Latest / The Brewery Underground Podcast | Craft Beer Interviews, Reviews and Beer Travel / Carl Meier & Black Abbey Brewing: Stories from the Nashville Craft Beer Scene | Re-Release of Episode 10

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Carl Meier & Black Abbey Brewing: Stories from the Nashville Craft Beer Scene | Re-Release of Episode 10 · The Brewery Underground Podcast | Craft Beer Interviews, Reviews and Beer Travel

• 0:08
  Hey. Hey, hey, what is up today
• 0:10
  everybody? Thanks for listening again to
• 0:12
  the Brewery Underground podcast where you can follow us always
• 0:16
  at sullivanterronbreweryadventures.com.
• 0:19
  I'm Steve Sullivan, joined the course by the Chancellor Craft
• 0:22
  Beer, Scott Terron. And Scott, we have a pretty
• 0:26
  great podcast today with Carl Meyer, a Black Abbey Brewing
• 0:30
  here in Nashville. He's going to join us in a
• 0:32
  moment. But there is one thing that's
• 0:35
  kind of non beer related that I want to mention is that a few
• 0:40
  months ago on our podcast, we had made a prediction on who may
• 0:45
  be in the Super Bowl. And at the time I never did.
• 0:50
  I don't know if you remember this.
• 0:51
  I haven't gone back to listen to our prior podcast to see who may
• 0:55
  you who you had perhaps selected.
• 0:58
  But at the time, I picked Baltimore versus Philadelphia,
• 1:02
  and obviously Philadelphia bombed out and then the
• 1:06
  Baltimore Ravens bombed out this past weekend.
• 1:09
  Do you even remember who you may have picked?
• 1:12
  Probably the Titans, I'm pretty sure.
• 1:16
  Probably not I I don't remember. I probably would have said one
• 1:22
  of, if not both of those teams probably would have put Kansas
• 1:25
  City in there. But it's a good question.
• 1:27
  I have no idea. Well, that's all right.
• 1:30
  That's all right. I haven't made a prediction yet
• 1:32
  and I'm not going to on who is going to win the Super Bowl
• 1:35
  between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers.
• 1:38
  You you have a guess as to who you think may win.
• 1:42
  Man, on paper, I think the Niners, but you can't count my
• 1:44
  homes and that team out. So yeah, I, I don't know.
• 1:48
  If I had to put money on it, I'd probably go with Kansas City,
• 1:51
  just again. Yeah.
• 1:52
  I don't think you can ever count them out.
• 1:54
  Well, we'll have a podcast again before the Super Bowl because
• 1:58
  we're going to have on the Beer Babes coming up here in about a
• 2:01
  week, and we'll talk about them a little more on social media.
• 2:04
  But let's welcome in Carl Meyer, who is the owner of Black Abbey
• 2:10
  Brewery here in Nashville. And Carl, we're happy to have
• 2:13
  you join us today. Glad to be here, thanks for
• 2:16
  inviting me. Yeah, welcome.
• 2:18
  And that was, it was and thanks for it was a quick turn around
• 2:20
  too from when we reached out and and we had some availability.
• 2:23
  So it worked out pretty quickly. It's, it's, it's funny, you
• 2:27
  know, scheduling is so fluid and, you know, sometimes you got
• 2:32
  some and sometimes you don't and it's an hour here and now we're
• 2:34
  there and so, but yeah, it worked out pretty well.
• 2:38
  Yeah, I did. We had some stuff booked out
• 2:40
  kind of into March, but then we had this this week right here
• 2:42
  and like, hey, we really don't have anything here.
• 2:44
  So it worked out great. So and again, thanks for joining
• 2:45
  us. It worked out perfectly.
• 2:47
  We always do on the podcast as we start off drinking a beer and
• 2:51
  it just so happens that I see Scott has.
• 2:55
  I've got the black Abbey, Yep, the red ale I got.
• 3:00
  I have Black Abbey myself. I'm opening her up and I have
• 3:05
  Black Abbey the Rose. So good stuff, man, good stuff.
• 3:09
  And we're glad that to help represent your your product
• 3:12
  today. Thank you.
• 3:14
  I'm, I'm actually not, I'm actually not drinking any beer.
• 3:19
  I just finished AI got there's I'm part of a group of 10 people
• 3:25
  that do dry January. Yeah.
• 3:29
  And so it's it's like a cookie exchange.
• 3:32
  We each buy 3 bottles of gin and then pour them out in little 2
• 3:37
  ounce pours and then we swap them all around so that
• 3:41
  everybody drinks a different one different gin every day in
• 3:44
  January. And then we've got one guy sober
• 3:49
  and he buys a non out gin and he does the 31st day.
• 3:52
  And so that's been sort of a liver to reset for me over the
• 3:59
  last month because you know, 2 ounces of gin turns into 6
• 4:03
  ounces of gin I think sometimes pretty quickly you.
• 4:05
  Understand. So yeah, so I'm I'm, but I'm
• 4:10
  enjoying this. It's not a Stanley Tumblr, but
• 4:12
  it is rather a large Tumblr full of ice water.
• 4:14
  It's been great. All right, well, you got to you
• 4:17
  got to stay hydrated and there's definitely nothing wrong with
• 4:20
  that. But let's talk about Black
• 4:22
  Abbey, because you all have been brewing a beer in Nashville for
• 4:26
  quite some time. But for for for people that
• 4:29
  aren't really familiar, when did you guys get started with your
• 4:32
  brewery here in Nashville? Sure, we we opened at we've
• 4:37
  always been the same spot wherever on Sidco Drive, the
• 4:41
  Berryhill, 100 Oaks, part of part of the city.
• 4:45
  We opened in September of 2013. And so my business partners and
• 4:50
  I met in a home brew club here in town, but they used to meet
• 4:54
  over at Bosco's, if you, if you remember, in Hillsborough
• 4:57
  Village. And so we would hang out over
• 5:01
  there and drink each other's beer.
• 5:02
  And then we formed sort of a subset of that club and started
• 5:08
  entering a bunch of beer in the competitions, mostly trying to
• 5:12
  beat the guys in Music City Brewers, which was always very
• 5:16
  difficult to do. And, and so we, you know, ended
• 5:19
  up winning some medals and then we won a silver medal in the
• 5:25
  largest Hum Brew competition in the world at the time.
• 5:27
  It was in Oakland in 2008. And after that we said, well, I
• 5:32
  don't know, maybe we ought to think about writing a business
• 5:34
  plan. And so we started working out a
• 5:37
  business plan. And my partners and I each had,
• 5:39
  you know, I would do air quotes, regular jobs.
• 5:44
  And so we would, you know, do our our jobs and then work on
• 5:47
  this business plan at night and on the weekends and brew beer.
• 5:50
  And I really wanted to focus on European influenced styles and
• 5:57
  at the time and that kind of early aughts leading up to 2010,
• 6:02
  2011, especially the local brands, their branding and, and
• 6:06
  I think sort of thought was very kind of 50s retro.
• 6:12
  They've got these big bright, bold colors and they're very,
• 6:15
  they got that sort of 1950s throwback vibe.
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  But there really wasn't a lot of focus either in sort of brand
• 6:22
  identity or in the liquid on these more European styles.
• 6:28
  And the the silver medal we won was for a Belgian dark strong.
• 6:33
  So we've always liked brewing with the sort of European
• 6:37
  framework in mind. And so we decided that that was
• 6:40
  what we wanted to do was make European influenced American
• 6:43
  craft. And what could be more European
• 6:47
  than naming your brewery as in the framework of a monastery or
• 6:53
  monastic brewing tradition? And so the Black Abbey
• 6:57
  references the monastery where Martin Luther wrote the 95
• 7:00
  Theses that started the Protestant Reformation.
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  Years later, after he was excommunicated, he married a
• 7:07
  nun. And then the two of them moved
• 7:10
  back into that monastery, which is called the Black Cloister.
• 7:13
  And Catherine brewed the brewed beer there and basically
• 7:17
  financed his ministry out of the monastery where the Protestant
• 7:21
  Reformation started. In the Middle Ages, it was
• 7:25
  common for the nuns to be the Brewers, not necessarily the
• 7:28
  monks, which typically everybody now nowadays thinks about these
• 7:32
  monastery breweries as being monk driven.
• 7:36
  But that was that was where that name came from.
• 7:39
  And so I was brewing one night and got to, you know, doing
• 7:43
  Wikipedia research and texted Mike and John and said, hey, I
• 7:46
  got it. We should, you know, we should
• 7:48
  call this brewery the Black Cloister.
• 7:51
  And the next morning John texted me back and said drink 3 beers
• 7:56
  and try to say cloister. And we thought that was
• 8:01
  hilarious and, and true. And so I think that the, the,
• 8:09
  the thing about switching from Black Cloister to Black Abbey
• 8:14
  was the style of beer that Catherine would have been making
• 8:19
  in the Middle Ages. You know, she wouldn't have had
• 8:23
  access to the same kind of brewing ingredients that we have
• 8:27
  now, like the beer, Like she couldn't have been making what
• 8:30
  we think of as German loggers. They didn't have temperature
• 8:34
  control. They didn't know what yeast was,
• 8:37
  much less out of propagator culture specific lager ale yeast
• 8:40
  strains. The mulch she would have been
• 8:43
  using would have been killed probably over peat or fire of
• 8:49
  some sort, you know, and have electric, electric ovens to kill
• 8:52
  and stuff. So she would have been making
• 8:54
  something very similar to what we think it was, a Belgian or an
• 8:56
  Abbey style ale. So we fit that black cloister
• 9:00
  and Abbey ale together and that's where that name Black
• 9:04
  Abbey comes from. But we try to let everything
• 9:06
  that we do flow out of that European influenced American
• 9:10
  craft motto. Everything you do, you guys do,
• 9:16
  whether it's the artwork on the cans, the website all ties into
• 9:21
  that who, who's obviously it's your idea, but who, who's kind
• 9:24
  of doing the artwork and stuff on the website and, and, and the
• 9:27
  cans. So it's, it's honestly, it's
• 9:31
  been sort of a rogues gallery of people over time.
