Latest / The Brewery Underground Podcast | Craft Beer Interviews, Reviews and Beer Travel / Ska Brewing Co-Founder Dave Thibodeau Talks Craft Beer, Music & Brewery History | Part 2 | Episode 128

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Ska Brewing Co-Founder Dave Thibodeau Talks Craft Beer, Music & Brewery History | Part 2 | Episode 128 · The Brewery Underground Podcast | Craft Beer Interviews, Reviews and Beer Travel

• 0:39
  Can you give a ballpark estimate from when you started in 95 till
• 0:44
  now? How many different beers have
• 0:46
  you brewed? Oh.
• 0:47
  God. I mean I'm not asking like the
• 0:49
  the exact number, but just like a ballpark.
• 0:51
  We have like right now we have 20 taps in our tasting room and
• 0:57
  they're always full and we have a new beer in our tasting room,
• 1:00
  not necessarily a, a distributed beer every Friday.
• 1:07
  So, but you know, for, for those first ten years, it was really
• 1:11
  only four beers. I mean, we have occasional one
• 1:13
  off batches and we do special beers for certain events, but
• 1:17
  God, in the last 1520 years, I can't Even so many different
• 1:23
  kinds of beer. And, and we have a, we have a,
• 1:27
  we have a 3 1/2 barrel system as a, as AR and D or a pilot
• 1:32
  system. And then we have our big system.
• 1:34
  And so we're always messing around on that thing.
• 1:37
  And a lot of those beers are just in our tasting room.
• 1:39
  But man, I mean, my guess is maybe not into the thousands,
• 1:49
  but hundreds and hundreds for sure.
• 1:52
  It's a lot. It's a lot, yeah.
• 1:54
  It's a lot of history, my friend.
• 1:56
  That's a lot of history. There's, there's a beer on your
• 2:00
  tap list right now. And the reason it stood out to
• 2:02
  me is because of the ABV and it's called a W easy light
• 2:06
  logger and it's 3.8%. Obviously it's in the
• 2:11
  description. It's a light logger.
• 2:13
  Why are those like low ABV and maybe even mid strength, Maybe
• 2:17
  it's in that range too. Why are those important?
• 2:20
  I know we talked about loggers in general.
• 2:21
  Why are those low AB VS important to people and why you
• 2:24
  know why have one on on on draft.
• 2:26
  Yeah, ours is, this is definitely an experiment for us.
• 2:31
  I I've always thought we were really good at brewing clean
• 2:37
  light loggers. Like one of our, we started
• 2:40
  brewing a Mexican style logger in 1999 and it's our best
• 2:44
  selling beer and, and it's been, it's won a bunch of awards and
• 2:49
  it's, it's something I'm super proud of.
• 2:51
  And we've always been, you know, I think the, the our lab and our
• 2:56
  quality control is a big part of that because obviously it's hard
• 2:59
  to make a beer like that. I mean, you can't mask anything
• 3:04
  and it's got it's got to be. And then once you, once you take
• 3:07
  it to a level where you've got a really low ABV, you don't have
• 3:11
  anything helping you out on the shelf at all on this place
• 3:14
  ability guys. But anyways, it's AI think, I
• 3:19
  think a lot of it is ours is interesting 'cause we're we're
• 3:25
  branding it a bit different than the rest of our lineup.
• 3:29
  It doesn't look anything like our regular scab ears.
• 3:32
  The price points also quite a bit lower.
• 3:35
  It doesn't cost nearly as much to make.
• 3:37
  And so it's it's we're almost looking at it like it might not
• 3:43
  even really sure it's made by a craft brewery, but I don't know
• 3:46
  if it even really depending on how you're defining it, if it if
• 3:49
  that's where it fits. So we're positioning it to sit
• 3:54
  on the shelves with Coors, Bud, Miller, but we'll see how that
• 3:59
  goes. That's an experiment.
• 4:00
  But back to just low ABV and mid strength beers.
• 4:04
  You know, I, I love to see the, the, the mid strength beers that
• 4:09
  are still a particular style, not just a light logger, but
• 4:12
  like Ipas or whatever. You know, we kind of went
• 4:14
  through a phase of session, you know, it's, it's a little bit
• 4:18
  different now. Maybe it's a little bit more
• 4:20
  accepted, but it's interesting because I think what we're
• 4:24
  seeing is a reaction to Gen. Z not drinking as much.
• 4:30
  People our age, a lot of my friends that probably kept us in
• 4:34
  business all these years don't drink half the amount of beer
• 4:38
  they used to. And then there's trends like
• 4:41
  zebra striping. Are you guys familiar with zebra
• 4:43
  striping? Where you where you drink an
• 4:45
  alcoholic beer and then you drink a non alcoholic beer and
• 4:48
  then you drink it out. Will you alternate?
• 4:50
  Where, where? Where is that becoming a trend
• 4:52
  then? I think?
• 4:54
  It's just a thing. I mean, I, I don't know, but
• 4:57
  it's kind of people trying not to get hungover but still want
• 5:01
  to go out or still want to have some beers.
• 5:03
  And so older people and then I think younger people,
• 5:08
  millennials, I think are pretty solid consumers, but they're
• 5:11
  very, you know, they have a lot of information coming at them
• 5:14
  digitally about health. And so it's, it's easy to, it's
• 5:18
  easy to spin somebody's out take on, on beer or whatever.
• 5:23
  And I think, I think lower calories, you know, less gluten,
• 5:28
  less alcohol, all of those things, less carbs, those things
• 5:34
  are all, there's definitely segments among beer drinkers and
• 5:39
  craft beer drinkers that are appreciating beers that take
• 5:43
  that into account more so than they ever have.
• 5:46
  And you're seeing, that's where you're seeing a lot of the
• 5:48
  growth right now. I just was reading an article
• 5:51
  that the BA put out today that mentions founders and Harpoon
• 5:59
  and their lower ABV lighter beers that they're coming out
• 6:04
  with. It's a good article.
• 6:06
  It's worth looking into just at the Brewers Association.
• 6:10
  But for us, I, I, it's interesting.
• 6:13
  We've brewed, we had a beer, a lighter, lower ABV beer called
• 6:18
  Ska Lager that we had out for a couple years.
