Full Movie: Crafting A Nation (Beer Documentary)

[Music] [Music] so i'm living in a uh in a country where i'm able to chase my dreams so one that's amazing how am i living the american dream well i'm getting to chase what's absolutely i'm so passionate about um i've done a lot of things in my in my short career uh of working for other people that i did or did not believe in and now i have the chance to do it exactly how i would do it and i think that's a rare privilege in her world and i i'm so excited to be going after it blaster brewing company is basically a little project that uh is filled with my brother and i's dreams and passions and goals all worked up for almost 10 years now when you look at two people and you see my brother and i and my wife in here um you know busting it when nobody else is looking literally sweating our our shirts you know until they're absolutely soaked and there's blood running down our fingertips you know when people try this hard it's hard to think that somebody like that willing to give so much could even consider failing it's not an [Music] option you know we're not kids with deep pockets we didn't come from uh silver spoons so it's taken a little bit longer for us and i think that has made it you know that much more rewarding [Music] we could work our nine to fives and live this this mundane kind of you know we're making money we have our day jobs it's nice it's comfortable but we wanted to do something that challenged us that let us chase our dreams and create something with our hands tangible uh we wanted to make our creative mark on the world and it was time for us just to get after it do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] we have to be honest with ourselves and know that so far it's taken us three times as long to get anything done so our hopes is in six months blackstrap brewing company will have a open sign sitting over the front door we've never really done a project like this i've never tried to do all the construction myself and get a business started so it's been a learning process for sure funding has been really tough even though we had twice the collateral of what we were trying to get a loan for the banks said you know what you guys are too much of a risk you're running full-time jobs and you're trying to start this new business we don't feel like it's feasible that you can do both and be able to pay us back i'm sorry [Music] [Laughter] so this building was a printing plant built in 1902 the printing company abandoned this building in the 1960s went out to st louis county and built a new building on a corn field this building then suffered a tremendous fire it was slated for demolition it was then used as a post-apocalyptic film location for escape from new york this is what we bought and so not only in 1991 were we doing the unthinkable which was opening a new brewery in st louis which to many people was completely unthinkable and a completely insane idea failure would be immediate you know we'd be put out of our misery within weeks but we bought a building in a part of town that was relatively is a kind way of putting it abandoned this was one of the first projects in what is now considered to be a long-term revival of the city [Music] there is definitely a current right now that we're seeing of supporting local [Music] it's still kind of difficult to know what to say about st louis and beer culture because we're in the middle of a big shift i think it's great because it's unlike any other industry that i've ever been a part of or really have seen [Music] we're still a very small piece of the pie but we're we're gaining a lot of attention we're there right now here i think that a lot of people are really seeing things differently and it's really important i mean the joke in south st louis you'd walk into any bar and said what beers do you have and they would say we have them all and what that meant was we have everything that anna's a bush makes in st louis people bought anazer bush beers because culturally they were such a huge part of everything that went on here a not-for-profit st louis never went without when it came to beer never had to buy a case of beer for an event never had to ask twice for a large donation you know part of the reason that they ended up losing the global battle and being bought up by the inbev culture was they did not buy other breweries around the world they wanted simply to develop the budweiser brand and and budweiser was so closely tied to american culture that in many parts of the world that was very difficult they lost the battle of globalization and ended up becoming eaten by inbev the sale of anazer bush to inbev meant the social contract between anazer bush and local people st lewis was broken we've had a little shift in the family uh chris and i had a little son robert anthony now i i have another body in the house that you know i have to care for and you know i want to spend time there and the balance here with the brewery it's uh it's been i struggle a little bit i'm definitely not getting as much sleep as i used to because i want to stay up and play with him and as soon as he goes down i'm out the door over here opening this door getting ready to put my work boots on and then making it back in time to see him wake up to change his diaper and feed him all over again and kind of repeats itself but i thought i'd be more tired and now it seems like i've got more fire to get it done so that's been a new and exciting change and i'm really blessed to to have my wife and my son we're just it's definitely a blessed family blessed [Music] thing [Music] so our newest snag was the building was put up way back when and when this building was built they tapped the water in 1902 we have a water line that is half an inch supplying a building that was never meant to maybe be a brewery denver water in the city told us this is the original tap and the original small half inch line water line into the building and for our needs it's antiquated and needs upgraded and it's all 100 on us we just had no idea we were looking at a 4 000 square foot industrial space we've got to dig up walnut street there's a you know four lanes of traffic here that we've got to shut down we've sold all of our toys and we've cashed in our 401ks and you know any savings that we we have is you know now sitting on stands over here on crates back there it's a big job it could go 20 to 30 30 000 bucks that was in all honesty probably an oversight on our part we haven't wanted to go to the investor route we've had a lot of offers from people that want to invest in us because they believe in us these people wearing suits and all we saw was our business would be you know run like they wanted it run you know how many dollars are we going to make them and not about the heart about the soul that we want to create in this business the consumer wants choice the consumer wants diversity and most importantly the consumer wants quality and american craft brewers deliver that every day and landscape of the beer industry has changed dramatically where