• 9:37
  The the idea, the original idea started with the three of us and
• 9:42
  my partner John, he had a friend of his who was an artist that
• 9:48
  they like. They went to kindergarten
• 9:50
  together. John Brooks was his name and
• 9:52
  John Brooks was instrumental in designing the logo on the
• 9:56
  stained glass in the middle of the arch.
• 9:58
  I think that was very much, he was very, very instrumental in
• 10:03
  that. And then when we were getting
• 10:05
  ready to put beer in the cans, we realized that really wasn't
• 10:09
  anything that any of us knew anything about.
• 10:12
  So we we worked with an agency out of North Carolina called the
• 10:17
  brand It. And so the brand it really came
• 10:20
  up with the the one that's kind of still sits in that format as
• 10:24
  the Rose, the arch on the can with the big bold color around
• 10:29
  the outside and black on the inside of the arch.
• 10:32
  And they came up with the idea of having sort of an individual
• 10:35
  icon that's attached to each brand.
• 10:38
  So the Rose has that White Rose with a red heart and a black
• 10:42
  cross in the middle, which was Luther's Crest.
• 10:45
  So that's, you know, where that came from Special, which is our
• 10:49
  Belgian double has a rooster. Luther often times used a
• 10:53
  rooster as sermon illustration, so much so in fact, that the
• 10:59
  sort of the history of the weather vane is dictated from
• 11:02
  this story. He they would they would put
• 11:05
  either murals or, you know, Roosters on the top of the
• 11:09
  steeples of the Protestant churches.
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  So that sort of the illiterate population knew which the
• 11:13
  Protestant churches were versus the versus the Catholic
• 11:16
  churches. Brandon came up with that and
• 11:19
  then we ran with it. And then here over the last
• 11:23
  couple of years, we've been starting to do a little bit of
• 11:27
  rebranding in terms of we've narrowed the arch of the can a
• 11:30
  little bit. We brought the style of the beer
• 11:32
  really up to the forefront, move the icon over to the side and
• 11:39
  that we've handled internally. We've got Alex Frizzle, who does
• 11:45
  all of our graphic work, social media, events, photography.
• 11:50
  He's he's been instrumental in in doing a lot of that stuff.
• 11:54
  Hey, Carl, I want to go back to the beginning of this podcast.
• 11:57
  If you just a couple of minutes ago when you were talking about
• 12:00
  Bosco's, because I've been here for 25 years and I feel like
• 12:04
  Bosco's was almost like craft beer before craft beer was cool.
• 12:09
  Absolutely, yes, that's absolutely true.
• 12:14
  When I I moved into Nashville in 1999 and there were three brew
• 12:18
  pubs in town, it was Market Street downtown and then
• 12:24
  Blackstone over on West End and Bosco's.
• 12:28
  Blackstone claim Lay's claim to be the oldest continuously
• 12:32
  operating brewery in the state and they opened in 1994.
• 12:38
  Jeff with Black Horse in Clarksville would argue that
• 12:41
  point. I think they opened maybe the
• 12:43
  same month. So they're very, very close.
• 12:48
  But for the purpose of this, I'm going to side with Blackstone
• 12:51
  because campus is a dear friend of mine and I'm going to, I'm
• 12:53
  going to side with him. But then Bosco's started in
• 12:58
  Memphis. They had a located, their
• 13:00
  original location was in Memphis and then they opened two or
• 13:04
  three more. My wife got her masters at
• 13:06
  Vanderbilt. So we lived on campus for a
• 13:07
  while. And so that was a very
• 13:08
  convenient location for us to, to go and eat and get a beer.
• 13:13
  It's funny, the one of the reasons we started kind of our
• 13:17
  own little offshoot of that Music City Brewers Humber club
• 13:21
  was because you could smoke in the bar at Bosco's.
• 13:24
  And I was, you know, for those beer nerd and me, I was like, I
• 13:28
  can't like smell or appreciate this beer because it's so smoky
• 13:32
  in here. And so we started having our own
• 13:35
  club, you know, off site club meetings where with guys that
• 13:38
  weren't smokers. And isn't that funny?
• 13:40
  It's just this was in, you know, 2000, You know, it's not like it
• 13:44
  was 20 years ago. And it's funny because I, I
• 13:48
  Scott, you've never been to Bosco's, right?
• 13:50
  But I no, never. OK.
• 13:52
  Because again, conversations with some previous friends and
• 13:55
  I've been here 25 years, moved here in 98.
• 13:59
  So I worked, I used to work downtown.
• 14:02
  And yeah, friends of mine, we would go to Bosco's.
• 14:04
  And as you mentioned, Carl, there were only a couple places
• 14:07
  you could go. It was Bosco's, as you said.
• 14:10
  It was Blackstone. We used to go to Oh, the place
• 14:15
  that had 200 beers on tap and on Broadway.
• 14:18
  Flying saucer. Yeah, flying saucer and that
• 14:22
  would and that would basically it.
• 14:24
  So I don't, I don't even know whatever happened to Bosco's,
• 14:29
  but. It it contracted, it's, I mean,
• 14:32
  yeah, it's the the classic story of Nashville.
• 14:35
  You know, the real estate got too expensive and yeah, there's
• 14:39
  a lot of redevelopment going on around it.
• 14:41
  And I don't know whether also I will say that Bosco's, like
• 14:46
  Bosco's knew who they were and they never changed.
• 14:49
  And so I think, you know, the menu never changed.
• 14:51
  The core beer offerings I don't think really ever changed.
• 14:54
  And so I think I tell this to people a lot, Nashville is a
• 14:59
  town that's driven on gimmicks, right?
• 15:01
  Everybody's got to have a gimmick.
• 15:03
  And yeah, Bosco's had a gimmick that came around in 1995.
• 15:08
  And, you know, after 20 years of the same gimmick, I think it
• 15:12
  just, you know, just gimmicked out and Yep, Yep.
• 15:17
  Hey, you have on your website and I'll let you give out that
• 15:22
  information. You have 3 categories of beer.
• 15:24
  It's year round the season and the specialty beers.
• 15:29
  How often are you trying to add more beers for each category and
• 15:33
  can you talk a little bit about all those three and also on your
• 15:37
  website where people can find those beers?
• 15:41
  Yep, the website is black, abbeybrewing.com and the the web
• 15:48
  design and all that stuff. Again with that was done by
• 15:51
  another company. We worked here locally with the,
• 15:54
  an agency called the Button Group BUNTIN and they really did
• 15:59
  a great job in, in not just developing it and building it
• 16:02
  out, but grasping the quirky humor that is part and parcel of
• 16:10
  our brand. I think that was not always easy
• 16:15
  for folks to wrap their heads around 'cause, you know, we like
• 16:18
  to, you know, have sort of 1 foot in the truth and 1 foot in
• 16:22
  blasphemy. And, and I and I like straddling
• 16:25
  that line. And I think they did a really
• 16:27
  good job in, in driving that through our the website.
• 16:31
  And if while you're on there, there's a piece of it called the
• 16:35
  patron Saints. And they did these videos about
• 16:38
  some of our beers and the patron Saints of Black Abbey.
• 16:41
  And they're, they're absolutely hilarious.
• 16:43
  Yeah. Very, very, very funny.
• 16:46
  Really proud they are that turned.
• 16:47
  Out it was my it was my favorite part of the website I went
• 16:49
  through each one of them because it's got their like their their
• 16:51
  BIOS right there and then it I think it says that it says that
• 16:55
  it's like a little video of it too and in an audio and it's
• 16:57
  it's hilarious yeah go on the website and check that out
• 17:00
  because the whole website is fantastic and there's kind of a
• 17:02
  little history lesson in there too right you got some some
• 17:05
  stuff you've written about Martin Luther and.
• 17:06
  Yes, for sure. And but the, so the core beers,
• 17:11
  we for a long time we had four and then it moved to five and
• 17:15
  now it's effectively 6 and it's had a little bit of change over
• 17:21
  the last couple of years. And, and I think, you know,
• 17:25
  change is good and I'm, you know, embrace it and excited
• 17:28
  about it. But the thing never changes is
• 17:30
  Rose. Rose is our flagship.
• 17:32
  It's a Belgian blonde. It's about 45% of the beer we
• 17:36
  make, I would say is Rose. And you know, when we open the
• 17:41
  brewery, like I don't know which, you know, we, you don't
• 17:44
  know what's going to, you know, what's going to stick or what's
• 17:46
  not. And I don't necessarily think we
• 17:50
  thought we're going to be a like flagship driven brand.