• 6:20
  We discontinued it last year. And our employees that drink a
• 6:24
  lot of beer, especially the Brewers, you know, they'll,
• 6:27
  they'll taste and drink all of our higher ABV beers.
• 6:31
  But when they're just sitting there in the tasting room,
• 6:33
  putting one down after another, that's what they were drinking.
• 6:37
  And, and it's just because they're going to get up and come
• 6:39
  to work at 4:30 in the morning or whatever it is.
• 6:42
  And it's like, you know, and they're younger, you know, and
• 6:45
  it's like they could put away a quite a few more beers and still
• 6:48
  function the next day. And then, then I can.
• 6:52
  So for me, it's difficult because it's not my it's not my
• 6:56
  kind of beer. I still like copier, little
• 6:59
  bigger beers and darker beers. I don't like light beers that
• 7:04
  are that are don't taste like a lot, even though I appreciate
• 7:10
  the difficulty in brewing them. But it's something that's
• 7:14
  impossible to ignore when you're a brewery.
• 7:16
  I think our size it's, it's, it's, it's happening kind of
• 7:23
  branding that the West's easy light different than all the ska
• 7:27
  stuff is it's a little bit of an experiment as sort of a sub or
• 7:31
  off brand that I don't know how it's going to go, you know, and
• 7:35
  we're not releasing it market wide.
• 7:38
  We're just releasing it in the southern part of Colorado out of
• 7:41
  the gates to kind of just see what happens.
• 7:45
  But already our, our crew, our actual employees are drinking a
• 7:50
  ton of it. Yeah, it's crazy.
• 7:53
  Yeah, It was going to be a question of mine.
• 7:54
  Could you have even predicted like 5 or 10 years ago that you
• 7:58
  know, on, on at your place non alcoholic and what you're doing
• 8:02
  Also like some of the CBD sparkling seltzers?
• 8:06
  Could you, could you have predicted 5 or 10 years ago
• 8:09
  that, hey, this is what's going to be a trend in 2026?
• 8:14
  You know, it's interesting because one thing we do have is
• 8:17
  we have a non alcoholic just flavored sparkling water called
• 8:22
  Skagua. We've been making that for years
• 8:25
  and years. And it that actually stemmed
• 8:27
  from one of my partners getting a DUI when we were much younger.
• 8:32
  And we drank a lot of beer while we were working when we were
• 8:35
  younger. Probably not the best idea, but
• 8:37
  we didn't know any better nor did we care.
• 8:40
  And, and so he got a DUI and he, he couldn't drink anymore, but
• 8:46
  he wanted a bubbly beverage in his hand.
• 8:48
  This is before Lacroix, you know, like we didn't even know
• 8:51
  about that. And so we started like just
• 8:54
  carbonating water and then adding a little cranberry or a
• 8:57
  little lime and, and we always had it on tap in the back so we
• 9:01
  could have something to drink other than beer for years.
• 9:04
  And then people started coming and we had it for free in our
• 9:07
  tasting room. Like you could just go fill your
• 9:09
  own glass up with a tap just on the wall in the tasting room.
• 9:13
  Any, any customer. And people started coming in and
• 9:16
  filling up jugs full of it and jugs and jugs and jugs full of
• 9:21
  it. And we should start canning and
• 9:24
  selling that stuff. And so that's how that happened.
• 9:28
  But then we also got into CBD and we've recently gotten into
• 9:32
  the THC game, very low, low dose THC sparkling beverages and it's
• 9:39
  just for an alternative, you know, and not none of us are
• 9:42
  into non alcoholic beer here. We appreciate it.
• 9:46
  We do sell. We do sell it here, but we
• 9:48
  don't. It's not our beer.
• 9:50
  It's not for you, right? It's for me.
• 9:52
  Yeah. And so it's kind of the stuff
• 9:55
  that we can sort of appreciate like these THC drinks that we
• 9:58
  make, it's only 1 1/2 milligrams of THC in a 12 ounce can.
• 10:03
  It's called SKA low dose. And those I'm having a good time
• 10:07
  with. That's it's fun to have one of
• 10:08
  those instead of a beer. Nothing higher than that as far
• 10:13
  as milligrams of THC, but that's really been pretty enjoyable for
• 10:17
  me. Once again, non alcoholic beer.
• 10:20
  Yeah, I can't see a day when that's something we do.
• 10:24
  But back to your original point, no, five years ago, my it was a
• 10:30
  conversation we probably had 10 years ago, definitely not, but
• 10:35
  it's now. And actually we were just
• 10:37
  looking at the numbers today, you know, our, our beer numbers
• 10:42
  in our own tasting room aren't up, but our numbers on all of
• 10:48
  our non alcoholic beverages are up in the tasting room.
• 10:53
  So it's interesting, you know, and I said it again, I said it
• 10:57
  to our whole team today. I, I believe in beer, you know,
• 11:00
  this, there's more people coming.
• 11:03
  We have a lot of tourists that come here.
• 11:04
  It's, it's Durango's a big tourism area and it's, it's very
• 11:08
  seasonal. So we kind of have to have a lot
• 11:11
  of offerings at least 'cause we're a full restaurant now at,
• 11:15
  at our world headquarters are that's what we always refer to
• 11:18
  it as. But we have it not necessarily
• 11:23
  for distribution or or a real, real true revenue generator
• 11:27
  outside of Durango, but just for to offer some diversity for
• 11:33
  those types of customers here at at our brewery.
• 11:39
  What that tells me, at least in my mind, is you're going to get
• 11:42
  the people that are going to go to the brewery anyway.
• 11:44
  Like you've got a group of people, right?
• 11:46
  And then somebody in there doesn't want to drink or is the
• 11:48
  designated driver or doesn't want beer, but you've got an
• 11:52
  option for them too. So you get your beer drinkers in
• 11:56
  there and then you get the other people that are going to come
• 11:58
  that might not have come in otherwise because you didn't
• 12:00
  have something for them, whether, you know, non alcoholic
• 12:03
  or THC or something. So the spike in that kind of
• 12:06
  tells me you're getting those people too obviously, right,
• 12:08
  with those groups that are coming in.
• 12:11
  Yeah, and that's, that's our intent, you know, for sure here.
