Georgetown Brewing Company, Seattle WA

After Elysian, we headed for the scheduled tour at Georgetown Brewing Company in Seattle. It’s an interesting story with Georgetown.

Interesting facts:

1. Manny’s Pale Ale is a hometown favorite, brewed by Georgetown. 85% of Georgetown’s sales come from Manny’s alone. It can be found at over 400 venues in the city – craft beer venues, regular sports bar and your typical college bars which will feature (if you can call it a feature) the boring yellow water beers (bud lite, coors lite, miller liter and the rest). So on one hand, decent penetration. Even college students and others (who generally don’t care for craft beer) end up drinking a Manny’s Pale Ale. Where it gets interesting: Most people in Seattle don’t know Georgetown Brewery makes Manny’s Pale Ale. And for that matter, for the high popularity of Manny’s – no one knows of Georgetown to begin with. People think Manny’s is the brewery or people don’t care to ask/wonder.

More than 80% sales coming from one beer! I’m sure Brooklyn Brewery has a similar story with Brooklyn Lager, Sam Adams with Boston Lager and Sierra Nevada with their flagship Pale Ale (60% sales, even today when they are the 2nd largest with 1million+ bbls a year.. for those who don’t work with barrels, take my word for it – that’s a lot. More about Sierra Nevada and their Pale Ale later). But if your customers don’t recognize your beer with your brand, I think it’s a fail. At least it would be for me and my plans. Got to keep that in mind. I want to build a brand, first and foremost. Georgetown is doing good nonetheless. I mean they do have a large brewery today. But Manny’s Pale Ale isn’t close to as good as some of their other beers (Lucille IPA, Chopper’s Red Ale, and the Geogetown Porter). I’d rather have my brewery being known/popular for my good beers, than for my average ones.

2. Why the name Manny’s Pale Ale? The founders of the company: Manny and Roger. Manny had developed the original recipte for the Pale Ale. Roger forced Manny to name the beer after him. Then later, Manny forced Roger to name a beer after Roger: Rogers Pilsner.

3. Magic Hat sued Georgetown since both breweries had a similar name (not same) for their respective beers (sad scene whenever craft breweries get in lawyers to settle dispute. Minus points to Magic Hat). The Magic Hat #9 vs the Georgetown #9. Georgetown decided (and wisely so) to retract the name instead of spending ridiculous monies on lawyers. As an ego saver, that beer’s tshirt was designed to diss Magic Hat and their conduct. Picture below. Geor9etown Porter with a ‘suck it’ intended towards Magic Hut.

Hopefully craft breweries can stay away from corporate America and avoid suing eachother. There are bound to be name overlaps (2500+1000 breweries, each making 4-5 beers at least = 10,000 beer names)

Elysian Brewing Company

Today was a unique day. Very well spent. I visited 3 breweries in Seattle – first had an 85 barrel capacity brewwhouse, followed by 60 bbl and lastly, to the smallest brewery in Seattle (probably) at 2 barrel! So a good range representing, how we will start in India (small/nano), move onto (30-60bbl) then hopefully 80+bbl when the time is right.

This post is for the 85bbl brewery called Elysian Brewing Company. They have 3 locations (brewpubs) in Seattle. The original venue (5/7 bbl system), their first expansion at venue #2 (20 bbl) and there production brewery at 60bbl. Having 3 venues with different brewhouses sizes gives the brewery options on where to brew – based on the beer. Experimental/R&D is conducted at the smallest brewhouse, followed by 20bbl for seasonal/special brews and then there’s the 60bbl for large scale production. I visited venue #2 – the 20bbl capacity.

Interesting fact: Elysian Brewing Co is the 8th fastest growing brewery in the country, and second from Seattle to be featured as top 50 fastest growing (Fremont is the other at #11). 136% growth in 2012. 13,500 bbl in 2011 to 31,800 in 2012. Impressive.

Called in ahead of time and got a private tour with the brewer there, Kevin. Gave us an extended and detailed tour, and really took the time to answer specific questions. Jono, brewer-friend I was staying with in seattle (whom I’ll talk about in the next post when I visited his brewery) was with me, and added some good points to cover more ground.