• 17:54
  Yeah, but Rose is our flagship and it it, it is certainly been
• 18:00
  the bellwether. And so Roses are #1 and then
• 18:04
  that runs on Belgian yeast. We use yeast that comes from
• 18:07
  Shimei. And so the Shimei yeast drives 2
• 18:10
  with the year round beers. Rose and Special.
• 18:14
  Special is a Belgian double, so it's a little darker in color,
• 18:17
  little stronger than Rose and Seven four.
• 18:21
  That one is also the one that is I think the hardest to find.
• 18:26
  Special doesn't have a lot of grocery placements.
• 18:29
  You can find it in liquor stores, we find it in some
• 18:33
  places on draft, but it is the, it is our number one selling
• 18:38
  package beer in the tap room. And so I think it encapsulates
• 18:42
  who Black Abbey is, is a European influenced American
• 18:46
  craft brand. It's a very unique style that
• 18:49
  not a lot of people are doing. And I, I'm could not be happier
• 18:54
  with how it's how it turns out. I think it's just such an
• 18:56
  interesting and fun approachable beer.
• 18:59
  Dangerous at 7 1/2%. So those two of the year rounds
• 19:04
  run on the Belgian East. And then we have two Ipas
• 19:09
  because you know, you can't be in brewery in the United States
• 19:11
  and not have, you know, a couple Ipas.
• 19:14
  But they we got one that sits kind of on the hazy juicy side
• 19:18
  and then one that sits on the more West Coast side.
• 19:21
  So Tennessee IPA is the hazy juicy that beer I was about 18
• 19:29
  months ago, we did a blind panel where we did 10-12 different
• 19:36
  Ipas, both local and national and just sort of compared to see
• 19:41
  how how 10, how we thought Tennessee IPA stacked up.
• 19:45
  But also, you know, if we if we wanted Tennessee IPA to be or
• 19:49
  feel different than the way that it was.
• 19:51
  And out of that meeting came some some adjustments to both
• 19:55
  how the beer looks and how the particularly how the beer
• 19:58
  smells. And we really have pushed to
• 20:02
  have it be a little more hazy. You know, I'd like to have a
• 20:06
  little bit of a lighter back end on it.
• 20:08
  And I don't like IP as necessarily when they're super
• 20:11
  strong. So we got Tennessee IPA where
• 20:15
  I'm really, really happy with it at 5 1/2%.
• 20:17
  It's got just enough haze and it's got a big fruit juice nose
• 20:20
  and I'm super excited about that.
• 20:23
  Then five points is I, I tell people all the time it's like my
• 20:27
  Sierra Nevada IPA, you know, it's it's Cascade and Amarillo
• 20:31
  driven. It's an OG West Coast.
• 20:35
  You know, that's the one where I'm like people, if people are
• 20:37
  going to make the bitter beer face, it's going to be on five
• 20:40
  points, right? Like that's our that's our West
• 20:42
  Coast, right? So that's those four.
• 20:45
  And then pub ale is new to the year round rotation.
• 20:48
  So pub ale is. If I were going to enter in a
• 20:52
  competition, I would probably enter it as an ESB.
• 20:56
  If you for sure don't want to ever sell a drop of beer, go
• 20:59
  ahead and call it bitter. So, but we are we had a Tapper
• 21:05
  manager several years ago, Andrew who he and his family
• 21:09
  went to England for vacation. When he came back, it was with
• 21:12
  Chad. Actually they Chad and Ben, Chad
• 21:15
  now at tenfold and Ben has moved to New Hampshire and works at a
• 21:18
  winery. But they were our routine at the
• 21:21
  time and sat down with those guys was like, look, we need to
• 21:24
  develop a pub ale because every pub you go to in England, they
• 21:28
  have just a super approachable little bit multi amber colored
• 21:34
  ale. And oftentimes it's on cask.
• 21:37
  It's just such a great thing. Like we need to develop that.
• 21:40
  And so we worked on it for a long time and it was always kind
• 21:43
  of like, oh, we should release Andrew's Pub Ale and we'd brew
• 21:46
  it on the small system to do well in the tap room and then
• 21:48
  we'd have other priorities move around.
• 21:50
  And so last year we decided we were going to go for it and we
• 21:55
  brewed it when the Craft Brewers Conference was in town.
• 21:59
  I guess we thought we're going to have breweries in town from
• 22:01
  all over the world. Everybody's trying to like blow
• 22:05
  everybody's doors off with we're going to make, you know, these,
• 22:09
  you know, whatever's on trend, we're going to do bring in all
• 22:11
  this beer from all over the country.
• 22:12
  And we're like, you know what we're going to do?
• 22:14
  We're going to do an English amber.
• 22:18
  And and it was we were so excited about it.
• 22:22
  And I think it like it captured a segment of the market that was
• 22:26
  just not being paid any attention to and had so many
• 22:30
  Brewers, like, working on the line, production Brewers being
• 22:35
  like, heck yeah, man, Like, I love this because this is beer
• 22:39
  that tastes like beer, right? And so then we brewed it again.
• 22:45
  And then we started putting in cans.
• 22:47
  And we're like, you know what? We're going to move this into
• 22:49
  the year round lineup. So pub ale, we graduated to year
• 22:53
  round in September last year, so that's only been year round for
• 22:58
  the last couple months. And then gold and ale, which is
• 23:03
  a gold in English, golden golden ale.
• 23:05
  That beer is the only year round beer that we have in 16 ounce
• 23:10
  cans. So same idea.
• 23:12
  We wanted an easy drinking, very approachable English style ale
• 23:17
  that we can also sell in 16 ounce 4 packs.
• 23:19
  It's just, it kind of opens up venues, it opens up, you know,
• 23:25
  certain liquor stores like to carry that format.
• 23:27
  And so Golden Ale is, is sort of the dark horse on the on the
• 23:32
  year round front in that it's also relatively new and it has a
• 23:38
  different package format. So those are the six that are
• 23:42
  year round. And then on the seasonal book,
• 23:45
  there are 5 beers that sit in the seasonal category and the
• 23:50
  first one is almost always changing and, and it has changed
• 23:55
  a number of times over the year. So I'll talk about the other
• 23:57
  ones and then I'll come back to the pole position.
• 24:01
  But our, our summer seasonal is called check condition, which is
• 24:05
  a check pills that moved into that role last year and we've
• 24:11
  been really happy with that. That was our first sort of foray
• 24:13
  into having a true logger, and so Check Condition runs during
• 24:19
  the summer. Then Chronicles is our fest
• 24:22
  beer, so that runs around Oktoberfest time.
• 24:27
  Then Guy Fawkes is an English brown that comes out in October,
• 24:33
  runs until right around Guy Fawkes Day, which is November
• 24:36
  5th. And then Krampus Knocked is a
• 24:38
  Bock. And so you'll still see Krampus
• 24:41
  around a little bit. I saw cans of it at Publix the
• 24:44
  other day. That's kind of coming to the end
• 24:47
  of its season. Which brings us to spot one,
• 24:50
  which is what we call it pole position.
• 24:53
  We've had we've run a Goza in there, we've run a Vienna logger
• 24:56
  in there. We ran an amber logger in that
• 25:01
  bucket I think last year. But this year we decided we was
• 25:04
  going to do an Irish style red ale.
• 25:07
  And I want to say last year I think we did well.
• 25:13
  I can't remember exactly what the numbers are, but by the time
• 25:15
  we're done with red ale, we will have brewed almost 2 1/2 times
• 25:21
  what we did of in that the beer that was in that position last
• 25:24
  year. And so it's again, a style
• 25:27
  that's like the beer guys all know and the beer guys all like,
• 25:32
  and it's just sort of been out of, you know, out of the trend
• 25:37
  favor, if you get, if you will, for a little while.
• 25:40
  And, you know, I think in the in the beer industry today, you're
• 25:45
  you're not, we're not chasing a trend drinker anymore.
• 25:49
  We're chasing people that like beer.
• 25:51
  And, and I think in order to appeal to the like real people
• 25:57
  that like beer, like we should make beer that taste like beer.
• 26:00
  And you know, I don't say that to crap on people that have
• 26:05
  different sort of approaches to what they want to make or styles
• 26:08
  that they want to approach. There's a place for all that
• 26:12
  stuff. I got out of the beer shaming
• 26:13
  business a long time ago. But I think for for Black Abbey,
• 26:19
  I think our sweet spot and what we excel at is that European
• 26:25
  influenced American craft and you know, appealing to beer
• 26:31
  drinkers that like those more traditional styles.
• 26:34
  It's almost like beers getting back to basics.
• 26:37
  A little bit, yeah. I think that's yes.
• 26:40
  And you know, it's been it's been interesting and a fun ride
• 26:43
  over the last few years to see, you know, these big hazy IP as
• 26:47
  and the, you know, double and triple juices and pastry stouts
• 26:52
  and people using lactose and fruit and crazy sours and
• 26:55
  getting weird lunch the other day with a guy that I served on
• 27:00
  a nonprofit board with years and years ago.
• 27:02
  And he always brings up I knew he would he brought it up again.
• 27:05
  I made AI made a green apple jolly rancher wit beer, like my
• 27:10
  kids are like untie in these little Jolly rancher candies and
• 27:13
  a melting on the stove top, you know, and I brought it to some
• 27:18
  event and he just will never like it.
• 27:20
  I mean, it was good. It was all right.
