a little bit and then we
• 44:34
  talked about butterscotch. And I don't remember
• 44:37
  specifically why we landed on butterscotch, but it was kind of
• 44:40
  a we'll give this a try. And I think the first year, we
• 44:42
  probably only made, I don't know, like the like a couple
• 44:47
  barrels worth of that. And now at this point, it's
• 44:49
  almost split down the middle with the traditional Oktoberfest
• 44:51
  and the Butterscotches. We always make sure that we have
• 44:53
  that on draft and we also make sure we have it on cans at this
• 44:56
  point. Eric, do you remember how we
• 44:58
  landed specifically on Butterscotch?
• 45:01
  Yeah. Well, I think it was probably
• 45:02
  just experimenting with things, you know, and I know that it's
• 45:07
  really fun. There's a kind of a funny Side
• 45:09
  Story to this guys is that we've done, we're, we're about to have
• 45:12
  our, what is it 6th or 7th or maybe 6th Oktoberfest that we're
• 45:17
  having on September 20th. And but you know, we've made the
• 45:22
  butterscotch for three or four years, I think, and maybe maybe
• 45:25
  the pretzel version for one or two years.
• 45:28
  And same with the sauerkraut. So we have a essentially we have
• 45:31
  a flight of those, those beers. But the funny joke, ongoing joke
• 45:36
  about the butterscotch is that we use, you know, real
• 45:38
  butterscotch to make, to make those beers on top of the
• 45:42
  Marzen. And I've gotten ribbed and and
• 45:45
  pinged by not only other Brewers, but by, you know, craft
• 45:50
  beer enthusiasts online because butterscotch can be known as an
• 45:55
  off flavor aroma like you, you made a bad beer kind of thing.
• 46:00
  And I, and I've always had to say no, we, we intentionally are
• 46:02
  putting butterscotch in there and doing that as a beer.
• 46:05
  So it's like one of those, it's like one of those flavorings or,
• 46:10
  or kinds of ingredients that that it can be known as an off
• 46:17
  flavor in there, but is the real deal.
• 46:19
  So like apples would be the same thing.
• 46:21
  That can be an off flavor and that kind of thing, you know,
• 46:25
  horse blanket, you know, or, or farmhouse kind of things there.
• 46:29
  There can be things that are, you know, actual off flavors.
• 46:33
  But when we tried the butterscotch, it was kind of a
• 46:35
  funny thing because I was getting pinged and and still to
• 46:38
  this day get pinged a little bit about, Hey, man, is that a, did
• 46:42
  you guys put butterscotch in there?
• 46:43
  Or is it just you're, you made a bad beer and tried to, it's
• 46:47
  real. I mean, it's real butterscotch.
• 46:50
  So but but people like it. And to Anna's point there it,
• 46:57
  it's just, you know, part of our experimenting and trying to have
• 47:01
  fun with it and do some different things, not just, hey,
• 47:04
  we're, you know, going up against, you know, who are the
• 47:07
  guys like the German, main German houses like Pauliner and,
• 47:11
  you know, the guys that have been making Maherzin's or Fes
• 47:14
  beers for hundreds of years. And Oh my goodness, they're so
• 47:18
  delicious. And they give me Brewers
• 47:20
  jealousy and all that kind of thing.
• 47:23
  So just, you know, just be able to mix it up and hopefully we're
• 47:26
  still living in the world where, you know, people come to small
• 47:29
  breweries and tap rooms to try something different, you know,
• 47:33
  and if you've come there and, you know, Scott, I saw that you
• 47:35
  were drinking Apollo 13 IPA, which is one that we've pretty
• 47:39
  much made from the beginning. Of course, that recipe, the one
• 47:42
  that you're drinking out of that can is a whole lot different
• 47:44
  than the original one that we first made.
• 47:47
  The reason why we called it Apollo 13, it was after the
• 47:50
  Apollo 13 mission because it was a near disaster the first time
• 47:54
  we brewed it. And, you know, we still like to
• 47:58
  have fun with it. And the the all four of the, you
• 48:00
  know, the regular Marzen, I love drinking that one, especially
• 48:04
  off a draft. It's real tasty.
• 48:05
  And butterscotch and the pretzel and the sauerkraut.
• 48:08
  The sauerkraut. And Steve, I'm kind of happy you
• 48:11
  didn't get to try that one because it definitely smells
• 48:14
  better than it tastes. I would.
• 48:18
  Have tried it through, I'll try almost anything I would have
• 48:21
  tried it my. Friend, totally.
• 48:22
  I would have tried it. I think that one tastes better
• 48:25
  than it smells. That smell is the nose on that
• 48:27
  one is strong. You put that one up to your nose
• 48:29
  and you're like, I'm not so sure about.
• 48:31
  This does a little bit of sauerkraut go a long way, and
• 48:34
  when you're brewing that. It dies and you know, it's,
• 48:37
  it's, it's yeah. Make making it that day is
• 48:41
  always funny because every time we we pull it out, we're like,
• 48:44
  what are we? What are we doing over here?
• 48:46
  What are we doing? Are there other?
• 48:51
  Are there other? Oktoberfest.
• 48:52
  Version beers that you're going to have out during the season
• 48:56
  here. Those are our four, those are
• 48:57
  our 4 ones that we usually do. We, we kind of release our
• 49:00
  Oktoberfest in tears. We first release release just
• 49:04
  the base and then the butterscotch.