• 12:14
  And it's like, you know, whether it's, I think we try to stay
• 12:19
  pretty true to where our soul is as far as to what we actually
• 12:22
  make and brew, you know, but like non alcoholic beards, I,
• 12:27
  I'm not throwing anybody under the bus here, but I still
• 12:30
  haven't tasted one that tastes as good as the version of it
• 12:35
  with alcohol in it. It would grade well.
• 12:39
  And Bella. So I don't get the point, but
• 12:42
  it's kind of like a lot of people do because it's close
• 12:44
  enough, I guess. And I don't like it, but I
• 12:48
  understood it. Yeah, and I appreciate it.
• 12:50
  And and so you're right though, I think, you know, there's, we
• 12:54
  want to offer something to everybody if they've got a
• 12:56
  friend. I think, I think I always look
• 12:59
  at it like probably, hopefully the driving, the driving
• 13:04
  decision maker in the group is probably the person that wanted
• 13:07
  to have some of our beers, you know, but then can we
• 13:09
  accommodate all their friends? That's what I hope we can do.
• 13:12
  Yeah, you'd, you'd mentioned earlier that Mexican lagers was
• 13:17
  one of your first ones that you start brewing.
• 13:20
  And it's something that Scott and I, when we go out, we hit
• 13:23
  breweries. We've noticed probably over like
• 13:25
  the last two years or so that every brewery now, especially
• 13:29
  this time of the year, they have they have a Mexican lager.
• 13:32
  Do you feel like you were a little bit ahead of the curve on
• 13:35
  that one way back in the day? I feel like I didn't see another
• 13:39
  one from a craft brewery for at least a decade after we started
• 13:43
  brewing this. Yeah.
• 13:45
  I mean, we, like I said, we started brewing it in 1999.
• 13:47
  And it was, to be honest with you, it was we were closet
• 13:52
  Pacifico drinkers. We used to.
• 13:54
  We used to. I mean, we would go to festivals
• 13:57
  and we wouldn't sit there and drink all the craft beers.
• 14:00
  We'd go back to the truck or the car and drink a Pacifico and
• 14:04
  then go back out or pour it into our glass and and then finally
• 14:08
  we're and then that's what we would drink in the summer in
• 14:10
  Durango. It gets pretty hot here, you
• 14:12
  know, and craft beers were not really light at the time.
• 14:16
  Lot, you know, lot of flavor, not the cleanest, lightest beers
• 14:20
  coming out of craft breweries in the mid to late 90s.
• 14:24
  Finally, we were just like, why don't we just try to brew one of
• 14:28
  these ourselves? And so we got a yeast strain
• 14:32
  from Mexico City and we put a little, little dextrose in there
• 14:39
  and made a lighter beer and it, it stuck for us.
• 14:44
  I mean, I remember going through the labeling issues that the TTB
• 14:47
  didn't know what to do because we just called it Mexican lager,
• 14:50
  but it wasn't made in Mexico. And at that time you had to, you
• 14:54
  could, you weren't, you weren't getting your labels approved
• 14:57
  online. You had to do it through snail
• 15:00
  mail. So we'd get a letter back saying
• 15:02
  you didn't make this in Mexico. It's not a Mexican lager.
• 15:06
  So then it ended up being a hyphenated Mexican style lager
• 15:10
  and it was a all this rigmarole did finally get it to where we
• 15:13
  could put it in a bottle. And at the time we were all
• 15:17
  bottles. We weren't cans yet.
• 15:18
  But it, yeah. And then I, I, I really feel
• 15:22
  like it wasn't till, I mean, a decade later would have been
• 15:26
  2009. So, I mean, still, that's 17
• 15:31
  years ago, Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 15:34
  Well, it's funny 'cause Scott and I will go out.
• 15:37
  He could talk about this, but we go out now, especially this time
• 15:40
  of the year, we're like, OK, they got the Mexican lager, we
• 15:44
  got to try it, right? I mean.
• 15:45
  We we went on, we went on a trip last year and we went to 88
• 15:49
  breweries in a row, had a Mexican lager and we got one
• 15:51
  from each one of them. It was like, yes, this was
• 15:54
  awesome. But it wasn't that way years
• 15:56
  ago. Now everybody has a Mexican
• 15:58
  lager. And it's the same thing that
• 16:00
  everybody keeps saying. You can't hide behind them.
• 16:02
  I mean, you know, there's a reason why they're there.
• 16:05
  And if they're not going to be good, man, it's not going to
• 16:07
  reflect well on you, no. Yeah, we, I remember like we
• 16:12
  when we first made it it, I remember bringing it to a couple
• 16:16
  of specific festivals and we just embraced throwing a lime
• 16:19
  into it. Like we, we were always just
• 16:21
  trying to be irreverent all the time, you know, like just do
• 16:24
  whatever the fuck we want and and regardless of what anybody
• 16:28
  else is doing. So we would show up at
• 16:30
  festivals, you know, in 1999, two thousand and that was when
• 16:35
  everybody was anti fruit in beer.
• 16:37
  And and we'd show up with this light beer and a big old bowl of
• 16:43
  cut up limes and and Brewers would come like to taste it and
• 16:48
  no way would they put a lime in it.
• 16:50
  And we were just doing it just to kind of spite everybody and,
• 16:55
  and every year we sold more and more and more.
• 16:58
  And then it became, and we only had it, we were only brewing it
• 17:02
  in the summer. It was seasonal for us until
• 17:04
  just a couple years ago. And it started to almost eclipse
• 17:08
  Modus Hopper and I when it was only available for four months
• 17:13
  of the year. So it was in four months.
• 17:15
  We were selling as much of it as we were selling our main
• 17:18
  flagship throughout the whole entire year.
• 17:22
  And so we switched and we started selling it year round.
• 17:24
  It's, it's definitely our best selling beer that we have out
• 17:28
  there. And you know, and it's, it's for
• 17:30
  us, it's great. It's got, you know, it's got
• 17:32
  good placements in like the, the grocery stores and, and in
• 17:36
  Durango where we live, it's, it's just means summer here for
• 17:40
  everybody. That's what I miss about doing.
• 17:42
  We used to have a kickoff party when we would release it every
• 17:45
  summer and it was kind of like the unofficial start to summer.
• 17:48
  And now that we have it year round, we we still have a party,
• 17:51
  but it's not, it's not really the Mexican lager party anymore.