• 27:22
  It was Kelly green. It was crazy.
• 27:25
  It's just pretty wild. It was funny, but it's like, you
• 27:28
  know, and he was always like, why did you brew that beer?
• 27:31
  I was like, well, because I can, you know, like I'm going to try
• 27:33
  it because I can. And, you know, my hat's off to
• 27:38
  folks that say, you know what, I'm going to try this and I'm
• 27:41
  going to see if I can sell it, you know, and go, you know, you
• 27:45
  want to make a beer that tastes like, you know, Krispy Kreme
• 27:47
  doughnuts. Well, like, let's let's do it,
• 27:50
  try it. But that's like, that's not
• 27:54
  where I came up. And those aren't the kind of
• 27:56
  beers necessarily that I feel like Black Abbey is is known for
• 28:00
  or really tries to lean into. But it is kind of fun to be
• 28:05
  coming back around to some of these OG styles that, you know,
• 28:10
  for folks like me who, you know, that was my introduction to
• 28:14
  craft beer, to have that, you know, be able to go into a bar
• 28:18
  and be like, Oh yeah, I can, I can get a red and I can get an
• 28:21
  amber and I can get a West Coast IPA.
• 28:24
  Like it's kind of fun. In the last three or four years,
• 28:27
  kind of that timeline you were just talking about, I've got a
• 28:30
  new found appreciation for or at least an appreciation now for
• 28:34
  like pilsners and, and, and, and that stuff.
• 28:35
  The, the, the ESB three or four years ago, you couldn't really
• 28:39
  find a good one or, you know, they were just kind of your,
• 28:41
  your typical middle lights or whatever.
• 28:43
  But man, they've come a long way And and I think it's people like
• 28:48
  you putting effort into making those things and making them
• 28:50
  better than they've ever been. So I see them now in a menu and
• 28:53
  I can't wait to get them. Yes.
• 28:55
  And it's not an easy style to make.
• 28:57
  And I think, you know, for folks like us who started as home
• 29:01
  Brewers, you know, there's a, there's a lot of great breweries
• 29:04
  out there that have degreed master Brewers.
• 29:08
  And, you know, those guys and gals went to school to learn how
• 29:12
  to do that stuff. And then there were a lot of
• 29:14
  people who sit in our bucket where we're like, you know what,
• 29:17
  we were home Brewers and we took some classes at Siebel and next
• 29:22
  thing you know, we got a 20 barrel brew house and we're
• 29:24
  figuring out how to use it. And, and I, and I think also as
• 29:29
  somebody who brewed your home for a long time, you know, it
• 29:31
  was very, very comfortable and brewing ales very comfortable in
• 29:34
  that temperature gradient, very comfortable with fermentation
• 29:39
  scheduling and with loggers is different.
• 29:43
  And especially you get in get into that in a, in a big space
• 29:47
  and you got a lot of money riding on it.
• 29:49
  It's like it darn well better be right because there's, there's
• 29:52
  nowhere to hide. So.
• 29:55
  I feel like I've seen your cans of Black Abbey in various stores
• 29:59
  throughout the Middle Tennessee area for years.
• 30:02
  I mean, I know you said when you started your brewery.
• 30:05
  How long have you been canning? We started canning in 2016.
• 30:10
  It was actually Saint Patrick's Day 2016.
• 30:12
  We canned our first batch. So we were draft only for just
• 30:18
  about 3, a little more than three years and did self
• 30:21
  distribution during that time as well.
• 30:23
  So, you know, I, I have been in just, well, I can't really even
• 30:28
  say this anymore around Nashville's changed so much, but
• 30:30
  I used to be able to say I've been in every cooler in this
• 30:32
  town, you know, personally rolled kegs into every bar and
• 30:37
  restaurant in the city. How far off do your cans go?
• 30:42
  Is it throughout Tennessee or is it elsewhere?
• 30:45
  Or is it just in this? Area, we're just, yeah, only in
• 30:48
  Tennessee, we're statewide, so Memphis to Johnson City.
• 30:52
  About 80% of our beer is sold in the Middle Tennessee area.
• 30:56
  So you know, we've got room to grow in Memphis and Chattanooga
• 31:01
  and Knoxville and Johnson City. I work mostly the East Tennessee
• 31:09
  market. So Isaiah is based here and he
• 31:12
  works in the Nashville kind of in the, in the donut.
• 31:16
  And then we've got somebody to cover Clarksville and then I do
• 31:21
  Cookeville and and Knoxville and I say it goes to Memphis.
• 31:25
  So we're spread thin. We're we're, we're small, but
• 31:30
  we're scrappy. Yeah.
• 31:32
  But what percentage of your operation would you say is
• 31:35
  through just canning alone? We run about 5050 on on off, so
• 31:43
  just about half our beer goes in the cans, the other half goes in
• 31:46
  the kegs. There aren't many places you can
• 31:48
  go to in town restaurants and and tap rooms and things that
• 31:51
  doesn't have the Rose on, on draft or on their menu or
• 31:54
  something somewhere. It, it, you talked about it
• 31:57
  earlier how it's your big your, your, your big hitter, but it is
• 32:01
  it is everywhere in this town. It's a great beer.
• 32:03
  I ran down the street to get to enjoy it.
• 32:07
  Right now it really is stuck and, and it's funny, of course,
• 32:11
  folks listening to this won't be able to see it, but you guys
• 32:14
  were, you know, able to see one another.
• 32:16
  If you hold those cans up and kind of look at the difference
• 32:18
  in them, the, the new design on Rose, those cans are going to
• 32:23
  very much mimic the way those Irish red cans look.
• 32:27
  And I'm really excited for how that's going to pop on the shelf
• 32:33
  because I do think that the consumer like there's, I call it
• 32:38
  skew paralysis. Like you've seen it, you've gone
• 32:41
  to the grocery store and you've seen somebody standing in front
• 32:43
  of the beer aisle just like frozen in the headlights.
• 32:46
  And it's just, there's so much there and it's hard to know.
• 32:50
  And the artwork on the cans is so intricate and so spectacular
• 32:56
  and it's just eye-catching. But at the end of the day, the
• 33:01
  the meaning is I got to know what's on the inside of that
• 33:04
  can. And that's making my decision
• 33:06
  on. And, you know, I think craft
• 33:11
  beer is it's it's hard to find your space the way between the
• 33:16
  way that wine does it and between the way that spirits do
• 33:19
  it, you know, and I think a lot of people buy wine based on the
• 33:22
  label. Like I can remember, you know,
• 33:24
  buying a bottle of wine because it said Menage a trois on it.
• 33:26
  And I thought that was hilarious, you know, and like, I
• 33:30
  don't know what kind of I don't know what kind of wine it was.
• 33:32
  I have no idea. I didn't buy it because of what
• 33:34
  the grape varietal was. I bought it because it had a
• 33:36
  funny label. And, and whereas spirits, I
• 33:41
  think are much more like Kentucky straight bourbon, like,
• 33:45
  you know, I'm telling you exactly what's in this bottle
• 33:47
  because that's why you're shopping for it.
• 33:49
  And, and I think your beer consumers think more that way,
• 33:53
  at least the, the beer consumers that are searching for beer, you
• 33:57
  know, they're like, I want to know, is this a, is this a red
• 34:00
  ale? Is this an embryo?
• 34:01
  Is this a pilsner? Or is this a lot you know?
• 34:03
  What is this? Yeah, I buy.
• 34:06
  I buy a lot of single cans. Yeah, I buy a lot of single cans
• 34:10
  when I buy beer for home. And there's a many, many times I
• 34:13
  pull a beer off the shelf and I can see the name of it, but I
• 34:15
  can't. I have to look in the fine print
• 34:17
  or look all over the can just to see what kind of beer it
• 34:19
  actually is. This a stout as an IPAI?
• 34:21
  Can't tell half the time. Yeah, right.
• 34:25
  But how often when you're at your brewery do you hear people
• 34:28
  that have come in and the reason they've come in is because
• 34:31
  they've had your canned beer and now they want to check out the
• 34:33
  brewery? It's, you know, it's funny being
• 34:37
  there 10 years. It happened just today.
• 34:40
  I was in the tap room and heard somebody come in and say, oh, I
• 34:44
  had no idea you guys were in town.
• 34:47
  Like we've we've we've been in the same building and the same
• 34:50
  neighborhood for 10 years. Well, yeah.
• 34:51
  Well, yeah, I had your beer out, but.
• 34:53
  And I think that was, you know, when I was talking about the
• 34:57
  other brands in town being have that sort of 50s retro vibe.
• 35:00
  I think also it was very it still is very common for
• 35:04
  breweries to name themselves after geography.
• 35:07
  You know, like Linus is from around Yazoo, Mississippi.
• 35:11
  And so that's where you know, that name comes from.
• 35:13
  You know, it's, you know, you assign, you know, Crosstown out
• 35:18
  of Memphis is in the Crosstown shopping complex and that you
• 35:21
  know, they're that their names are very geographically
• 35:25
  specific. And we didn't want, we didn't
• 35:28
  want to tie the brand in that way.
• 35:31
  But that's came with sort of an unexpected downfall of well,
• 35:35
  we're not Nashville Brewing Company or Tennessee Brew Works.
• 35:40
  You know, we're have this name that doesn't have a specific
• 35:43
  geographic tie. And so that does maybe where
• 35:47
  people are like, Oh yes, I've had this beer ever.