• 49:05
  And then the second round that we brew, we we pull off the
• 49:09
  pretzel and the sauerkraut. We have a flight release.
• 49:11
  And then the third release in September is set for the actual
• 49:15
  Oktoberfest event that we have at the end of that month.
• 49:18
  So we try to keep things rolling with the butterscotch throughout
• 49:21
  and the pretzel sauerkraut is definitely a one time thing.
• 49:25
  But other than that, I don't think we've, I don't think we've
• 49:27
  tried anything else. And I and we kind of, I, I don't
• 49:30
  know that we're going to do anything else this year anyway.
• 49:32
  I think it's great. You've got multiple variants of
• 49:34
  it though. Not a lot of people do that.
• 49:35
  It's just the 1. And I love the idea of the
• 49:37
  butterscotch. I haven't had it, but I think
• 49:39
  it's a really nice pairy. Yeah, it ends up working out and
• 49:44
  I think it literally was just a sometimes we're looking at some
• 49:48
  extra ingredients we have or sometimes there's an idea that
• 49:50
  came along. One of our former employees
• 49:52
  said, what if we put sauerkraut in there and we said we'll give
• 49:55
  it a try and see what it tastes like.
• 49:56
  So we'll try a new thing once, you know, and, and it worked out
• 50:01
  pretty well. Is there an ingredient that you
• 50:03
  guys think would go well on a Marzen logger?
• 50:08
  That's a good. Question, you mentioned caramel.
• 50:11
  I would think that might be would be OK too.
• 50:14
  I think that might be a nice pairing, like a nice, you know,
• 50:16
  Marzan or something. God, I don't know, maybe.
• 50:20
  A little bit of chocolate, you think?
• 50:22
  Maybe just a little bit. Yeah, we put, we put chocolate
• 50:25
  in beers for for sure before. Yeah, yeah.
• 50:29
  I never would have guessed sauerkraut though, but I would I
• 50:32
  would try it in a heartbeat. We we did a there was a few
• 50:39
  years back. There's a you guys know what
• 50:41
  ramps are I? Don't.
• 50:45
  Think so. Ramps are wild, wild onions that
• 50:47
  are grown in our area here. But there's a ramp, there's
• 50:51
  actually a whole festival that they have for ramps, these wild
• 50:54
  onions. And so one year we got asked if
• 50:56
  we'd make a ramp beer and we made a ramp pilsner.
• 50:59
  So wild onion pilsner and used the ramps and stuffed it down in
• 51:04
  the keg and then racked the pilsner right on top of it.
• 51:07
  And it's so funny. It's one of those things that
• 51:09
  kind of like sauerkraut that he'd say, I don't know, I guess
• 51:11
  I'll try and sip of this thing. But I'll never forget there was
• 51:14
  this lady out of Indiana that bought, bought a bunch of them.
• 51:17
  And her husband was saying, no, I don't, we don't want to take
• 51:20
  any with us. And she said, yeah, make us a
• 51:21
  bunch of crawlers of it. And it definitely left you with
• 51:26
  some breath after you drink it. You know, it's interesting at
• 51:34
  the minimum because I actually really enjoy, you know, you've
• 51:37
  got like, you know, well balanced beers, then you've got
• 51:40
  sweet beers and then you've got some savory beers.
• 51:44
  And so we made a pizza beer a few years ago that was, you
• 51:47
  know, tomato paste and basil in there on top of a beer Embrail
• 51:52
  that was made with coriander. And it was a savory beer, But I,
• 51:57
  I probably drank three or four of those.
• 51:59
  And it's just kind of being open minded to what a beer could
• 52:02
  possibly be. And, and that, that's part of
• 52:05
  the beauty, I think a craft beer.
• 52:07
  And that that may be what's left, you know, is that being
• 52:11
  being open to trying different things and then, you know,
• 52:14
  knowing what you enjoy and knowing what you enjoy and
• 52:16
  knowing what you don't enjoy. I want to tell you, you know,
• 52:21
  obviously I had, I think one of the first beers I had when you
• 52:25
  brought us some here in Nashville with the Peaches,
• 52:27
  which was outstanding and tremendous.
• 52:29
  I've only had seen a variation of that at one other brewery,
• 52:35
  and we were, Scott and I were at this brewery called Little Miami
• 52:39
  Brewing in Cincinnati in mid-May, and they had a Peaches
• 52:44
  beer up there similar to what you guys had.
• 52:48
  I haven't seen too many of those around, though, I thought.
• 52:52
  But but yeah, I mean, I think Peaches, as you said, is one of
• 52:55
  your flagships. It's tremendous.
• 52:58
  We, you know, we brew, we brew beers that we like to drink
• 53:02
  ourselves, but we obviously brewing beers that brew beers
• 53:07
  that our customers will drink. And somehow, and you can talk to
• 53:10
  this to someone who kind of came along several years ago and, and
• 53:14
  saw who we, we were and what, what beers we made.
• 53:16
  But we end up doing a lot of fruited beers, you know, and
• 53:21
  Peaches was an accident there. And it's our, by far, it's our
• 53:24
  best selling product and it's, people will say it's pretty
• 53:28
  unique. People will say, I don't
• 53:29
  normally drink beer, but I can drink that, which is a good
• 53:32
  place to be for, for business. But a lot of our beers have
• 53:35
  ended up being fruited and people drink a ton of them.
• 53:38
  So I don't know, Anna, have you, what have you seen over the
• 53:41
  years as far as our, our beers and, and what we've done there?