• 17:55
  It's just the summer kickoff party, but.
• 17:58
  Because you could buy it yesterday at the same time.
• 18:00
  Exactly. Yeah, Yeah.
• 18:03
  And I, yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's, it was, it's
• 18:06
  always been a fun beer for us. And I, I kind of love telling
• 18:09
  the story and it's, it's, I'm glad to see more.
• 18:13
  And it's, it's interesting because they don't all taste
• 18:17
  like ours. You know, we would, we used to
• 18:19
  just always put this in the international pilsner category
• 18:22
  because there wasn't anything any better for it.
• 18:24
  We didn't brew it for a category, but we'd like to enter
• 18:27
  it. It's, it's done well.
• 18:30
  And now it's like when you are really tasting some of those
• 18:34
  old, some of those older Mexican lagers that are truly derived
• 18:41
  from like German Vienna's and whatever.
• 18:43
  And that are, you know, I don't know that ours is the closest
• 18:49
  representation of some of those beers that I've tasted, cause
• 18:53
  I've tasted some that are really, really close and really,
• 18:57
  really delicious. I think ours is a little bit
• 18:59
  different. I love what it is, but it's
• 19:02
  really weird when you have a beer that light, you know, how
• 19:05
  much variance is there from brewery to brewery And, and it
• 19:09
  turns out there's actually quite a bit, you know, and I
• 19:13
  appreciate it. It's a hard beer to make.
• 19:15
  And so I like to drink them when I go to other breweries as well.
• 19:18
  But boy, when you get one that's not clean, it's it's, it's Pam.
• 19:23
  And you're right that that 8 breweries in a row was talking
• 19:26
  about they were different from from brewery to brewery and none
• 19:29
  of them were bad they but they did vary.
• 19:31
  And it was like how could it be different that much difference
• 19:34
  between them? But they're all fantastic and
• 19:37
  maybe some had some more corn notes or whatever it was, but
• 19:40
  they were all good. But they were all different.
• 19:42
  Yeah, yeah, it's. Pretty remarkable.
• 19:45
  We never, we didn't have any kind of clone recipe.
• 19:48
  We just made it up when we started.
• 19:50
  We just had the yeast strain and so and what that's what we've
• 19:53
  stuck with all these years. So if you're really trying to
• 19:56
  replicate Pacifica or whatever it might be, ours probably isn't
• 20:03
  the closest representation out there.
• 20:05
  In fact, I know that's not, you know, so.
• 20:09
  Hey, Speaking of loggers, you do a German style logger
• 20:14
  Oktoberfest and we're not going to be that far off from
• 20:18
  Oktoberfest season. Can you talk about that?
• 20:22
  Yeah, that was another one that we, another one I'm really proud
• 20:26
  of. It's I think it's because it's
• 20:28
  so seasonal, you know, it's so limited.
• 20:31
  That's probably my favorite beer that we make and it's we I think
• 20:38
  we originally came out with one. We brewed one years and years
• 20:41
  ago and it did OK. And, and then and there were a
• 20:45
  lot of breweries making an Oktoberfest long, long time ago.
• 20:50
  And then there was this big lull where it just kind of stopped
• 20:54
  happening. And I didn't see as many
• 20:56
  available on the shelves here in Colorado as I used to, but
• 21:01
  always loved the style. And so we just decided let's
• 21:06
  just go all in, get all of our distributors on board, get all
• 21:10
  pre-orders for this beer. This was 2017 or 1818, I think,
• 21:16
  and, and just make an Oktoberfest, get the can.
• 21:20
  It's always, this is kind of an interesting thing, but there's a
• 21:23
  minimum quantity order if you get a true digitally printed can
• 21:28
  from, you know, the big can manufacturers like Ball.
• 21:33
  And if you're not going to sell that minimum quantity, then you
• 21:37
  pretty much are labeling your cans.
• 21:39
  And we decided to go for it with a, with a cool matte finish, use
• 21:44
  this old label from the first time we made one years and years
• 21:48
  earlier, probably 2 decades earlier and reinvent the beer,
• 21:54
  totally new recipe. And man, we won multiple gold
• 21:58
  medals, we won Brussels, we won a gold, we won a gold at GABF
• 22:04
  that year and we were so proud of it.
• 22:07
  And it, it's, I don't know, it's, it's a beer that our whole
• 22:12
  team 'cause we're, I mean, we're already getting, we're already
• 22:15
  talking about brewing it, even though, you know, it's only
• 22:19
  April. We only brew a, a couple
• 22:23
  batches, if even that. And it's limited, you know, it's
• 22:27
  just get it out and it's done and you got to time it right.
• 22:30
  But the longer it can lager for the most part, the better.
• 22:35
  And so it's, yeah, we're already talking about fitting it into
• 22:39
  the production schedule. And but man, it's like when we
• 22:43
  come out with that beer, it's not unlike, it's a similar beer
• 22:47
  to, we've also done a Mexican lager Dark that we kind of
• 22:51
  discontinued, but we might do again this fall.
• 22:54
  They're very similar recipes actually, you know, trait.
• 22:59
  It's all German roots and it's but it's those beers that are
• 23:04
  kind of clean loggers, but with a little color and a little bit
• 23:09
  of a malt backbone. You know, I think, I think
• 23:14
  Brewers in general eat it up, you know, not just us, but but
• 23:18
  those styles, yeah, I think they're, you know, I think those
• 23:25
  are the types of beers that Brewers really, really
• 23:27
  appreciate a well made when it's really well made it it's a beer
• 23:31
  I'm really proud of. And and I I once again, that's a
• 23:35
  big part of when fall rolls around, everyone can't wait to
• 23:39
  be drinking that again here at the brewery.
• 23:41
  Fun beer. When do you try to drop yours
• 23:45
  and, and, and do you, do you take into consideration, you
• 23:47
  know, a lot of breweries drop in stuff early or do you, do you
• 23:51
  kind of hold back a little bit and or when just when do you
• 23:54
  drop yours? By the way, can I, can I
• 23:56
  interrupt for a second? This has become a this has
• 23:58
  become a big thing with Scott and I had the conversation about
• 24:02
  Oktoberfest because because every year we text group of
• 24:07
  friends going do you see Oktoberfest yet?