• 35:49
  I've had it a million times. I had no idea it was a national
• 35:51
  brand. You mentioned the tap room into
• 35:56
  kind of in the tap room itself. It sticks with the theme of the,
• 36:00
  of the the brand and the brewery.
• 36:02
  Can you talk about the layout of it?
• 36:04
  And it's called the Fellowship Hall, but it's you've got a
• 36:07
  certain style in there that ties in everything else.
• 36:10
  Yep, when when we were getting ready to open the tap room, we
• 36:15
  really wanted our space to feel like somewhere between a
• 36:19
  monastery chapter house and a German beer hall, Luther was
• 36:25
  famously quoted as saying. I would rather have people
• 36:32
  thinking about worship in the beer hall than thinking about
• 36:36
  the beer hall during worship. And so we sort of let that drive
• 36:43
  what our tap rib looks like. And, and it was interesting
• 36:47
  because we, you know, one of our sort of company mottos is always
• 36:51
  sit at the community table and our, we there, it's community
• 36:55
  city and we got 7 farmhouse tables that each seat 8.
• 36:59
  And when you come in, you're going to end up sitting with
• 37:02
  somebody you didn't know when you sat down.
• 37:05
  And I think that that's important.
• 37:07
  But that was really hard during the COVID time, you know, where
• 37:12
  it was like, Nope, you really need to be sitting, sitting six
• 37:14
  feet away from people. And so I think, and it's been
• 37:18
  interesting how that period of time has sort of changed
• 37:22
  people's approach to how they interact with one another.
• 37:25
  And coming back around to the idea of, yeah, I can sit next to
• 37:29
  a total stranger and I can talk to a total stranger.
• 37:31
  I haven't maybe forgotten how to do this.
• 37:35
  But yeah, we have 7 farmhouse tables.
• 37:37
  We actually, it's funny, we don't have bar seating.
• 37:39
  We have a sort of main bar at the front that has to sort of
• 37:43
  brings to mind of sort of altar of sorts.
• 37:45
  And they don't have seats there. And it's always specifically
• 37:51
  designed that way because, you know, we want people to not just
• 37:55
  sit at the bar and look at their phone or sit at their bar and
• 37:58
  only talk to the bartender, but move to a table and maybe sit
• 38:01
  with somebody that they don't know or somebody that they do
• 38:06
  and have a conversation. And so it's, it's sort of a
• 38:09
  different approach to ship in that way.
• 38:12
  And we, you know, in our tap rooms is cozy.
• 38:15
  I'd say it's just 1000 square feet, 56 seats.
• 38:20
  We do have a little outside space that with some picnic
• 38:23
  tables that'll hold solid. You know, another 30-40 people
• 38:27
  could sit outside if they wanted.
• 38:30
  And you know, we make the best of it.
• 38:31
  Like we have an event coming up in a couple of weeks where we
• 38:35
  pair beer and cookies. The events called Beer and
• 38:38
  Cookies. The cookies are manufactured by
• 38:41
  a group you've probably heard of, but you know, some small
• 38:44
  female humans and green vests whose name of organization we
• 38:48
  will not mention due to potential copyright
• 38:50
  infringement. But you know, it's just that
• 38:55
  it's like it's a kooky event. The first time we tried it, we
• 38:59
  literally Andrew and I did the pairings the morning of the
• 39:02
  event and just, we absolutely got swamped.
• 39:08
  And so it's now I think this is the sixth year we've done it.
• 39:11
  And it's just been a lot of fun to say, you know, this is I, I
• 39:14
  wouldn't have normally thought that eating this cookie and
• 39:17
  drinking this beer together would be anything other than
• 39:21
  disgusting, But it's, but it's not, it's really good and really
• 39:25
  fun. But it's just a good way that,
• 39:29
  you know, again, where we can bring people together into that
• 39:31
  space around something that that we make and something that
• 39:35
  somebody else makes. And, you know, we'll have some
• 39:39
  of those small ladies there selling the things that we're
• 39:44
  using. And it's, you know, it's just
• 39:47
  that it's a good community gather round event.
• 39:52
  And I think that's kind of the heart and soul of our tap room.
• 39:56
  Is that a public event? Public show up and go.
• 40:01
  It's Saturday, February 17th, 12:00 to 8:00.
• 40:04
  OK. And then Steaming Goat is a food
• 40:06
  truck that doesn't steam goats. He makes steam sandwiches and he
• 40:10
  has a funny little goat beard. That's how we got that name.
• 40:14
  He's going to be there doing the savory side.
• 40:17
  That's cool. Yeah, I.
• 40:17
  Was going to ask you about that. You do have food trucks, I guess
• 40:22
  on the weekends at your brewery, is that right?
• 40:25
  Yeah, we do. We typically have a food truck
• 40:27
  there Monday, Friday and Saturday, sometimes Sunday, but
• 40:32
  usually we have we do trivia on Mondays and so we have food
• 40:35
  truck when trivia is there and then Friday and Saturday and
• 40:39
  February. Every one of those days with the
• 40:42
  exception of the 17th is Taqueria Alhim and she makes
• 40:50
  like burrito ramen that will melt your face.
• 40:53
  It's phenomenal. So good.
• 40:57
  What there was some other events or do you guys have a some of
• 41:01
  the events in the Tapper, but you've got a Deacon is a Deacon
• 41:04
  club Membership was like, is that like a mug club?
• 41:06
  Yeah, so we have the mug club has sort of two tiers, if you
• 41:11
  will. We have, there's the, you know,
• 41:15
  like the board of elders who are the, we have 95 mugs that have
• 41:18
  numbers on them. And those folks, they get their
• 41:23
  mug and they have it for a year and at the end of that time they
• 41:25
  take it home and then they sign up and they get a new one.
• 41:27
  We have an initiation and it's, that's actually coming up too at
• 41:31
  the end of the month. Initiating the mug club members
• 41:36
  is, is a is a joy. Like it's, I genuinely enjoy it
• 41:40
  and I will not talk about it outside of the tap room.
• 41:43
  So this is all I will tell you is it's great fun and I really
• 41:46
  enjoy it. But then the deacons, the
• 41:51
  deacons are the ones who, you know, for, you know, you
• 41:54
  Presbyterians out there, you know, like the deacons are the
• 41:56
  ones who do the work. And so the Deacon club is open
• 42:01
  all the time. And that's, that rotates not
• 42:04
  based on a single date, but on the date that you sign up.
• 42:06
  And you get most of the same benefits that you get is, is one
• 42:11
  of the numbers, but you don't get to come to the initiation as
• 42:14
  sort of the big differentiator. But then, you know, it's just
• 42:19
  people move away or just, you know, people's lifestyle
• 42:22
  changes. And so we turn over 5 or 6 mugs
• 42:25
  a year. And so we graduate the deacons
• 42:27
  up into those spots. And so it, it's a, and it's a
• 42:31
  good value and it's a good way to kind of take care of your
• 42:34
  regulars. And they, you know, the mugs are
• 42:36
  a little bigger than our normal glassware.
• 42:38
  And so they get, you know, a little extra beer and they get
• 42:41
  discounts on stuff, and it's good to have them as part of the
• 42:45
  family, you know? Yeah, it's pretty cool.
• 42:50
  We we've heard stories in in within the Nashville brewing
• 42:55
  scene about breweries helping breweries and in a sense of
• 42:59
  community. Can you, I'm sure you've got
• 43:02
  some examples of that. Can you have you got an example
• 43:04
  of maybe where someone's helped you guys along the way or you've
• 43:06
  helped someone another brewery along the way?
• 43:10
  Yeah, I, I would love to tell that actually when I was talking
• 43:15
  about when we were getting open and how we didn't know anything
• 43:18
  about what about anything in order to keep your fermenters
• 43:24
  cold or keep them temp temperature controlled, they're
• 43:29
  all jacketed. So like I was explaining sort of
• 43:32
  like a turbis Tumblr, right? Like it's a, it's a cup inside
• 43:34
  of a cup with ale air as an insulator.
• 43:37
  Well, the, the fermenters work that same way, except instead of
• 43:41
  air as an insulator, there's a, there's a, it's like a jacket
• 43:45
  and it fills with polypropylene glycol.
• 43:47
  And so you have this glycol chiller that gets the glycol
• 43:50
  down to 20 something degrees and it pumps through these headers
• 43:53
  all the time. And then when the tank, when the
• 43:56
  beer is fermenting inside that fermenters, it gets warm if
• 44:00
  there's a probe in there. And if it gets above a certain
• 44:03
  temperature variance, it'll call for glycol and it'll open the
• 44:06
  valve and it'll drop the glycol cold down into the jacket and
• 44:09
  cool it back down. So we're able to be pretty
• 44:12
  precise in that sort of fermentation temperature
• 44:15
  control, right? But putting all that stuff
• 44:18
  together is either it's very expensive.
• 44:23
  So a lot of people try to do it themselves, but it's also really
• 44:26
  intimidating because now we're into fluid dynamics, right?
• 44:30
  And so we decided that we were going to try to stick these
• 44:32
  pipes together ourselves. And it before we opened, like I
• 44:39
  went around, we went around, talked to everybody, went talked
• 44:41
  to Steve and Bailey at Jackalope.
• 44:43
  We went to talk to Kent Stephanie at Blackstone.