• 53:47
  Yeah, I think that the experimental stuff has always
• 53:49
  been something that the brewery's been known for.
• 53:51
  But then also the the fruited. I mean some of our some of our
• 53:54
  best sellers year round and then throughout the summer are are
• 53:57
  have fruits. We have our the Peaches beer, we
• 53:59
  have blue and gold that we've room for like ETSU and that
• 54:02
  that's that's a gold nail Blueberries.
• 54:05
  We have one of our best sellers this summer was BlackBerry IPA
• 54:08
  and that's on a like a a hoppy beer.
• 54:10
  But that that blend worked out well.
• 54:13
  I'm trying to think we have, I mean, apple butter golden Ale
• 54:15
  is, is one of our better seasonal releases that we could
• 54:19
  probably keep that one on year round.
• 54:20
  But there's only so many flagships that you can keep up
• 54:22
  with at a time. I'm trying to think of some of
• 54:25
  the other fruited ones, but I, I would say that we're probably
• 54:29
  best known for like the accessibility of the fruit of
• 54:31
  beers. And then also just some of the
• 54:33
  fun stuff that we do. I was thinking when you were
• 54:35
  talking about the ramp beer, Eric, I remember the, there was
• 54:38
  a Rosemary IPA that we did and it's like you would pour that
• 54:41
  and Rosemary goes a long way. And so you would just smell the
• 54:45
  Rosemary like crazy. And I know that somebody took
• 54:47
  crowlers of it to cook potatoes and like a pot roast in like
• 54:51
  they they took, they took a crowler just for that.
• 54:53
  And. We've done lavender things.
• 54:55
  We've done. I made a horrible, but I'll say
• 54:58
  because it was me who made it. I made a really not good molay
• 55:01
  lager one year. There was just one keg and I
• 55:04
  looked up all the spices that's like in a traditional molay
• 55:07
  sauce and it was paprika and garlic and it just that was one
• 55:11
  that that one was tough to even get anybody to try a little 5 oz
• 55:15
  taster. We get to try various things and
• 55:19
  as we expand as a brewery, we still want to stay true to those
• 55:22
  roots but also be able to be taken seriously and also have a
• 55:27
  product that is a good and solid beer just within the craft
• 55:31
  brewing industry in general. And I do want to say real quick,
• 55:35
  Scott, sorry to interrupt you there.
• 55:36
  You're good. Yeah, I do want to say the
• 55:39
  BlackBerry IPA when I was at your brewery, because there was,
• 55:42
  there were several of them on the board that I had.
• 55:44
  And I'm like, yeah, I want to try something else because I've
• 55:47
  had Peaches and, you know, Apollo and you always want to
• 55:49
  try something different. And your guy working there, I
• 55:52
  wish I could remember his name. He was real knowledgeable, real
• 55:54
  nice. And he recommended, he said, you
• 55:56
  know, are you an IPA guy? And I'm like, oh, yeah.
• 55:58
  And he recommended the BlackBerry IPA.
• 56:00
  And I'll tell you what, that was really a really, really great
• 56:03
  taste. I appreciate that.
• 56:05
  I think that. I think that one of the cool
• 56:06
  things about putting fruit on IPA sometimes is that on their
• 56:09
  own, those hops have a high level of complexity.
• 56:12
  And so sometimes they just it's nice to just let them sit by
• 56:14
  themselves. But sometimes like the orange
• 56:17
  Creamsicle, the big orange creamsicle double IPA that we
• 56:19
  released this week, that kind of just enhances what's going on
• 56:22
  anyway, the hops that we have in there, the Mosaic and Azaca are
• 56:25
  incredibly juicy. Like it's, it's already just as
• 56:29
  a double IPA thick and like juicy beer.
• 56:32
  And to sort of add in just a extra level of orange juice and
• 56:35
  a little bit of vanilla in there goes a long way to kind of
• 56:38
  highlight what's already going on now you're making.
• 56:40
  Me want to drive right now to get some of these beers I gotta
• 56:44
  return yeah okay. I was going to say it was, it
• 56:50
  probably was Blake. And that's great.
• 56:52
  That's great. You guys must have a lot of with
• 56:54
  all the stuff you do, you guys must have a lot of customers
• 56:56
  that come in for the for the crazy stuff, right, For the
• 56:59
  small bad stuff and the new stuff that comes out.
• 57:00
  Like I would be that person, hey, they're dropping something.
• 57:04
  Same here. Yeah, I'm totally going to go
• 57:06
  get it. Do you have a lot of those
• 57:07
  customers? Like no matter what you're
• 57:08
  dropping, they're going to try it.
• 57:10
  Oh, definitely, yeah. That's, that's a big part.
• 57:12
  I mean, that's that's how I was a customer really.
• 57:14
  There was they used to have this contraption, I think it's
• 57:17
  called, did you call it a Randall Eric, where it's like
• 57:19
  that you can actually circulate beer through a closed system.
• 57:23
  And so they would in this closed like pipe system basically.
• 57:26
  And then your draft line pours through that separate thing.
• 57:30
  They would put all kind. I mean, they put an entire
• 57:32
  chocolate cake down in there and they put like farm fresh
• 57:35
  strawberries. They jam them in there.