The space here was tiny and the equipment was all cramped up in there. 20bbl brewhouse with three 40-bbl fermentators – which means they end up doing double batches quite often. Chiller (beer and hop storage), grain storage and keg storage was all right there.

Key learnings:

1. Double Batches: I really didn’t know what this meant until today. Its simple. Breweries have fermentators which are larger than their brewhouse size (40 bbl fermenters for 20 bbl system). What this does is it enables the brewery to brew 2 batches in the brewhouse (one after the other) and use one 40bbl fermenter. Makes a lot of sense. Especially because the price difference between 20bbl and 40bbl fermentors is about 40% I hear. 40% more dollars for twice the capacity. Prepare for eventual increase in demand. And apparently, it’s fine if there is a difference of upto 1 day between the 2 batches. So batch 1 today, put it into the fermenter, pitch the yeast and let the magic begin. Tomorrow, start batch 2, and add to the same fermenter. Sophisticated breweries will take a yeast count to see if more yeast needs to be added. Elysian doesn’t seem to do that. 1 day difference is tried and tested – it works. Kevin’s got it under control. The yeast starts generation as soon as its pitched in, which is good (/fine) for when the second batch goes in.

2. Yeast reuse – Another interesting thing I learnt – Yeast is ‘reused’ about 10 times. This is common practise. I asked other brewers later and found that everyone does it 8-15 times. What this means is that once the beer is done sitting in the fermenting tank (for about 7-10 days for ales) – before it is moved to the bright tank – the yeast is removed and stored. And this way, it’s reused several times.

3. Jono told me that Elysian experiments with beer styles all the time. Which could explain their making it to the top 50 fastest growing list. People like newer beers coming out of their favorite breweries. Keeps things interesting. I tried a sour beer (my first time). It was a gateway sour – not very tarty. It was good. Later I had the Petrus and Monk’s and loved it more than the Elysian (in Elysian’s defense, their sour was not 100% sour to begin with. apples and oranges).

After Elysian, we visited Georgetown Brewing Company. 60bbl system, but hasn’t made it to the fastest growing. Why? One reason is that they don’t experiment as much. More on it in the next post.

Brewery Ommegang, Cooperstown NY

Easily my favorite brewery visit so far in the US.

We arrived at 1pm at the brewery, after a 2 hour drive from Ithaca NY. First, we were greeted by this massive entrance. Doesn’t really feel like a brewery. Felt more like an old (and fancy) hotel or castle. On entering the gate, you see a massive area ahead of you – huge brewhouse, store, restaurant, a VIP tent, a huge open field and a small hop farm in the background – all of which is surrounded by what seems to be a thick forest.

To get ourselves started, we (my brother and me) opted to begin with the tasting room –
while waiting for the 3pm brewery tour. Paid $3 for 6 tastings of year-round Ommegang beers. Each beer was very well explained – what to expect, what ingredients went into it (all spices used were present for us to view and smell – apparently, Belgian beers use a lot of spices), and what classic Belgian style it represented.

Which reminds me – I should mention a bit about their history and what they do.

HISTORY: It is common knowledge that Duvel acquired Ommegang in 2006-07.  What’s not as commonly known (except to us few who took the time to visit Cooperstown), is that Duvel and Ommegang go long way back – right when Ommegang first started brewing.

Brewery Ommegang was founded by Don Feinberg in 1997. Don used to be an imported of European beers, but things weren’t going so well. The only portion of his imported portfolio that was doing well were the Belgian beers, which were mostly owned by Duvel. So Don approached Duvel with a business plan to set up a craft brewery in Cooperstown – which will focus on traditional Belgian styles. Duvel liked the idea and Don got 40% funding from Duvel (or was it Duvel got 40% stake? I can’t be sure). Either way, Don got Duvel. Impressive achievement. Can I get Duvel to invest in my start up brewery in India? Dream on.

Getting back to the visit – we tasted 6 of their beers, 5 of which were a traditional Belgian beers. The Witte, Belgian Pale Ale, Rare Vos, Hennepin, Abbey Ale and Three Philosophers.Along with the beers, we also got some very tasty Ommegang treats to try out – beer infused horseradish mustard and beer infused cheese+horseradish spreads. Delicious. Love the cheese spread idea. Great compliment to beer and munchies.