• 44:45
  We spent a new Linus for many, many years.
• 44:48
  Went talked to Linus at Yazoo and we at Kent recommended that
• 44:53
  we use this brand called George Fisher for the piping for the
• 44:56
  glycol stuff. And so whenever we'd have a
• 44:58
  question about George Fisher pipe, we'd call Kent.
• 45:01
  And so one day we're in there trying to glue this pipe
• 45:04
  together and it's like PVC where you got to, you got to put the
• 45:07
  cement on it and you got to stick it together and twist it.
• 45:10
  And so we're messing around with this stuff, and this guy walks
• 45:14
  in and it's like, what are you, you know, what are you idiots
• 45:18
  doing up there? Like we're sticking this pipe
• 45:21
  together. Who are you?
• 45:22
  Yeah. What's it like?
• 45:24
  Yeah. And it was Coop.
• 45:26
  And Coop was the maintenance manager at Blackstone for
• 45:30
  probably 100 years. And that is an exaggeration, but
• 45:34
  a long time. And he said, Kent sent me over
• 45:37
  here to check on you. And we're like, well, come up on
• 45:42
  the scissor lift and let's see how we're doing.
• 45:44
  And so he came up and gave us some good advice and whatever.
• 45:47
  And I mean, that guy came once a week for months to check on us
• 45:53
  because Kent Taylor, he, he wants you to think he is the
• 45:58
  roughest, most curmudgeonly person you've ever met.
• 46:01
  But that guy genuinely cares about not just the like the
• 46:06
  quality of beer in Nashville, but like for, for people that do
• 46:10
  what he does. And, you know, he just, he would
• 46:14
  never, he hates it when I do this and I try to do it a lot
• 46:17
  like he, he genuinely is a caring person and goes out of
• 46:22
  his way to try to make sure that you know, that he's trying to
• 46:28
  help you take care of you. And so I think that's a that's a
• 46:31
  place where I always remember and I'm very grateful for, you
• 46:37
  know, what Kent did for us was. And so I've tried to pay that
• 46:43
  forward whenever we can, you know, and some of the some of
• 46:47
  the guys that we've worked with and given advice to and, you
• 46:51
  know, tried to help along the way, Some of them have made it
• 46:53
  and some of them have not. But we've made some great
• 46:57
  friends. And yeah, we made some, we made
• 47:00
  some big changes to the way you can self distribute beer in the
• 47:04
  state. And I think that that is
• 47:06
  something that I'm really proud of.
• 47:07
  I work very closely with Rich Vogue, who's the president of
• 47:12
  the Association for the Wholesalers.
• 47:14
  So of course the wholesalers don't want breweries self
• 47:17
  distributing like they want them selling their beer to a
• 47:19
  wholesaler to do the distribution.
• 47:23
  But the law was very arcane and you can only distribute only
• 47:28
  self distribute beer in the county where you manufacture it,
• 47:31
  which in Davidson County is no big deal.
• 47:33
  But when you get out way out east where you got 7 or 8
• 47:37
  counties on this like 10 mile radius, you know, like Johnson
• 47:41
  City Brewing Company out there, like he, you know, he's got a
• 47:44
  basically a bar across the street from his brewery and he
• 47:47
  can't self distribute to him because it's in a different
• 47:50
  county. But he's too small and the
• 47:52
  wholesaler didn't really want to pick him up because it's was
• 47:54
  just kind of a headache and didn't want to deal with it.
• 47:58
  And so I think that was some place that I'm really pleased to
• 48:02
  have been able to work with a team of folks at the Guild and
• 48:06
  with Rich, the Malt Beverage Association, to get some
• 48:09
  meaningful change that allows breweries to maybe succeed where
• 48:14
  otherwise they wouldn't have been able.
• 48:16
  To I'm sure on occasion you get people to ask you for advice on
• 48:21
  what advice can you give me to open up a brewery?
• 48:23
  And you touched on that a little bit, but can you maybe are there
• 48:26
  like maybe one or two things that you tell people that that
• 48:29
  might help if they're interested in opening up a brewery?
• 48:33
  I mean, don't, I mean, I think you'll need twice as much money
• 48:41
  as you think you're going to need.
• 48:43
  And I honestly, I, I think the people that I know that I think
• 48:48
  we're the smartest about opening a brewery are the Bartosh
• 48:52
  brothers at Wiseacre. And they knew when they were in
• 48:56
  college that they wanted to open a brewery.
• 48:58
  And so the one brother went to Germany and got his master
• 49:02
  Brewer certification and worked in some pretty good sized
• 49:07
  breweries. And then the other one went to
• 49:11
  work for a distributor and then went to work for a supplier and
• 49:14
  sales. And so they between the two of
• 49:17
  them had a terrific understanding of both sides of
• 49:21
  the business and not just how to make it and how to sell it, but
• 49:25
  also how to deal with the wholesaler partners.
• 49:28
  And I think that's just really good advice.
• 49:33
  That was something that we didn't know anything about was
• 49:36
  how to deal with the wholesalers and how to present yourself as a
• 49:43
  as an entity that can be a priority for them.
• 49:46
  You know, most most your wholesalers sort of loosely fall
• 49:49
  into one of three categories. You got the guys that distribute
• 49:54
  and has a Bush Budweiser, the guys that distribute Miller and
• 49:57
  then the independent folks. And each one has positives and
• 50:02
  negatives that go along with them.
• 50:05
  The guys that are Bud houses or Miller houses, they get you a
• 50:09
  lot of access to grocery and C stores and, you know, places
• 50:14
  that the big brands can go and maybe a small brand can't.
• 50:19
  But you're, you're never going to be there number one, right?
• 50:22
  You're no matter how big you are or how successful you become,
• 50:26
  you're never going to be #1 it's always going to be AB or Miller
• 50:32
  Coors. So that that I think is
• 50:35
  something to try to try to grasp, you know, understand how
• 50:40
  the distributorships work, how franchise law works, that, that
• 50:47
  I didn't know anything about it. I wish that I'd know more about
• 50:49
  it when we started. You wouldn't think it would be
• 50:52
  that, you know, when you get started, you wouldn't think it'd
• 50:54
  be that big of a deal. But I guess you had to.
• 50:56
  I guess you learned and realized.
• 50:57
  Oh, the cow, it's more than I thought.
• 51:00
  Right, You know, it's like, you know, you want to make beer and
• 51:03
  sell it in your own tap room. Like there's, there's, there's a
• 51:06
  degree of simplicity there. I'm not not saying it's easy,
• 51:11
  but there's there's certainly it's a very straightforward at
• 51:14
  at least, you know, once you start selling beer out in the
• 51:17
  market, you know, you got to register your brand with the
• 51:20
  state, you got to pay these taxes and you got to file these
• 51:23
  report. You better have an account that
• 51:25
  knows what they're doing and, you know, and then you you say,
• 51:29
  you know, whatever I'm going to, I'm going to roll out a beer
• 51:33
  called Shady Bomb, you know, and you know, you got a some brewery
• 51:38
  in Memphis. It's like, hey, that's called
• 51:41
  Market Valve. Yeah, right.
• 51:46
  So you know those things and, and everybody steps in those dog
• 51:50
  piles, you know, and for a collaboration beer that we did
• 51:53
  with Jack Loeb to benefit the Craft Brewers Guild, Steve and I
• 51:57
  brewed it on my home brew rig at the brewery.
• 52:00
  We made 10 gallons. And then we gave it away at
• 52:03
  Craft Brewed for donations for the Guild and the patio one
• 52:07
  afternoon. And the beer was called Jack
• 52:13
  Abbey. And Steve Wright grew up in
• 52:16
  Boston, like he's from Massachusetts and there's a big
• 52:20
  brewery in Mass called Jack's Abbey.
• 52:23
  And how he didn't catch, how he didn't think of it, I don't
• 52:25
  know. I didn't either.
• 52:27
  But we got a call. Then we got to see CMD from from
• 52:31
  Jack's Abbey for that collaboration beer.
• 52:35
  And they called and God bless him.
• 52:37
  Like they called and John talked to him and he's like, look, you
• 52:42
  know, this is what we're doing. We didn't really even think
• 52:44
  about this. We're so sorry when we ever step
• 52:46
  on anybody's toes. And they were like, no, we
• 52:47
  understand now that we see like you're not, this isn't something
• 52:50
  you've rolled out as part of your year round lineup.
• 52:52
  You know, it's like, tell, tell you what?
• 52:56
  We will license you our name for a period, you know, for 10 days
• 53:01
  or whatever for a dollar. And we were like, sounds great.
• 53:06
  And they sent over a contract and John's like, we'll get it
• 53:10
  right back in the mail to you. And he's like, please don't send
• 53:12
  that back to me like this. We're just This is a formality.
• 53:16
  But. But I, I signed it and sent it
• 53:18
  back with a dollar $1.00 cash, cash money in an envelope and,
• 53:23
  and I ran into them at the Craft Brewers Conference in 2018.
• 53:28
  I was actually, it was at Tailgate on the Mumbrian and
• 53:33
  they were hanging out with Wes and Wes introduced me and he's
• 53:37
  like Black Abbey. That sounds familiar.
• 53:39
  I'm like, Oh yeah, you all sent us our first C&D and he's like,
• 53:42
  oh, are you the guy that sent me the $1.00 bill in the mail?