• 57:36
  They put I I don't know what different hot Peppers, things
• 57:39
  like that. And so then you have your
• 57:41
  regular beer off the draft that just pours right through, that
• 57:43
  goes right into your glass. And I mean, that was that was
• 57:46
  one of the reasons why I would go back because once a week they
• 57:48
  would stick something in that Randall and pour a beer through
• 57:52
  it. And there are a lot of people
• 57:54
  who who have remained faithful to the cause of some of that
• 57:58
  experimentation. Even in spite of that, right?
• 58:02
  That's right, I. Think it would be great.
• 58:03
  So you're really infusing whatever that thing you're
• 58:05
  putting in there. You're just infusing the beer
• 58:07
  with that. Yeah, we don't, we don't do that
• 58:10
  as much. I don't.
• 58:10
  We haven't done that in a long time.
• 58:11
  But when, when I was first coming as a customer, that was
• 58:14
  something that you guys did like once a week, I think on like
• 58:16
  Wednesdays or something. Why not?
• 58:25
  That's awesome. Yeah, you're doing that.
• 58:29
  You're you're poking beer with hot sticks.
• 58:35
  Yeah, now that's a lot of fun. Some of it, you know, I think
• 58:37
  that the beer industry is gone and some of it, you know, is
• 58:40
  about is about the beer. But where the industry kind of
• 58:43
  post COVID is, it's not just about making and selling beer.
• 58:46
  It's about having experiences at the tap rooms and what do you
• 58:50
  have to do there? You know, you got trivia or
• 58:53
  you've got music or you're poking beers or whatever it is.
• 58:56
  It's it's it's how are you going to get people to the tap room?
• 58:59
  Because they're going to drink and eat there.
• 59:02
  You know, we know that, but I think that's evolved a little.
• 59:04
  But too, pre COVID, it was like you could make beers and make
• 59:08
  interesting things and people were just coming for beer.
• 59:11
  And now you got to have, you got to have things to do.
• 59:15
  Yeah, but I also go back to the Butterscotch IPA because I'm
• 59:18
  going, I've never been to any, you know, I I drink a lot of
• 59:22
  Oktoberfest when it comes out and I've never even seen anybody
• 59:25
  close to having a Butterscotch IPA.
• 59:28
  And now I think Johnson City Brewing, man.
• 59:31
  And you know, I can go out and tell everybody that, Erica, I
• 59:34
  know, I know obviously you get into Nashville quite often and
• 59:39
  we've seen your beer distributed at various locations.
• 59:42
  Are you trying to do that more? Are you trying to expand your
• 59:44
  beer out of Johnson City and the other areas?
• 1:00:08
  Yeah. You know, we because we're self
• 1:00:11
  distributed, it's kind of, you know, as far as we'd like to to
• 1:00:15
  go, you know, and some people along I-40 and in Nashville have
• 1:00:19
  have given us a chance. We really appreciate that.
• 1:00:23
  And so it's, it's a little bit of a tricky thing.
• 1:00:26
  You know, as we, as our little business grows, I'm trying to
• 1:00:29
  figure out, you know, as we do it ourselves, really we're
• 1:00:33
  running three businesses because we've got a manufacturing
• 1:00:36
  business, we've got, you know, our, our wholesale business and
• 1:00:39
  we've got our retail business. And so juggling those things can
• 1:00:42
  be a challenge at at times at our size.
• 1:00:46
  But, you know, we we have some plans, especially going into
• 1:00:50
  2026 and beyond, just to continue to incrementally grow
• 1:00:56
  our distribution. And at the end of the day, and
• 1:01:00
  probably a lot of breweries, especially the small kind of mom
• 1:01:03
  and pop ones like us, is that, you know, yeah, we may can sell
• 1:01:06
  beer to pay the bills, but we're in the business of building
• 1:01:09
  relationships. And so, you know, that's what we
• 1:01:13
  do is we slowly build these relationships around in our
• 1:01:17
  area, reinforce those relationships and build
• 1:01:20
  relationships along I-40 and in central Tennessee.
• 1:01:23
  And those people are nice enough to, you know, give us a tap or
• 1:01:26
  put some of our cans there and, and also have patience with us
• 1:01:29
  to, you know, to try and improve our product.
• 1:01:33
  Is that, you know, we talked about all these different beers.
• 1:01:36
  We like, like to have fun with it.
• 1:01:37
  But you know, we, we've made some good beers along the way.
• 1:01:40
  We've made some bad beers along the way.
• 1:01:43
  And so at the end of the day, the whole thing is, is we like
• 1:01:48
  to have a nice plan there and, and be in control of building
• 1:01:53
  those relationships and, and selling those products because
• 1:01:57
  who, who knows those products better than we do.
• 1:01:59
  It's, it's us. And so not, not major, major
• 1:02:05
  plans to, you know, pick up 100 accounts in, in Central
• 1:02:09
  Tennessee, that kind of thing. But we're just, it's still
• 1:02:13
  surreal and, and very exciting to be able to say, Hey, you
• 1:02:16
  know, our cans beer at Main Street Liquor in Nashville or,
• 1:02:20
  you know, you guys knew we, we actually got on at the airport,
• 1:02:23
  at the Nashville airport and that took some time and security
• 1:02:27
  clearance and all the things you got to do to do that.
• 1:02:29
  But it, it sometimes is just about doing something new and,
• 1:02:35
  and being able to achieve things, achieve some things like
• 1:02:38
  that, that, that keep us going and keep this thing exciting
• 1:02:42
  after, you know, 11 years in business.
• 1:02:45
  And we're, we're excited about our future.