• 24:09
  Do you see it? It gets earlier and earlier
• 24:11
  every year. What's the stuff at the grocery
• 24:13
  store? Yeah, it's, I'll tell you, it's,
• 24:17
  I mean, I don't think a lot of people really realize this, but
• 24:20
  it's a difficult puzzle. You don't want to come in later
• 24:24
  than a lot of other breweries because people just go for it
• 24:27
  when they first see it. And it's only going to be a one
• 24:30
  time purchase for a lot of people.
• 24:32
  So you kind of got to be at the forefront, you know, at the same
• 24:36
  time, Oktoberfest, as we know, actually it takes place in
• 24:39
  September. So it you don't want to come out
• 24:42
  with it so early that you don't have any around when it's truly
• 24:45
  Oktoberfest season. And then you got to take into
• 24:49
  account how long it takes to get to your distributors and how
• 24:52
  long it takes for your distributors to get it to the
• 24:54
  retailers. So it's a puzzle.
• 24:58
  And then if you, you know, if you have any still left at the
• 25:02
  end of September, when you hit October, you'll have some
• 25:06
  trickling sales. Come the end of October though,
• 25:08
  you can't sell it anymore. So you gotta run out before
• 25:13
  that. So we usually try to get it out
• 25:19
  every year. It seems like it's a couple days
• 25:21
  earlier, you know, I think towards the end of July,
• 25:28
  sometime in July is when it'll probably get out there.
• 25:32
  And that gives it, you know, the whatever's left of July and then
• 25:36
  all of August before it's truly Oktoberfest season.
• 25:40
  So it depends on how much we make.
• 25:41
  And you know, I mean, that's that was always a complaint of
• 25:44
  mine too. Like I'm not drinking that stuff
• 25:45
  in July, 8th of July. There's a reason it's not out in
• 25:51
  July, right? And I always blame with good or
• 25:56
  bad and I always joke when I say blame, but it's, it's Sam
• 25:58
  Adams's fault, right? Sam Adams did this thing.
• 26:01
  They, they, they, they did good or bad, they did it.
• 26:06
  They, you know, this stuff starts throwing up in mid June.
• 26:10
  Yeah, yeah. And then you're.
• 26:12
  Fucked. I'm exaggerating.
• 26:14
  You kind of got to do that. Yeah.
• 26:20
  And are are there any Oktoberfest events that either
• 26:23
  at the brewery or around Colorado that you were all
• 26:26
  involved in around Oktoberfest season?
• 26:28
  Yeah, there's some, there's some small stuff around around the
• 26:32
  Durango area. I don't think we do.
• 26:35
  We do different things like with certain retailers, but we're not
• 26:39
  in any big like Oktoberfest festivals.
• 26:42
  I, I, I really want to throw one ourselves in Durango.
• 26:44
  Where? Where we have different versions
• 26:48
  of German beers and like people have big tents and we get the
• 26:52
  mayor to come, you know, tap a barrel.
• 26:55
  And I, it's always been kind of a dream of mine to create a
• 27:00
  create something a little more authentic.
• 27:02
  But but Durango style, you know, and invite all our friends that
• 27:05
  make well made German style lagers and particularly
• 27:10
  Oktoberfest. But it's there's nothing huge,
• 27:15
  just some small things. But it there's room for it, it
• 27:18
  would be great. I think it'd be a lot of fun.
• 27:20
  We do we do try to get a polka band so and play it.
• 27:26
  They're very. Awesome.
• 27:27
  It is. It's it's Steve.
• 27:29
  We love that time of year. Just the beer, the
• 27:31
  transitioning. It's just maybe the weather's
• 27:34
  changing a little bit. It's just that whole whole
• 27:37
  feeling of fall is great. And those beers come out and you
• 27:40
  get a polka band going on. You're just in the mood.
• 27:44
  I always say for beer drinkers, it's like Christmas, right?
• 27:46
  It's the most wonderful time of the year.
• 27:48
  And it's kind of like between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• 27:52
  And that's sort of their traditional Oktoberfest season
• 27:55
  lasts about that long, too, you know?
• 27:57
  And then boom, it's here. And then, all right, bye, bye.
• 28:00
  And as you said, I mean. If you're going to it, maybe
• 28:04
  it's just because it's still fleeting that it's so great.
• 28:08
  I mean, as much as I would love to sit there and drink a lot of
• 28:11
  Oktoberfest, and I do, if I'm, if I'm going into a brew, unless
• 28:15
  it's a brewery that's serving Oktoberfest all year long, if
• 28:19
  I'm going into a brewery and it's, you know, mid November,
• 28:22
  I'm going. I don't know.
• 28:24
  Yeah, maybe not. Yeah, it's interesting.
• 28:27
  And it's, I mean, we, we usually 'cause we get, we fill our
• 28:32
  pipeline with it, you know, and then we usually have another
• 28:34
  batch going and then that's what's going to possibly go on
• 28:38
  through October. And so the beer is still plenty
• 28:41
  fresh into the next year. But regardless of what the Best
• 28:47
  Buy dated on the can is, the consumer is just seeing
• 28:52
  Oktoberfest. And that just means, and it,
• 28:56
  it's funny because, you know, we take it for granted because we
• 28:59
  live it. But most people think
• 29:01
  Oktoberfest means October and, you know, just the general
• 29:05
  person out there. So, you know, for it's still
• 29:09
  good. Like October still works.
• 29:11
  Obviously, if you're a beer person, you're thinking of
• 29:13
  September. But.
• 29:15
  But the beer still tastes great in February, you know?
• 29:18
  Yeah, but you can't sell it after October at all.
• 29:23
  Well, Steven, see, when I live in a part of the country where
• 29:25
  it stays hot for a late into the season, so when I drink
• 29:29
  Oktoberfest through October or even some in November, we don't
• 29:31
  care because it's still not cold yet, you know.
• 29:35
  Hell, it's been hot for seven months.
• 29:39
  That's funny. Yeah.
• 29:40
  I don't even think about that. That's funny.
• 29:42
  No, we're not ready for stout season yet when November rolls
• 29:46
  around. Yeah, this is almost the end of
• 29:48
  my stout season. That's definitely a thing in
• 29:52
  Colorado, like the seasonality of the beer styles and and what
• 29:57
  consumer preferences, including my own.