Next up, the brewery tour. The tour itself wasn’t great. It was short, it wasn’t detailed, and it wasn’t given by the brewer himself (which is always better I feel). A quick walk through the brew house, and then a quick look at the bottling line. 2 cool things here:

1. Duvel donating a massive bottling line to Ommegang a few years ago. That line was just lying idle in Germany somewhere. It’s a big system, so Ommegang doesn’t end up using it for more than a few days – takes care of your requirement.

2. The second Game of Thrones beer – ‘Take The Night’ Stout, was being bottled. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take pictures (last year HBO got pissed off apparently when pictures leaked), nor could we buy any (launch was in 2 days after our visit). Oh well.

After that unsatisfactory tour, we ate some at the restaurant. Very good food, Belgian/French style but with your typical American options in there (burger, of course). Interesting fact: The restaurant itself generates $1 million+ in revenues a year. And take in mind that this is a miles out of Cooperstown. And Cooperstown is a 4.5 hour drive from NY. It’s in the middle of nowhere basically. But people come, for their love of Ommegang.

Maredsous, Duvel, Houblon Chouffe, De Konick, Liefmans

Lastly, we decided to take the ‘VIP’ tasting for a total of.. wait for it.. drumrolls please – $8. Cheapest VIP tickets I’ve ever seen. Either way – 6 beers (we got one bonus later), generous pourings, great conversations and interesting history behind each beer was shared. Along with a small cheese plate that had a hop-infused cheese!

All Belgian beers I’ve had at Vol de Nuit (Belgian beer lounge in NYC) are well balanced. That’s why I love them so much. Same thing about these bottled beers. Easy to drink, despite high ABV (7-9% is common), delicate hop flavor.  The Duvel Triple Hop (Special Edition) was particularly good. It’s difficult to get your hands on though.

2 employees at Brewery Ommegang joined us for the VIP tour. It was their last day at work and they had never had the VIP tasting. They were, obviously, very thrilled about my brewery-in-India-plans. We spoke about our love for beer, shared suggestions and recommendations and had a nice hour long conversation with some great Belgian beers. I didn’t know or would never have imagined – but some Belgian beers actually taste better from the bottle (over tap). Later, Rich got us a special edition Duvel Triple Hop. It uses the famous Sorachi Ace from Japan for aroma, along with 2 other hop varieties. It was one of my most liked Belgian beers (and for that matter, all time fav).  Good going Duvel. The more you go craft and more you experiment, the more the general population is likely to get a taste of craft beer and appreciate it.

After about 4.5 hours at the brewery, we decided to head back to Ithaca, after buying some Ommegang shwag.  Great experience visiting Ommegang, will highly recommend to all, and will try to visit again before I head back to India.

DC Brau, Washington DC

DC Brau was started in 2009 by Brandon Skall and Jeff Hancock (brewmaster). It is the first brewery to operate within the
District of Columbia since 1956, after Heurich Brewery closed shop. Now Washington DC has a brewery to call its own, again. And trust me, the citizens are happy and DC Brau’s killing it. Or don’t trust me, but trust The New Yorker (very cool interactive map of the US craft beer scene at this link. Do check it out).

Great to see another example of a successful distribution-only brewery. Gives me hope. We want to avoid having a brewpub, and focus on distribution of beers to venues in Bombay and Pune to begin with. And DC Brau is a great example to learn from. They’ve used what they’ve got very well – uniqueness since they are the only one within DC; great name, beer names and general branding & merchandising; great beer!

A few interesting facts:

1. DC Brau was the fifth fasted growing craft brewery in the US in 2012. 195% growth. Very impressive. As per their website, their beers are available at 400 venues in DC and 350 in the DC metro area.

2. Apparently, they worked with the local govt to change a law that allows breweries within DC to have a tasting room. Right on – taking some initiative.

3. Like many breweries, they support a family-owned local farm by delivering waste (spent grain) to them – which the farm uses as animal feed. Farmers love it apparently – the brewing process itself only uses 30% of the grain’s nutrients. When done, this spent grain still has a lot of protein in it, which is good for the animals of course. Works well for the farmer. Works well for the brewery as they can get rid of the waste sustainably.