• 1:02:47
  We don't know all the plans, but we're excited about it.
• 1:02:51
  That's amazing. You've put a lot of miles on
• 1:02:53
  your car between Johnson City and Nashville since we've talked
• 1:02:56
  last, I know. That was a week or two ago.
• 1:02:59
  That was my fifteenth trip to Nashville this year.
• 1:03:03
  Yeah. So a couple times a month or
• 1:03:05
  sometimes a couple times a month, and we'll do at least one
• 1:03:08
  more time the rest of the year. And then, you know, I'm still,
• 1:03:13
  I'm finishing up my 2 year term as president of the State Guild
• 1:03:17
  and we'll have our annual meeting in November.
• 1:03:20
  And like last year, take all of our managers of Johnson City
• 1:03:23
  Brewing to Nashville to have those meetings, meet the other
• 1:03:27
  breweries and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:03:29
  And it's always a, it's always a great time.
• 1:03:33
  That's fantastic. I did see that you stopped at
• 1:03:35
  Stokehouse the other day. Yes, yes.
• 1:03:39
  You know Chad and Mike. Well, I know.
• 1:03:40
  And I saw you stuff and we were talking about traditional beers
• 1:03:42
  earlier and they came to mind right away.
• 1:03:44
  Like what they're doing over their stuff is traditional and
• 1:03:47
  they are wonderful at what they do for the short time that
• 1:03:49
  they've been open. I'd say, yeah, I'm, I'm super
• 1:03:52
  excited for those guys because I know they worked hard to get
• 1:03:55
  that place open and wanted to have their own place.
• 1:03:57
  And of course, that combination, Chad definitely knows what he's
• 1:04:00
  doing on the brew house and and Mike does too on the brew side,
• 1:04:04
  buddy, the BBQ side. Oh my goodness, yeah.
• 1:04:06
  That's that's a good combination there.
• 1:04:10
  Yeah, I was there for lunch on this past Friday and I left
• 1:04:13
  there. I didn't eat dinner, I'll tell
• 1:04:16
  you that. I left there so full because I I
• 1:04:18
  got like everything that was on the board.
• 1:04:20
  I get the Reds, I get the sausage land cooking, I get the
• 1:04:23
  German salad, potato salad. I got it all.
• 1:04:26
  I went to go friends a bit that I was dropping some beers off
• 1:04:30
  maybe the ones that you're drinking there off to Main
• 1:04:32
  Street liquor like 10 in the morning and I was like, hey,
• 1:04:34
  these guys are right next door. You know, you know my style.
• 1:04:37
  I'm like pop into town and popping out.
• 1:04:39
  So I go over there and knock on the door and Chads in there
• 1:04:42
  brewing and I bought a couple of 6 packs of their beer.
• 1:04:46
  And then he's like, you better just say hi to Mike.
• 1:04:48
  He's out in the trailer and those guys are like, can you
• 1:04:50
  stick around to eat? And I was like, no, Nope, Nope.
• 1:04:53
  I got to get on the road and get back to old JC there.
• 1:04:55
  But I'm I'm excited for those guys.
• 1:05:03
  Yeah, next time through, when I was there for lunch, it wasn't
• 1:05:05
  ready yet, but he was smoking Bologna for, like, Bologna
• 1:05:07
  sandwiches later in the day. And I was like, damn it, I
• 1:05:10
  missed it. But yes.
• 1:05:11
  Yeah. Good stuff.
• 1:05:12
  Anna, you are our third woman head Brewer on our podcast, and
• 1:05:17
  congratulations to you. But where I'm going with that is
• 1:05:25
  like, what is your opinion of the state of women in craft
• 1:05:29
  beer, if you've got one at all? Do you see growing?
• 1:05:33
  Yeah. You know, I think that let's
• 1:05:35
  see, this was my fourth year, I guess going to the Craft Brewers
• 1:05:38
  Conference like the the National Conference with Eric this
• 1:05:41
  spring. And every year I feel like
• 1:05:43
  there's an increase in like the, the amount of women there, the
• 1:05:47
  amount of diversity just in general.
• 1:05:48
  And I do, I do see that increasing.
• 1:05:50
  I think that there's a little bit like a not a push sounds
• 1:05:53
  wrong, but like there's, there's an increasing level of like
• 1:05:56
  saying that somewhere is female owned or like women operated or
• 1:06:00
  women owned and operated. And there's various versions of
• 1:06:03
  what that looks like. I think I think there's probably
• 1:06:05
  a higher level of women owned breweries than like women like
• 1:06:09
  operated on the production side. That's that's at least been my
• 1:06:12
  experience with meeting people and did the different roles that
• 1:06:15
  they hold within the breweries a lot more like administrative
• 1:06:18
  than than on the on the production side.
• 1:06:21
  I'd I'd like to see more of that.
• 1:06:22
  I do think I have a fairly insular experience with that
• 1:06:26
  only because I think you could have another woman on here who
• 1:06:30
  might say that she, she sort of had like position herself really
• 1:06:35
  strategically to get to where she was or like had to compete
• 1:06:38
  at a, at varying levels to get to the position that she was.
• 1:06:41
  And I've been really fortunate not just in the, in the company
• 1:06:44
  that I work for, but in like the regional, like Brewers Guild and
• 1:06:47
  things like that, that the, the men who I have interacted with
• 1:06:49
  have all been very encouraging and supportive of, of my space
• 1:06:54
  in the, in the brewing world. I know that's definitely not the
• 1:06:57
  case for a lot of women who are in the industry.