• 29:59
  You know, I definitely the fall turns browner beers, the the
• 30:04
  winter turns blacker beers. You know, there's no doubt about
• 30:08
  it. And and we see it in the tasting
• 30:11
  room. It's, you know, it's, it's real.
• 30:13
  When we had Emily on, we asked her, we said, we asked her.
• 30:16
  We said if a brewery did three marketing things well, what
• 30:20
  would they be? And one of the things she said
• 30:22
  was, and I'm quoting affect your website and accept that it's
• 30:27
  never really finished. Your website is perfected.
• 30:32
  It's fun. It's.
• 30:33
  Fun. It is fun and I, I guarantee
• 30:35
  it's continually updated because it's, it's, it's so cool.
• 30:40
  It's comic book style, comic book theme kind of thing.
• 30:44
  Can you describe it? It's very interactive.
• 30:46
  It's I was on it today and I kept jumping around like this is
• 30:49
  a lot of fun. I appreciate that IA lot of a
• 30:55
  lot of the thanks for that goes out to some friends from a
• 30:59
  marketing agency that they're they were dear friends before I
• 31:02
  knew there was a marketing agency involved, but out in
• 31:05
  Philadelphia called Red Tetamer. And they helped us create that
• 31:10
  website in the style of it back when we first built our world
• 31:13
  headquarters here in 2008. And then in house our our
• 31:19
  graphics person, Kara, she's she's maintained it ever since.
• 31:24
  So it's not easy to keep a website that's that's foundation
• 31:30
  is that old. It's very difficult to keep
• 31:32
  updated, but I have a hard time letting go of the style of our
• 31:37
  website. I don't want it to change, you
• 31:41
  know? It's got a lot of that black and
• 31:42
  white that you were talking about and you showed on that
• 31:44
  record earlier. It's got a lot of that around
• 31:46
  the border and stuff. I love it.
• 31:48
  It's. Funny, it's a lot of like the
• 31:49
  the the verbiage and the text. You know that we wrote whenever,
• 31:54
  however long ago. It's kind of fun.
• 31:56
  Like the story stuff is all pretty fun.
• 31:59
  The story's great. There's something on there.
• 32:01
  It's called Bear with Me, I got it here, the Legion of Ska, and
• 32:09
  it's got a total comic book vibe.
• 32:11
  It's like you've got heroes and you've got villains and the
• 32:16
  heroes are you guys in the villains.
• 32:19
  I guess it's kind of like corporate America kind of thing.
• 32:22
  Yeah, so here's the actual comic.
• 32:26
  Book. Oh, look at that.
• 32:28
  Wow, that's the true blonde character.
• 32:30
  There's true Blonde, yes. Yeah.
• 32:32
  And pinstripe, pinstripe, he's the skeleton that's in the
• 32:37
  pinstripe suit and he is the CEO of the Rock Gutsin International
• 32:42
  Beverage Corporation, which which at the time was Bud
• 32:49
  Lightner. OK, Yeah.
• 32:53
  And so the whole everybody, the whole thing takes place and the
• 32:58
  showdown at the end of the comic book is in the 10 pin bowling
• 33:01
  alley and all of our friends that help us defeat Pinstripe
• 33:07
  and his thugs, that is the Legion of Ska.
• 33:13
  And it's it's pretty funny. Like, you could kind of see
• 33:18
  here's like the whole fight scene in the bowling alley, in
• 33:22
  fact. I love that it's the whole
• 33:25
  thing. Full page motherfucking fight
• 33:28
  scene. Like an old Batman comic book.
• 33:33
  Kind of just like pow crunch, you know?
• 33:36
  Kabam, it's a bam. So so yeah, I mean that it all
• 33:41
  kind of it all. There's a lot of inside jokes in
• 33:45
  this place. There's inside jokes on our
• 33:48
  labels within our comic book and, and I mean, even even like
• 33:53
  our employee handbook has inside jokes and stuff.
• 33:59
  We try to that's we kind of touched on it earlier, but we
• 34:02
  try to keep that flowing through a lot of the stuff we do.
• 34:06
  And so the websites like it's just the perfect medium for
• 34:11
  that, you know, to kind of tie it all together and give people
• 34:14
  a taste of it. And you can kind of tell, you
• 34:16
  know, there's, there's some fun going on and there's, I mean,
• 34:19
  there's a lot of story here and there and, you know, it's all
• 34:22
  pretty much completely embellished, but just little
• 34:25
  bits and pieces of truth here and there.
• 34:28
  Sure, there's a point to some of it, right?
• 34:30
  There's really a point here. Like like if you click on each
• 34:33
  individual character, like if you click on true blonde, like
• 34:38
  it jumps to that person, then she says something, right?
• 34:41
  Is there's a statement or something and each of you have
• 34:43
  that. Even the villains have something
• 34:44
  if you click on them. You know, I eat the little guy
• 34:47
  for breakfast. I think it's amazing.
• 34:54
  Awesome. I appreciate that.
• 34:55
  That's that's good. To hear I swear, man, what
• 35:00
  what's really what's really great about you is that you were
• 35:03
  you were like what your late teens when you when you're going
• 35:07
  to the brewing process and starting Scott's on now and I
• 35:10
  don't even I could see you now to then and you haven't really
• 35:14
  changed you still have that you. Know I was trying to make her I
• 35:17
  don't feel like I have. Yeah, I can tell that.
• 35:20
  I mean, we have felt you through this entire podcast episode.
• 35:24
  I mean, from the the evolution of everything that's happened to
• 35:28
  you, you haven't changed at all. It's great.
• 35:31
  Amazing, that's funny to hear. What what what?
• 35:35
  PJO thugly and knuckles I those. Are these thugs, these teeth
• 35:42
  thugs of the thin stripes, you? Got to see these.
• 35:46
  You got to go to the page, you got to see it's, it's hilarious,
• 35:48
  it's great. I just, you can't even describe
• 35:51
  it. You got to look at it and see
• 35:52
  it's. Scottbrewing.com is the website.
• 35:56
  And and not only that, there's a whole lot of good stuff on the
• 35:58
  the story so far is great. You've been touched on it.