Some breweries (I know Dogfish Head does this) goes one step further  – 1. make beer 2. feed waste to cattle 3. chop ’em up 4. get meat 5. feed beef & beer to customers. Thus completing the circle. Makes a statement, and a convincing one – that we give you the ultimate beer experience when you come to our brewpub. Even the meat you are eating grew up nice and fatty eating healthy grain from OUR beer.

4. Heard that the same family owned farm is now considering growing some hops for DC Brau. Another circle complete.

Getting to the brewery visit now:

Wall art

Great environment. Lot of young people, hanging out, checking out the facility, talking to the employees and buying merchandise. As soon as you walk in, you are handed 4 little coupons which entitle you to 4 beer samples. A 5 minute wait in the line, and we get our samples. Good beer. Very interesting beer name like ‘Public’ Pale Ale, ‘Corruption’ IPA, and ‘The Citizen’. The wall has a lot of art and while writing this post, I just read on their website that they have partnered with local artists for all this art. Great idea and it has been noted:

• Kendra Kuliga – “Ground Wolf” collaboration beer logo
• Matt Leunig – 2013 growler and pint glasses and brewery murals
• Pixel Pancho – Our beloved (and awesome) “Robot Reindeer” mural
• Mike Sikes – The “Burial at Sea” collaboration beer logo
• Kelly Towles – 2012 “Artist Series” labels and brewery mural

Brandon gives us a tour

My brewery tour was great. Brewery is open to the public only on Saturdays. Brandon himself delivered the tour, which speaks a lot about his dedication. He isn’t sitting on his couch drinking free beer on a Saturday afternoon (I mean after all, he’s got the rest of the week for that haha). Jokes apart, he’s probably working very hard throughout the week. He started the tour explaining to us (we were about 20 total, and we were the 5-6th batch) that brewing isn’t a fun, chilled out job. It’s a lot of manual labor, in a hot warehouse. Picking up sacks of grain, climbing steps, manually dumping grain into the boil kettle, and doing this for a 20 bbl batch means you do many rounds. Then you have to move kegs around, load up the truck. Hard work. Good to hear that. Good reminder.

Empty cans, waiting

What else? Oh they have a canning line of their own, which is pretty cool. Didn’t see it operational though. Their can designs are very creative and eye catching.

 

 

Wall of beer

Merchandise was great too. Got a lighter – haven’t seen any brewery supplying lighters. Especially not on the west coast where it’s all about being organic and gluten free and what not. Tshirts were cool too. So is their logo. Got a tshirt with a ‘Fermentation without Representation’ on it – not sure what it means exactly but its cool. Got my friend John (who was visiting with me) a growler to take home.

Church Brew Works, Pittsburgh PA

Church Brew Works, Pittsburgh PA

The unique thing about Church Brew Works is that it is situated in an old church building! Check out some of the pictures below. It is a brewpub – but really – a microbrewery in a church – should be more than a brewpub right? The place is HUGE. The typical church windows (with the pictures sort of ’embroidered’ in the glass – dont know what thats called) are still there. The cross on top of the church is still there (no cross inside though). They have a 20-bbl brewhouse which is placed at a rather unique position. Beer is god, at this place, it would seem.

Imagine having a brewery in an old, abandoned temple in India some where! Never happening.

Anyway, great feeling to walk into this place. Not only because you are literally entering a church, but coz you can literally smell the brewery and the fresh malts/grain. Smells like it usually does in the kitchen during the home brew process.

An interesting beer: Kenya AA 

Pipe Organ Coffee Pale Ale

Usually, whenever a beer claims to have a coffee flavor to it, usually its a stout. So it was surprising to see a pale ale with coffee, my first time. A different approach taken, and a good beer. Mild coffee flavor to it, but still very pale ale. I’ve always thought of brewing a local, Indian coffee flavored beer once the brewery is operational – partner with a coffee plantation in India and procure some fresh coffee grains (is it grains?). Thought it would be a stout. But, today’s experience teaches me that – it doesnt have to be a stout.