• 1:06:59
  And that's something that I think it's important to talk
• 1:07:02
  about and highlight. But as far as me acting like
• 1:07:05
  that's been my personal experience, that has not been
• 1:07:07
  the case for me. I think I've been, I've been
• 1:07:09
  really fortunate in that. Do you think that there are
• 1:07:11
  certain barriers that come with being a woman in the field?
• 1:07:15
  I remember specifically when I was transitioning into
• 1:07:18
  production in general and when I started training with Eric, I
• 1:07:22
  did ask pretty pretty much immediately if if he thought
• 1:07:26
  that either Co owners or the public or he was going to have
• 1:07:29
  any challenges with me being a woman.
• 1:07:31
  And he was very quick to which again, this was fortunate for
• 1:07:34
  me. Very quick to say if you're
• 1:07:36
  going to do the job properly for me, it doesn't matter too much
• 1:07:38
  to me like who you are. And that, that has always been
• 1:07:41
  his motto on that. I think that being a woman in
• 1:07:45
  the industry, sometimes it is nice to be recognized for like
• 1:07:48
  the, that that is uncommon. I mean, saying that I'm the
• 1:07:50
  third, the third woman had Brewer on your podcast is
• 1:07:53
  something special to hear. And I, I wish that that number
• 1:07:56
  was higher. But also I think that I tend to
• 1:07:59
  be someone who likes to be recognized for like the product
• 1:08:02
  that I put out rather than being being a woman.
• 1:08:05
  And I think I think there is growth specifically in Tennessee
• 1:08:08
  that could be had. I was talking to the executive
• 1:08:10
  director for the state Guild at the, at the Craft Brewers
• 1:08:12
  Conference this year and we were talking about how we don't even
• 1:08:16
  really have metrics for like we don't even have the information
• 1:08:19
  catalogued on how many there are.
• 1:08:20
  Like how many people there are, how many like women owned
• 1:08:23
  breweries there are in Tennessee, How many, how women
• 1:08:25
  operated, how many women had Brewers there are, how many
• 1:08:29
  black-owned breweries, black operated, black-owned, things
• 1:08:32
  like that. And I think it would be
• 1:08:34
  important and, and nice to see some of that data collected.
• 1:08:38
  Not so that we can say look how, look how few women are in the
• 1:08:41
  industry. But really, I think it might be
• 1:08:43
  nice to know how many there are because sometimes I do, I do
• 1:08:47
  feel like someone will ask me what it's like.
• 1:08:50
  And I'm like, well, I actually, I, I, I, I would like to know
• 1:08:53
  how many more there are so that we could like collaborate on
• 1:08:55
  things. And you know, there's the pink
• 1:08:57
  boots hot blend that's released every year.
• 1:08:59
  We've, we've made beer with that a couple years and we haven't
• 1:09:02
  done that in the last couple of years.
• 1:09:03
  But it'd be nice to do like a statewide pink boots
• 1:09:05
  collaboration brew. But it's, it's hard to get in
• 1:09:08
  contact with people. We don't even have the
• 1:09:09
  information for where they are, what's what's going on there.
• 1:09:12
  So I think, I think that's something that would be like, in
• 1:09:14
  my experience it, it, I wouldn't say it feels isolating at all,
• 1:09:17
  but it would be nice to know like who's actually doing what
• 1:09:20
  around the state and just, I mean, nationally as well, but in
• 1:09:23
  the state specifically. Yeah, I did when Eric told me
• 1:09:25
  about you and that you were coming on, I kind of did a
• 1:09:27
  ChatGPT and was like, hey, is there any other women head
• 1:09:30
  Brewers in the state of Tennessee and owners?
• 1:09:32
  And it brought up a couple and I and I and I and I knew some of
• 1:09:35
  the names and I go, I don't think they're there anymore and
• 1:09:38
  I won't mention any names, but then I Oh yeah, did a deeper
• 1:09:40
  dive and I'm like, yeah, that person's not there anymore and
• 1:09:42
  that person's not there anymore. So I don't know.
• 1:09:44
  You might be the only one. I don't know That's true.
• 1:09:46
  But from when I was from my little quick search that that's
• 1:09:49
  what I found. Yeah, I I've wondered that as
• 1:09:51
  well. I know there's plenty of women
• 1:09:53
  in production like you might have.
• 1:09:54
  You might have plenty of people on the packaging line or plenty
• 1:09:57
  of plenty of Brewers even or plenty of people still on the
• 1:10:02
  operation side of the brewery. But the head Brewer position, I
• 1:10:06
  agree with you might might be, and I'm not saying that because
• 1:10:10
  I want to claim like I'm the only female Ed Brewer in
• 1:10:13
  Tennessee, like that's that's actually really not not
• 1:10:15
  important to me at all. But the IT would it would be
• 1:10:18
  nice to know. And it might be, yeah, but yeah,
• 1:10:21
  to to to get the to get that data and to get that information
• 1:10:24
  would be nice, right? Just.
• 1:10:25
  Yeah, I think I think that'd be nice.
• 1:10:27
  Yeah. But like I said, I think it's
• 1:10:28
  interesting that you asked me that question just because I'm
• 1:10:30
  very quick to kind of like build up the men, at least regionally,
• 1:10:35
  who I've interacted with, who have really taken the time to
• 1:10:38
  make sure that I'm welcome and sported and respected and kind
• 1:10:42
  of brought in. Just as if that wasn't anything
• 1:10:45
  to be thinking about anyway. Right.