• 53:48
  That's really funny. But with all the things that
• 53:51
  sometimes I guess with the brewery, you feel like they're
• 53:53
  stacked up against you and all the hurdles you got to get over,
• 53:56
  what's the most rewarding thing at the end of the day?
• 53:59
  And I'm going to, I'm going to. I won't even take a guess.
• 54:00
  I think I know the answer, but I'll let you answer.
• 54:03
  I mean it, I don't know, it's hard to say, but I, I think we
• 54:10
  talked to the people who are in the industry, I think talk about
• 54:12
  this a lot. Like nobody, nobody gets to do
• 54:16
  what we do. Like nobody goes out and has
• 54:18
  beers every day at lunch. Nobody like sort of runs with
• 54:24
  this circle of competitors who are also your best friends.
• 54:30
  There's just a there's a culture and a joy around going into bars
• 54:34
  and restaurants and being a being a part of that I think has
• 54:39
  been really rewarding for me. You know, that's nobody's
• 54:43
  getting rich in this industry, I guarantee you that.
• 54:48
  But you do get to be a part of a kind of pretty good sized
• 54:54
  community of people who really care about what they do.
• 54:58
  And it's funny, I was talking to somebody who wanted to have
• 55:02
  their biorehearsal dinner or something in our tap room and
• 55:06
  they had a, a member of the family.
• 55:08
  It was just like, you know, we, we want to make sure that this
• 55:11
  just doesn't turn into some sort of drunken shenanigans, you
• 55:15
  know, where people are just impounding beers.
• 55:18
  And, and I said to him, I'm like, man, I will guarantee you
• 55:21
  that we have no funnels like we're, we're not going to be
• 55:27
  shotgunning anything like this isn't, it's not what you.
• 55:31
  Just because we manufacture beer here doesn't mean that we're all
• 55:34
  just alcohol guzzling themes. You know, like we make a we make
• 55:39
  a luxury product that people like to enjoy when they're
• 55:43
  having a nice time. You know, if, if you know,
• 55:46
  somebody wants to, you know, go buy some Mad Dog 2020 and, you
• 55:50
  know, mainline it like they're in Mötley Crüe will knock
• 55:54
  yourself out. But that's not what the craft
• 55:55
  scene is about. And, and that I think I, I'm
• 56:01
  really grateful to be a part of, of that sort of educational
• 56:05
  process. We were we were approached years
• 56:10
  and years ago shortly after we opened by the Creve Hall Little
• 56:14
  League, by a coach of the Creve Hall Little League team.
• 56:17
  And he wanted to call his team the Black Abbey Brewers.
• 56:20
  And and I was all in like, this is great.
• 56:24
  I love this. And my business partners were
• 56:28
  like, oh, hell no. Like we can't be marketing to
• 56:32
  kids. Are you mad?
• 56:33
  I'm like, it's not that kids like they're five, they can't
• 56:35
  read like this is for the parents.
• 56:38
  And they said, Nope, let's go talk to the attorney.
• 56:41
  And so we went to talk to the attorney and he said no.
• 56:43
  And, and so we didn't, did, we didn't do it.
• 56:46
  And I told the story to my dad and, you know, just complaining
• 56:52
  about it, sort of like I'm complaining with y'all right
• 56:54
  now. And a couple weeks later I got a
• 56:57
  big Manila envelope in the mail. My dad does this a lot.
• 57:00
  He'll send me a, he sends an envelope that's got, you know,
• 57:03
  like cartoons. He's cut out of the funny papers
• 57:05
  and stuff. It's never a note.
• 57:07
  There's no note. It's just stuff.
• 57:10
  And so I get, it's not unusual. So I get this envelope and I
• 57:12
  open it up and in the envelope there's a 8 by 10 picture of my
• 57:20
  travel soccer team when I was in like 8th grade.
• 57:24
  And so it's just the being the kids were all like, look at dad
• 57:26
  and he's got his hair and braids, you know, and I'm like,
• 57:29
  why the hell did he send this to me?
• 57:31
  Like I'm looking at this pictures like why, like of all
• 57:34
  things, just that did he find it in the garage?
• 57:36
  Like where do you what is this? And then I realized what it was
• 57:41
  our jerseys said Kei liquors. Hi, nobody cared.
• 57:50
  Nobody cared back that right? Yeah, well.
• 57:53
  And I grew up in upstate New York and it's just like it's a
• 57:55
  little, it's a different the cult, the culture surrounding
• 57:58
  alcohol and alcohol consumption is just different in the South
• 58:01
  than it is in other parts of the country.
• 58:03
  Sure. Yeah.
• 58:04
  And so I think being a part of an education about that is is
• 58:10
  very helpful. And I think that's that's a
• 58:12
  something that we can uniquely address given the quasi
• 58:15
  religious nature of our brand. You know, that it's the the role
• 58:20
  that alcohol is played in the history of humanity is
• 58:23
  important. And it hasn't always just been
• 58:26
  the debauchery of the Roaring 20s, you know, like it hasn't
• 58:30
  always been that. Your beer has been around based
• 58:33
  I think they say like since the beginning of humans, like since
• 58:36
  the beginning of civilization or something like it goes back
• 58:38
  that. Long it's what made the nomads
• 58:41
  stop being nomads. The first cultivated crops were
• 58:46
  for making beer. You guys have a social media
• 58:49
  account for your parking lot? Yes.
• 58:52
  It is quite hysterical. Where does that come from?
• 58:54
  We could just chat about a little bit because it's it's
• 58:56
  it's, it's funny to me. We had an event, I don't know,
• 59:01
  years ago and it was probably beer and cookies, honestly,
• 59:06
  where, you know, used the people would check in on Facebook and
• 59:12
  if you couldn't find the location that you wanted, you
• 59:14
  could create it. And so somebody on Instagram
• 59:18
  created the check in point parking lot at Black Abbey
• 59:22
  Brewing Company. And then you couldn't check in
• 59:26
  to the brewery. You could only check into the
• 59:28
  parking lot. And that infuriated me.
• 59:33
  And so, you know, you get on and you have to send in your little
• 59:36
  notice and, and I just wasn't ever getting anywhere.
• 59:41
  And so I'm like, you know what? All right, so I start, I started
• 59:44
  that account Black Abbey parking lot and I would take pictures of
• 59:48
  stupid stuff in the parking lot and tag Zuckerberg and Instagram
• 59:54
  and like anything I could find, just like, hey, it should be
• 59:58
  great if I could check into the brewery, but I can't.
• 1:00:01
  I can only check into the parking lot because some boob.
• 1:00:04
  Created a a check in out here in the parking lot for an event
• 1:00:07
  that we had and Facebook and Instagram will not listen to me
• 1:00:11
  and fix it. And I did that for a long time
• 1:00:13
  until they finally fixed it. Did they really?
• 1:00:18
  Yeah. Just I just never did away with
• 1:00:20
  the account. So I don't think very much
• 1:00:22
  anymore. No, it's just got random
• 1:00:24
  pictures on there too, like set of keys.
• 1:00:26
  I think there was a baby's pacifier or something.
• 1:00:28
  Oh yeah, random stuff. Yes, and sometimes I'll come in
• 1:00:31
  in the morning and there'll be something in the parking lot,
• 1:00:34
  like the building directly behind us is now occupied by.
• 1:00:38
  I'm a Jean and Willie, like that really fancy blue Jean brand.
• 1:00:42
  OK, Yeah. And they must add a like that
• 1:00:46
  must add a whatever they had thrown away must have been a
• 1:00:49
  pair of jeans. And maybe they fell out of the
• 1:00:51
  dumpster when it was getting emptied.
• 1:00:53
  But I came in one day and there's like a pair of jeans
• 1:00:57
  kind of just weighing in the middle of the parking lot from
• 1:00:59
  like this is going on black heavy parking lot.
• 1:01:01
  Like this is the the perfect thing, yes.
• 1:01:04
  It's the ultimate. Yeah, so this is yes.
• 1:01:07
  I mean, you know, whatever. Sometimes you find weird stuff
• 1:01:09
  in the parking lot, you know, and then that's it.
• 1:01:12
  Just goes for a good, good engagement, you know?
• 1:01:17
  Yeah, it's funny. Like, I like, I was just looking
• 1:01:18
  you guys up on social media, right?
• 1:01:20
  You know, Black Abbey comes up, Brewing comes up, the tap room
• 1:01:22
  comes up, you come up, and then the parking lot comes up as
• 1:01:25
  well. It's like, oh, that's brilliant.
• 1:01:28
  Yeah, Carl, we're definitely going to have to have you on
• 1:01:31
  another podcast and listen to more of your stories because
• 1:01:34
  you've been fantastic today. And before we wrap this up, we
• 1:01:38
  want to again talk about how people can find you on social
• 1:01:42
  media and for those that are interested certainly and going
• 1:01:46
  to your brewery. So if you could give out all
• 1:01:48
  that information. Sure thing.
• 1:01:50
  The brewery is located at 2952 Sidco SIDCO Sidco Dr. which is
• 1:01:57
  in the Berryhill 100 Oaks area, Nashville.
• 1:01:59
  We're about 5 miles South of downtown, right off I-65 at the
• 1:02:03
  Armory exit and then on the social medias, of course.
• 1:02:07
  You can find us on Facebook, Facebook back slash Black Abbey
• 1:02:11
  and then Instagram is at Black Abbey Brew the tap room.