Key Learnings:

1. If we enter the brewpub scene, the type of venue will play a big role. Obviously we can’t have a church. But a spacious loft/warehouse will be fucking awesome. Few arcade games. A small stage. A stack of board games (Settlers of Catan, mainly!) available during ‘board game hours’, maybe a couple of ping pong/fuzball tables, and these sorts of things can then be incorporate.

2. Remember to have that brewery smell as you enter the building. Feels as good as that smell when it first rains.

3.  Perhaps a Coorg Coffee Pale Ale? (Coorg – the coffee producing region in Karnataka).

Quote

“Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.”

– Mark Twain

He then goes on (full quote below), but I like the first sentence. In India (as in the US), people’s habit (like drinking mass-produced, boring, watered down beer from the big companies) needs reforming (by introducing them to good beer.. craft beer).

Full Quote:

“Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits. Fanatics will never learn that, though it be written in letters of gold across the sky. It is the prohibition that makes anything precious.”

Quote

The consumer is more likely to be enlightened, if there is more than one source of enlightenment

– Sam Calagione, Dogfish Head

Malts

Some of the malts used at East End Brewing Co. During the tour, they passed these around. We got to smell and taste them. Interesting idea to incorporate for our brewery tours.

East End Brewing Co, Pittsburgh PA

Beer list. Growler hours.

Had the opportunity to visit East End Brewing Co. today. Have been following their progress over the last 2 years, and they are a best-case-practice – who we’d love to learn more from.

Started by Scott, who lived on East End St in Pittsburgh (hence the name) in his garage. Started out by delivering kegs to local pubs. Been in operation for 9 years now – with 10 employees and a 20-bbl system. One could argue it’s slow growth. I won’t – because, and more importantly, they’ve managed a very good penetration in the craft beer scene in Pittsburgh. Every restaurant that I’ve been to (which serves a decent range of craft beers) has at least 1 or 2 East End beers on tap. They are truly local – locals are proud when asked about the brewery – a feat we’d love to achieve in our local market in India. To have local citizens be your brand ambassadors is what we are aiming for.

Currently, East End is a production brewery. They have a tasting room, where one can pick up growlers to go. They do have a few bottled beers (only in 22oz bottles), which are hand bottled.

Brewery tour costs $25. About 45 minutes. Included are 4 tastings (generous filling, by the way) and a growler to take home. All that beer with some great ideas = money worth spent.

Their 20-bbl system

Key Learnings:

I love to visit small, local breweries like East End Brewing Co. (until very recently, they were the smallest microbrewery in Pittsburgh). I love it because I get some awesome ideas from these guys. For instance:

Annual Keg Ride: Every September, East End releases a special brew. Bicyclists follow the first keg to a ‘mysterious’ pub, where they get free beer from the keg. Last year, 600 riders followed the keg! Oh how much we’d love to have 600 cyclists follow our beer around on the streets of Bombay or Pune! Note taken. Let’s see if we can do something similar.

Another unique concept implemented by East End, this time not on the marketing front – but on the financing front when they were expanding to a new (and current) facility: 

Scott raised $1000 each from 100 local investors – in exchange for beer once they are up and running. Brilliance. Not only do you raise $100k, but you (a) Get the local community involved in your project and (b) you guarantee yourself $100,000 worth of sales in the first 1-2 years.

Proudly displayed on the brewery wall is a list of the early 100 local investors

Even if I’m able to raise all the required funds for my brewery (which I’m confident I will) – I would still pursue this technique to generate initial sales. Approach friends, for instance, for Rs 20,000 from each. Not a big amount for most people. (Note: If I go pure production, then it’ll get a bit complicated on how this Rs 20k is to be redeemed. They’ll have to go to regular pubs to redeem. Needs further investigation).

And finally, there’s this one other good idea. Nothing unique about this one (most breweries do this) but they’ve managed to generate a good hype around this launch:

Special release on Sep 14, 2013. Expected to sell out on day 1

Gratitude – a barleywine

22oz bottles (hand bottled by team and interns).

11% ABV.

1600 bottles only.

Awesome packaging.

1 case per person max.

$18 each.

Sept 14 release.

They expect it will probably sell out on day one. One of the most sought after bottles for beer traders.