• 1:10:47
  And we were really excited to get you on tonight, and now
• 1:10:50
  we're even even more excited having you on because of, you
• 1:10:53
  know, everything you've been able to accomplish with Eric at
• 1:10:56
  the brewery. I appreciate that.
• 1:10:58
  Yeah, it's it was. I appreciate you guys having me
• 1:11:00
  on. It was cool to be asked.
• 1:11:02
  This is this is the first time I've interviewed on a podcast
• 1:11:04
  before so. Well, you're welcome back
• 1:11:07
  anytime. You could be.
• 1:11:08
  You could be the second. It'll be Eric's third.
• 1:11:10
  It'll be your second time next time.
• 1:11:12
  Here we go. I thought you guys were going to
• 1:11:18
  make me the third the third host.
• 1:11:20
  Come on now. It'd be the the Steve and Scott
• 1:11:27
  show and and the other guy I. Know we're we're if he comes
• 1:11:34
  back on again, I don't know, he might not want to.
• 1:11:37
  You can. You absolutely can play.
• 1:11:43
  And who is that guy? We'll just call you Peaches.
• 1:11:50
  Look when. You're you know my know my stage
• 1:12:01
  name, eh? Well, when your term is over
• 1:12:06
  from the Guild, you're going to need something to do.
• 1:12:09
  That's right. You're not busy enough, Eric.
• 1:12:11
  You're not busy enough. What what state can we all walk
• 1:12:15
  across? I think you guys should be the
• 1:12:22
  guys at the at the beer tables along the way.
• 1:12:25
  And yeah, by beer tables I mean all the tap rooms along the way.
• 1:12:30
  You got to have one beard each of the tap rooms.
• 1:12:33
  That's OK, Steve. Steve and I will be at the
• 1:12:38
  finish point already when you get there.
• 1:12:41
  Hey. I love it.
• 1:12:44
  We could set that up. For you, we, we could totally do
• 1:12:47
  that. I do.
• 1:12:49
  I do want to ask you this. You mentioned this is your last
• 1:12:52
  term as the president of the Rivers Guild.
• 1:12:56
  You had mentioned when you were on here last time that some
• 1:12:58
  things take a lot of years in multiple terms to kind of get to
• 1:13:03
  come to fruition. Have you got some things that
• 1:13:05
  you're currently working on that either you take took over and
• 1:13:08
  are still working on or that will kind of continue on into
• 1:13:11
  the next term? Yeah.
• 1:13:14
  So we just had a board meeting in Chattanooga and we've been
• 1:13:17
  doing a really cool thing this this year where we to to
• 1:13:23
  increase our outreach to breweries all over the state is
• 1:13:26
  that we've been holding these holding our board meetings
• 1:13:30
  regionally every quarter and and then hosting socials after.
• 1:13:36
  And so we just had one in Chattanooga.
• 1:13:39
  It was a lot of fun, but I was telling our board that we should
• 1:13:43
  be, we should be proud of what we've accomplished over the past
• 1:13:46
  year and a half. But it could be summarized as as
• 1:13:51
  transition because last year our executive director that we've
• 1:13:56
  had since like 2015 or so, she came to me and said, you know,
• 1:14:01
  I'm, I'm, you know, planning on resigning or, or wrapping up my
• 1:14:05
  time here as executive director towards the end of last year.
• 1:14:10
  And so, you know, we began the process of starting to interview
• 1:14:14
  for new executive directors and it took a, it took a long time.
• 1:14:18
  And we went through a number of folks interviewing folks and
• 1:14:21
  finally found Matt Altobell. And I don't know if you guys
• 1:14:25
  have met Matt yet or not, but he kind of, he kind of kind of
• 1:14:29
  jumped from the frying pan, frying pan into the fire kind of
• 1:14:33
  thing in January. Because that's the, that's the
• 1:14:37
  time of year when we go lobby and work with our elected
• 1:14:40
  officials to talk about beer laws.
• 1:14:43
  And so he, he just got like thrown into the fire there, you
• 1:14:46
  know, but he did a really great drop job.
• 1:14:49
  And then over the past, you know, after February or March,
• 1:14:52
  So done a really good job and, and kind of figuring out a game
• 1:14:56
  plan for, you know, what's our short term and long term plans
• 1:15:00
  for the Guild, where we go from here?
• 1:15:03
  And I think we've got some really good ideas both on, you
• 1:15:05
  know, increasing membership, not just for breweries, but for, you
• 1:15:11
  know, kind of affiliate members, you know, different companies
• 1:15:13
  that supply breweries, getting home Brewers across the state
• 1:15:18
  involved and become members of the state Guild.