• 36:01
  You said something about Dave and Bill learned that while they
• 36:06
  loved gulping down good beer, they weren't yet old enough to
• 36:09
  buy it. You touched on that early in the
• 36:13
  episode. Yeah, it's.
• 36:17
  I love this. There's a lot of good
• 36:18
  information on here, like real information.
• 36:19
  There's a lot of fun stuff on here, too.
• 36:21
  Go check out the website. It's great.
• 36:22
  Something else I want to touch on before, we didn't want to
• 36:24
  keep you forever and we got a we got a million things, but
• 36:27
  sustainability. You guys are really into
• 36:29
  sustainability. You've got a really nice page on
• 36:32
  your website about it. You guys, There's there's
• 36:35
  something really cool about it. You you can collars.
• 36:38
  You went from plastic to paperboard was cool.
• 36:41
  You're composting, reducing waste.
• 36:43
  But one of my favorite things I've never seen this before is
• 36:46
  you use recycled jeans in the walls for insulation.
• 36:50
  Talk about that. They literally just wind up
• 36:53
  jeans up there. They ground down.
• 36:54
  How does that work? Yeah, when we, when we built the
• 36:58
  brewery that we're currently in in 2008, there were no lead
• 37:02
  certified buildings in Durango at the time.
• 37:05
  And we wanted to be the first lead certified building.
• 37:10
  And so one of the, you know, we, we did a lot of the stuff, but
• 37:14
  unfortunate part when you're a small business owner trying to
• 37:18
  grow, to become lead certified, you have to pay a commissioning
• 37:23
  agent to basically just stand there that doesn't live here,
• 37:27
  you know, so you're paying for his hotel and his food and, and
• 37:30
  he's just signing off saying, yeah, you did the things you
• 37:33
  said you were going to do very expensive.
• 37:36
  And we were like, I'm not, we're not doing that.
• 37:38
  You know, so we didn't keep that guy.
• 37:42
  We'd still went forward with most of the things we wanted to
• 37:46
  do to become LEED certified. We didn't get the certification
• 37:49
  though. But one of the things we did
• 37:53
  amongst quite a few different things was and this was just
• 37:56
  cool because I hadn't even heard of this before, but the R
• 37:59
  factor. How how, how insulating
• 38:04
  insulation can be in a wall. And I don't know a lot about
• 38:08
  that, but recycled denim blue jeans is has a great R factor,
• 38:16
  like as good as fiberglass, if not better, I think.
• 38:20
  And so all of our walls are insulated with recycled denim,
• 38:26
  which was interesting because when we actually got it and it's
• 38:30
  it clear as day was just recycled denim, you know, And I
• 38:36
  think it was a mix of of scraps from jeans being made and also
• 38:43
  jeans that were recycled. So yeah, that's what all of our
• 38:47
  walls are insulated with. If they're.
• 38:49
  Not on my bingo. On my bingo card tonight, I
• 38:52
  would have not have ever have guessed that denim would be good
• 38:56
  insulation, Yeah. And I don't, you know, that's
• 39:00
  I'm glad you guys just brought that up because it's one of
• 39:02
  those things I've probably taken for granted and haven't thought
• 39:04
  about a little while. But I wonder like how, how far,
• 39:07
  because that was in 2008. So how far advanced that has
• 39:11
  come and what other materials they might be using now.
• 39:14
  And and if denim is still is still a good, you know, has that
• 39:21
  insulating factor and that R factor that it, that it.
• 39:25
  And if there's better products now if we were ever to build
• 39:28
  something else? Yeah.
• 39:31
  So I don't know, but it was it's cool.
• 39:33
  Like if you cut right into my office wall right here, jeans
• 39:36
  would fall out. So you should.
• 39:37
  Fall them out. And there's some Levi's.
• 39:41
  Maybe a few coins might come up. With who knows what else would
• 39:45
  fall out, but I guarantee some jeans.
• 39:47
  But there's some brewery recipes in the back pocket.
• 39:49
  A couple of grocery lists. Yeah, Oh my gosh.
• 39:54
  I got a couple fun things I want to end on if if if you if you
• 39:57
  got a couple extra minutes. Yeah, yeah, sure.
• 40:00
  OK, all right. What's the most punk rock thing
• 40:04
  that's ever happened in the brewery?
• 40:06
  Oh God. He's combing through the stories
• 40:12
  right now. Yeah, there's, you know, 'cause
• 40:16
  that can be, you know, that's pretty subjective.
• 40:18
  I can think of AI mean I, I can think about a time when we had a
• 40:25
  band that showed up kind of unannounced.
• 40:29
  They were a ska band called Warsaw.
• 40:32
  This is in our old brewery, our original brewery.
• 40:35
  The tasting room was very small. It was actually an old lab that
• 40:38
  coincidentally worked out great for us.
• 40:39
  But those guys kind of showed up one day unannounced.
• 40:44
  They were an Arizona ska band and they toured a lot in the
• 40:47
  Southwest and they ended up playing.
• 40:51
  They ended up playing in the tasting room, which wasn't, I
• 40:56
  mean, it's the size of my office, our old tasting room.
• 40:59
  And they had a lot of people and they weren't playing their
• 41:03
  regular instruments. They were playing brewery stuff.
• 41:08
  They were all really good. They can all play a lot of
• 41:10
  different instruments. They're all multi talented.
• 41:13
  And I was singing and it was this is it like 2:00 in the
• 41:16
  morning? A couple good stories like that,
• 41:20
  but this one's a good one. And it was like, yeah.
• 41:22
  And I, I, there's a picture that sometimes I see on the Internet
• 41:25
  when, when they're talking about this band that's in our tasting
• 41:28
  room that same night. It's like, particularly when
• 41:31
  it's this one guy's birthday, I see it pop up on some ska
• 41:34
  websites. But there was probably 10 people
• 41:38
  playing instruments really well. And well, way past when we were
• 41:45
  legally allowed to be doing that.
• 41:48
  And there was, and it was packed and, and everyone was, but
• 41:51
  people were playing pots and pans and I mean some
• 41:55
  instruments. And I remember a recorder and it
• 41:58
  was like, and I remember like handprints the next day on the
• 42:01
  walls and people like or climb and everyone was on top of the
• 42:05
  bar. And it was, I mean, it was, it
• 42:08
  was one of the funnest nights of my life.