• 1:02:15
  I think it's Black Abbey tap room if I'm not mistaken.
• 1:02:19
  And then and then you can find me personally at Black Abbey,
• 1:02:23
  Carl. You've got a pretty good parking
• 1:02:25
  situation. You've got some spots in the in
• 1:02:27
  the front, but you do have some around the back too, don't you?
• 1:02:30
  We do, and we have a great relationship with the places
• 1:02:33
  next door and across the street from us.
• 1:02:35
  And so, you know, we've got 20-30 spots in the in the back
• 1:02:40
  of the building and then the handful up, right, up front.
• 1:02:43
  But then as you're, as you're looking at the front of the
• 1:02:45
  building, MJM Architect, which is immediately to the left where
• 1:02:52
  we're super cold with them. So folks can park over there,
• 1:02:54
  just as long as they don't park in the grass.
• 1:02:55
  That really ticks them off. And then directly behind you as
• 1:03:00
  you're looking at the brewery is Ancora Consulting, and they also
• 1:03:04
  let us overflow park over there. OK, that's cool.
• 1:03:07
  I and I bring it up because parking in this town, you know,
• 1:03:10
  is at a premium. So anywhere.
• 1:03:12
  You it sure is and free. It's just free parking.
• 1:03:17
  It's like, hey, that's always a good.
• 1:03:20
  Thing I went over to, I went over to the filling station
• 1:03:22
  today at lunch, right there in at 12 S, you know, right there
• 1:03:24
  by the Edley's. And behind Edley's, they've got
• 1:03:28
  kind of this Torah parking lot and this little dirt lot.
• 1:03:31
  It's a pay lot now they've got the and they've got orange like
• 1:03:34
  it's in the dirt, like it's pay lot in the dirt.
• 1:03:36
  Like how much more parking do they need or much more paying
• 1:03:39
  parking we need in this town? It was.
• 1:03:40
  Ridiculous. I just I can't bring myself to
• 1:03:43
  pay. I mean, I will park 6 miles away
• 1:03:47
  and walk to the filling station before I will pay to, to park
• 1:03:52
  back there. Like it's, it's just the, it's
• 1:03:54
  hard and, and I mean, it was free for so long, but then you
• 1:03:58
  know, you got all the, all the other places where you got to
• 1:04:00
  pay. And so people would just park
• 1:04:01
  there at Edley's and leave their cars all day and all night.
• 1:04:04
  And then there was no place for the Edley's customers to park.
• 1:04:06
  So yeah, it's, it's tight back there Anyway, yes, I saw that
• 1:04:08
  today and I was like, oh, that's just, you know, just from
• 1:04:11
  around. But hey, I've got one last
• 1:04:12
  question, if you don't mind if you got just a minute.
• 1:04:14
  Wait it on me? Yep, the.
• 1:04:15
  And this comes up because I never thought about this way
• 1:04:18
  until we started talking to some some Brewers and some owners of
• 1:04:22
  breweries. But how do you feel about the
• 1:04:24
  untapped app? The reason I asked the wrong
• 1:04:27
  person, my friend. See, as a consumer, we thought
• 1:04:32
  we look at it one right, right. I'm checking in beers and I like
• 1:04:34
  this and I like that and I'm and I'm rocking up these numbers.
• 1:04:36
  But I never thought a bit about it from your end before.
• 1:04:41
  So we used Untapped for a long time to run the menu in our tap
• 1:04:47
  room. It forces you as a, as a brewery
• 1:04:51
  to be very deliberate about building out beers like you
• 1:04:55
  release, you know, we do a lot of small batch, limited release
• 1:04:58
  stuff through the tap room. And so you can either, you know,
• 1:05:03
  let the untapped on the user end, let them create that stuff
• 1:05:06
  for you, or you can create yourself.
• 1:05:08
  And so it, it, I think it forces the breweries to be diligent
• 1:05:10
  about providing good information to the consumers.
• 1:05:14
  And so in that respect, I think untapped is good.
• 1:05:18
  I think the idea of being able to keep track of what you're
• 1:05:22
  doing, drinking and checking in and and so being able to say,
• 1:05:26
  yes, I'd like this place or keep track of, you know, I've drank
• 1:05:30
  these beers, I've tried them before.
• 1:05:31
  I haven't. I think that's really helpful.
• 1:05:34
  What I hate and despise with the heat of a burning sun that
• 1:05:40
  someone will check in a beer that's a style that they don't
• 1:05:45
  like and they'll say I hate Ipas half star and they're checking
• 1:05:51
  in Pliny the Elder or a, you know, a world renowned world
• 1:05:55
  class beer. And giving the power of whether
• 1:06:01
  a a brand is viewed as successful or their products are
• 1:06:05
  viewed as good versus bad to someone who's going to rate them
• 1:06:10
  based on their own personal likes and dislikes, I find to be
• 1:06:15
  incredibly annoying. And you know, and it's and I'm,
• 1:06:20
  and I'm not saying this to like crap on untapped users.
• 1:06:23
  That's not my intent at all, but it is frustrating as a brewery
• 1:06:28
  owner to to look at check insurance for things where
• 1:06:35
  people are making an honest admission.
• 1:06:37
  Like I would never ever drink this and I hated it one star
• 1:06:41
  even though they're they're not taking into account OK, is this
• 1:06:44
  a well made product? Is this something that might
• 1:06:47
  have broader appeal? My favorite untapped story are
• 1:06:52
  lead Brewer once by the time Ben Martin was his name, he made a
• 1:06:57
  beer using a lot of peat smoked malt.
• 1:07:00
  And for those of you who've ever used smoked malt in your in your
• 1:07:04
  home brew, like you peat smoke is a very intense flavor and so
• 1:07:08
  you really want to make it less than 1% of your total grist and
• 1:07:12
  a little bit goes a very, very long way.
• 1:07:15
  And so he made a peat smoked like barley wine that used 30%
• 1:07:20
  peat malt. So it was, I mean, like burning
• 1:07:24
  leather, right? It was just really intensely
• 1:07:27
  smoky. And I loved it.
• 1:07:30
  And Ben, I think Ben and I probably drank the majority of
• 1:07:32
  it and really, really good. And one day he comes into the
• 1:07:36
  office and he's laughing. He's like, you got to see the
• 1:07:38
  untapped check insurance on this beer.
• 1:07:40
  And I said all right, And he shows me the first one and it
• 1:07:43
  says, I love this beer so much. It's like it was custom made for
• 1:07:48
  me. I can't believe how good it is.
• 1:07:50
  The most incredible thing I've ever put in my mouth.
• 1:07:52
  Four stars. All right, so we're live and
• 1:07:55
  we're like this guy, like you loved it so much you couldn't
• 1:07:57
  give it 5. Like what's this?
• 1:07:59
  And then you Scroll down to the next one and it says half star.
• 1:08:04
  And the comment just said the fuck?
• 1:08:10
  And like those those two comments, like it's summed up
• 1:08:13
  for me, the whole untapped experience like that was
• 1:08:16
  genuinely someone who drank that beer and didn't understand what
• 1:08:20
  it was we were trying to do and was like, this is really awful.
• 1:08:25
  Like I can't believe this is a thing.
• 1:08:28
  And but you know what in A and again, on a small batch, one off
• 1:08:33
  oddball project like that that we do in the tap room from time
• 1:08:36
  to time, like that kind of makes sense.
• 1:08:38
  But you know, for somebody to go and say, you know, it be at the
• 1:08:42
  airport and get a pint of Tennessee IPA at an airport bar
• 1:08:48
  And because all the every other beer is out of town, we've, you
• 1:08:51
  know, whatever, it's been Snowmagdon that nobody can
• 1:08:52
  deliver beer and there's only one beer left and it's this and
• 1:08:55
  I have to drink it because I need to get drunk before I get
• 1:08:57
  on a plane and I hate Ipas half star.
• 1:09:03
  Yeah. And I never thought about it
• 1:09:06
  from that perspective before until we started talk.
• 1:09:08
  I forget who it was. I don't know if it was Chris
• 1:09:10
  Dolan or or Wesley, but or Grayson.
• 1:09:13
  But I I never thought about it before but I I completely
• 1:09:16
  understand. Well, Black Abbey, the Rose gets
• 1:09:20
  a lot of stars for me because I, I've had the beer before and
• 1:09:24
  I'm, I'm enjoying it tonight. So certainly love it.
• 1:09:26
  But hey, Carl, we appreciate you coming on today.
• 1:09:29
  We hope that you'll come back again sometime because you got
• 1:09:32
  some great stories and that's one of the things on this
• 1:09:35
  podcast. Besides the fact that we like to
• 1:09:38
  talk to brewery owners and others, we also like to hear
• 1:09:42
  some good stories, so we appreciate.
• 1:09:43
  It I sure like to tell them so thanks for giving me the format.
• 1:09:47
  Thanks a lot and we definitely appreciate it and we will.
• 1:09:51
  We will definitely be back soon. That's been Carl Meyer with
• 1:09:55
  Black Abbey Brewing. We appreciate it.
• 1:09:58
  Go go to Black Abbey, go get their beer and you'll love it.
• 1:10:01
  And this has been the Brewery Underground podcast for Scott
• 1:10:06
  Terron. Or Steve Sullivan.
• 1:10:08
  Cheers.