• 1:15:22
  Also opening up Guild positions and, and types of memberships
• 1:15:25
  to, you know, to cideries and meteries and even distilleries
• 1:15:30
  as we try to work with the executive directors and the
• 1:15:33
  associations and guilds related to the wine, you know, wine
• 1:15:37
  folks and also the distilling folks and try to work together
• 1:15:41
  beer, wine and distilling, you know, of course, cideries and
• 1:15:45
  eateries together as we try to shape both, you know, favorable
• 1:15:52
  laws when it comes to making and selling alcohol, but also
• 1:15:57
  building relationships with the various departments at the state
• 1:16:00
  level, you know, office, Department of Agriculture,
• 1:16:05
  Department of Tourism, department of financials,
• 1:16:10
  finance and things like that. To be able to, you know, to
• 1:16:14
  figure out what the next round of manufacturing and alcohol in
• 1:16:18
  Tennessee looks like. And you know, quite honestly, it
• 1:16:21
  hasn't always been favorable, especially for smaller
• 1:16:25
  businesses and people trying to, to start something brand new who
• 1:16:29
  just who don't have the, the resources or the means to do
• 1:16:32
  that. And you know, my personal view
• 1:16:35
  and, and maybe this is getting political, but I'm big, a big
• 1:16:38
  supporter of small businesses. I think small businesses are the
• 1:16:42
  backbone of not only Tennessee, but America.
• 1:16:45
  And we have to make an environment for not just small
• 1:16:49
  businesses to, to be able to build something up and rise up,
• 1:16:52
  but to encourage and support people, you know, from all walks
• 1:16:57
  of life. To be able to, to, to think that
• 1:17:00
  starting an alcohol manufacturing business is, is
• 1:17:04
  something that they can do and that they'd like to do.
• 1:17:06
  And that we as a, as a state support them and, and doing that
• 1:17:10
  kind of thing. Because as we know, you know,
• 1:17:13
  the craft brewing world and craft distilling and craft
• 1:17:16
  cideries, that's way bigger than beer.
• 1:17:19
  We support it's, it's a, it's a multibillion dollar economy just
• 1:17:24
  for craft beverages in Tennessee, on the tourism side,
• 1:17:28
  on the agriculture side, supporting farmers, supporting
• 1:17:32
  culture and community, music and food and community, you know,
• 1:17:36
  all these terms. And and so I think we're on a
• 1:17:41
  good path and I'm I'm both excited for where we're going
• 1:17:47
  and just because I won't be, I think that the outgoing
• 1:17:51
  president has kind of serves on the board for a year or so kind
• 1:17:56
  as an ex officioso kind of role. But I think that there's some
• 1:18:01
  exciting things coming down the pipe for craft beverages in
• 1:18:04
  Tennessee. That's exciting.
• 1:18:07
  That's that's good. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:09
  So it's been in good hands. It will continue to be in good
• 1:18:12
  hands. One of the joys of doing this
• 1:18:14
  podcast, he says no sense of humor.
• 1:18:18
  They're loving. One of the one of the joys of
• 1:18:20
  doing this podcast is getting to know folks like you guys because
• 1:18:23
  you know, you're hard working individuals and you're out there
• 1:18:26
  like everybody else. You're grinding, you're trying
• 1:18:28
  to make a living, and you know that's what it's all about.
• 1:18:32
  And we need you to keep doing it because we need beer to keep
• 1:18:35
  drinking. So that's right, it's.
• 1:18:37
  Many of our Peaches it's. Cyclical.
• 1:18:39
  I mean, we'll help you. You help us.
• 1:18:40
  It's it's, it's a win win. We need more.
• 1:18:44
  Don't stop making beer. We need it.
• 1:18:46
  See if you got it. Yes.
• 1:18:47
  There you go. I tell you, if you ever need to
• 1:18:49
  like, you know, as you're coming to Nashville and you're like,
• 1:18:51
  damn, I can't get all the way, I'll meet you halfway and I'll
• 1:18:53
  distribute the beer into Nashville for you halfway.
• 1:18:57
  A good percentage What might actually make it to the liquor
• 1:19:00
  store? Yeah.
• 1:19:01
  And I appreciate you guys. I mean you guys, you guys serve
• 1:19:04
  as a great role as a guy. I mean, before I was a Brewer, I
• 1:19:06
  worked in news and big believer in communication on things.
• 1:19:10
  And so, and you guys serve a super important role on, you
• 1:19:15
  know, something like this where you have Anne and I on and
• 1:19:18
  you've got breweries on taking interest in and not only what we
• 1:19:22
  do, but in our company, but what the industry does, spreading the
• 1:19:27
  word. And then, you know, showing
• 1:19:30
  people that it's once again, it's about people.
• 1:19:33
  You know, we, we make and we make and sell beer for a living,
• 1:19:36
  But real people here in Tennessee are working these jobs
• 1:19:40
  and building, helping build up, build up the economy.
• 1:19:43
  And I really appreciate what you guys do.
• 1:19:47
  Well, good, Steve, if you got anything else.
• 1:19:49
  If not, we can just wrap it up. Just want to thank them, but
• 1:19:52
  thank you for being there after a long day of brewing and a long
• 1:19:54
  day of grinding it out. But thanks for joining us, guys.
• 1:19:57
  Yes, the bird a double batch. Really good to meet you.
• 1:20:00
  Guys, really great to meet you. We'll get out there and see you.
• 1:20:03
  I can't wait for the beer to improve as you brew more, it's
• 1:20:06
  going to keep getting better. Looking forward to that.
• 1:20:10
  That's right, it's only up from here.
• 1:20:12
  So there you go. Eric Latham and Anna McKay from
• 1:20:16
  Johnson City Brewing in Johnson City, TN Thanks for joining us
• 1:20:20
  on the Brewery Underground podcast.
• 1:20:21
  Thanks. Thanks for being on.
• 1:20:23
  We really appreciate you guys. Cheers.
• 1:20:26
  Cheers. Cheers.
• 1:20:26
  Cheers, cheers.