• 42:11
  Took some time to get over in the next few days, but it was,
• 42:15
  it was, it wasn't legal. It was nobody got hurt.
• 42:19
  So I think that's a big thing in punk rock.
• 42:21
  You know, you're always trying to punk rock as crazy as you get
• 42:25
  and it was wild. It was completely wild, but
• 42:28
  nobody got hurt. We had a great time and
• 42:30
  everybody lived to at least do it to some extent.
• 42:34
  Another day. That was good because that was
• 42:37
  that was another thing. I was thinking about some of the
• 42:39
  old pictures, but we had a few questionable things as far as
• 42:45
  the legality of what we were doing in not only at our own
• 42:48
  place, but around town way back in the day.
• 42:51
  And then. So I think there's some things
• 42:53
  like that, you know, where you're still, you're just
• 42:56
  pushing the limits of everything and well.
• 42:59
  The good news is the statue of limitations have run out on
• 43:01
  that. Yeah, you hope I'm not too
• 43:03
  afraid you. Don't.
• 43:04
  You won't tell anybody. Well, that's definitely punk
• 43:08
  rock. That is definitely punk.
• 43:10
  Guard that. That certainly fit the bill.
• 43:12
  If you had a walk up song or Ska Brewing had a walk up song, what
• 43:17
  would it be? Not Jamie's on a vacation far
• 43:21
  away. I'm just thinking, thinking the
• 43:22
  rock. But no, I I don't know.
• 43:29
  That's a great question. God, I've never thought about
• 43:31
  that. Which is amazing that nobody's
• 43:33
  ever asked me that before you. Know You know what that means.
• 43:35
  Then, Dave, we're going to have to bring you back on again and
• 43:39
  you have a lot of time to think about it.
• 43:42
  Well, if he throws one out here, we're going to use this one of
• 43:45
  the posts. I know I'm trying to think like
• 43:48
  of all the like, OK, I think the toasters, we actually used to
• 43:56
  use this on that website. I don't think it's on there
• 43:58
  anymore. But the toasters and this is a
• 44:00
  fun story too. They're they're celebrating.
• 44:03
  I think they're 45th year as they were.
• 44:08
  They were original New York ska, so part of that third wave of
• 44:11
  ska. I was talking about well known
• 44:14
  ska band and they've invited me to go on tour with them this
• 44:18
  fall in Poland and Germany, neither of which country I've
• 44:21
  ever been to. But they have a a song called
• 44:25
  Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down.
• 44:27
  And I think that, and there's no doubt about it, that's that's
• 44:31
  the walk up song. Don't let the bastard grind you
• 44:34
  down by the toast. Yeah, you look out with that
• 44:36
  great song. I'm gonna end on this what's one
• 44:43
  thing people have to experience to truly understand Sky Brewing?
• 44:50
  I think, I think actually being at our anniversary party in the
• 44:55
  fall, it's a good, you get a taste, all the beers, you get a
• 45:01
  feel, the vibe of the brewery and all the people that work
• 45:04
  here and the people that really enjoy the beer and the music.
• 45:08
  It's it's kind of a scene. It's usually mostly ska.
• 45:11
  It's a little faster and harder and some more punk rock.
• 45:14
  This year with the bands that we've got lined up, it's
• 45:16
  September 12th. It's not quite sold out yet, but
• 45:20
  it always does sell out. But that party is really
• 45:24
  indicative of the whole character and the vibe of who we
• 45:30
  are and the beers we make and and the people we are and the
• 45:33
  people that work here. And it's a really good way to
• 45:37
  get a taste of what this place has been all about for 31 years.
• 45:41
  Awesome, Awesome. That's awesome.
• 45:45
  Steve, you got anything else for Dave?
• 45:46
  I can't get anything better than that, I know.
• 45:49
  What? It I mean, I don't have
• 45:50
  anything. I have so many other questions.
• 45:53
  But you know what? We like to save questions for
• 45:55
  another episode. And you know what?
• 45:58
  Now we're going to twist your arm and say, will you come back
• 46:00
  again? I'd love to come back.
• 46:01
  Yeah, you guys are a lot of fun. You were great too, because you,
• 46:07
  you you did a good amount of research for being in a place
• 46:10
  that can't get our beer on a regular basis.
• 46:12
  You know, I appreciate that. So I appreciate you guys for for
• 46:16
  really digging into things before we ever even got started.
• 46:19
  Absolutely, I'm trying to do a little.
• 46:21
  Digging. I've loved every minute of this
• 46:24
  episode. Man, this has been fantastic.
• 46:25
  That's awesome. Is there anything you want to
• 46:27
  end on? Anything we didn't touch on, you
• 46:28
  want to you want to put out there.
• 46:30
  No, I mean go avalanche there's we talked about that.
• 46:36
  No, it would be great to see you guys.
• 46:38
  You should maybe see if you can make your way out here for one
• 46:40
  of our anniversary parties. Even even he's.
• 46:42
  Going to have to do that. I I was telling him like I go to
• 46:44
  GABFA lot, but I know it's it's it's almost another world
• 46:48
  getting to where you guys are. So may have to plan a little
• 46:50
  something maybe one of these days and kind of do both.
• 46:53
  Maybe next time I'm the one time I was in Nashville, I went down
• 46:58
  early. I ran in Rock'n'roll Marathon
• 47:00
  like it was like the day before the the the Craft Brewers
• 47:04
  Conference started and I swore I would be back to Nashville.
• 47:08
  So if I'm getting back there to do whether it's to run or for
• 47:13
  some other reason, I I'll look you guys up and definitely see
• 47:17
  if we can go out and have a couple of beers.
• 47:19
  We will show you a good time, promise.
• 47:21
  Awesome. I need to move me around.
• 47:24
  Yeah. We'll find time for you.
• 47:25
  We'll find a location to record too.
• 47:27
  That would be an absolute blast. Yeah, that'd be great.
• 47:31
  Cool. Well, Dave, thanks for joining
• 47:33
  us. This was a freaking blast it.
• 47:36
  Was awesome, had a lot of fun. Thank you guys.
• 47:39
  Scott Brewing, West Coast IPA. Cheers.
• 47:45
  Cheers. Cheers.
• 47:47
  Thank you, Brewery Underground. Podcast.