we've gone from 35 small breweries or 40 small breweries to 1800 at the brewers association we have on our books over 700 companies that are planning to open breweries in the foreseeable future one of my favorite memories was down on the river i met like this new crowd of people at a brewery in golden you know we're just so excited about what a cool tasting room they had it was outside with a bunch of picnic tables all around the sun was shining perfectly you know it wasn't so intense that you're just getting beat to hell it was you know a little slight little breeze through there we're like man this is this is the way i wanted to drink beer this sunday this is this is how i pictured it and it's happening and uh this one guy heard us he's so excited about our enthusiasm you know he comes over he goes hey if you guys like this place you're gonna love my little place down on the river it was me and my and a buddy and then him and a few of his buddies on this berm of beautifully mowed grass sitting on the edge of this this river that rolled through like 20 feet wide we're just sitting there like a bunch of old men you know sitting in our adirondack church we're not saying a thing we're just enjoying the moment we'll get it we uh we're close so it's only an obstacle there's been plenty of those yes we've got over every one of them get over this one like you're about to hit your last big one i wish i could yeah we might have more but just keep going yeah yeah i think we've come to expect that we'll just have that other one waiting around the corner for us now it's like old hat we know it's coming it's just how big is it going to be what kind of a surprise are we up against next time so the four hands represent my family represents my wife our two sons and myself this is an old machine shop this building's been vacant for three years prior to us coming in the brewery's been put in place now for about eight weeks so we've got a 15 barrel brew house four 15 barrel fermenters two 15 barrel bright tanks and then all of this space over here is designed for expansion i'm super proud to be a small business in st louis and super proud to be one of the new craft breweries in st louis it's my home you need to do things to better your home we've been brewing for about a year now we opened on january 26 2011. there's a lot of other smaller breweries that just opened over the last year um schlafly obviously has been around they just celebrated their 20th birthday so they've been around for a long time and kind of paved the way for for the rest of us people are really into beer to craft beer and are excited about new breweries craft beers a lot of it's the story craft beer drinkers want to feel a part of something having something local is something that people can be a part of and that's what you find it you know you'll find any any craft beers you know probably sells best you know in its home market and this today is a uh it's a new account for us it's a small little music venue it's a weekly basis we're adding a new account you know multiple handles probably every week at this point in time which is uh which is the fun side of the growth to see i had had a career at anheuser-busch for about 20 years in sales and marketing and kind of some some general business strategy within azerbush i think there were you know a lot of people there were different feelings or mixed emotions which is what you're going to find when you're talking about an organization as large as anheuser-busch no i left on february 1st 2010 which is the day that we uh that we signed on on the brewery the the building itself you know the housing market's still down it hasn't really opened up yet but you still find a lot of new businesses opening up and money still being poured into the economy which is which is a good thing when you get a liquor license in st louis it's kind of like running for mayor so you have to get signatures of everybody within 300 feet of your front door i think people are naturally skeptic and they should be like this is your community you want to protect it but then once people were able to sit down with us and talk to us we were taking a vacant warehouse that sat vacant for you know nine months we were putting a space that would be part of their life like their living room once people realize that the people that were your skeptics become your greatest promoters i think of beer as like glue that holds people together and you know the local part of all this is the transformation of one regular sitting next to another regular and becoming friends dylan has a family and you know this is his job and if he makes money here he can raise his family and you know and mike's the same way and people that work here i believe in uh very strongly like my role of you know creating a good work environment is better for their lives and if i'm successful at this and and we're all successful we do this i think they can have a better life than they would working for someone else so in 35 years we have built an entire manufacturing industry employing over 100 000 people but we only have five percent of the market share what's going to happen to those job numbers when our market share continues to grow [Music] us finding out that our water tap to the street had to be changed out and on our dime was a huge blow to us we didn't have the capital available to us to get it done the colorado enterprise fund is a non-profit this is a business that pretty much lets blackstrap brewing company do as we please as long as we make that loan payment back to them in the meantime you know i was telling brandon like you know all these little projects that we're doing these these little things that we can't see that you can't see it's like this little build craigslist you know for 10 years later like you know these are our fire rate doors and they're ready to go in as soon as the walls go up or glass garage doors will be both on this side and this if you look at the outside of the building these two openings are mirrored right glass garage doors there and then we have a 10-foot glass garage door that will separate the tastier from the perfectioning okay part of the intrigue of a brewery is you know seeing the stainless steel and going out look at those those craftsman back there yeah yeah we wanted somebody that you know would literally have to you know find us or struggle to get to us i mean that that was somebody that was really interested in beer that would come you know another 10 blocks up north of this in this warehouse neighborhood yeah but these are the right people for the tapper these are the right clientele that we would want to hang out it wouldn't be too easy and i think that's nice in the market that can be resaturated a little bit more sure you know so it's scary absolutely but also i mean this area is full of artists right a bunch of craftsmen yeah we want to be around like-minded people that appreciate that crap you yourselves want to be inspired absolutely for sure surrounded by it yeah [Music] saying 10 12 years of you know deciding what color our walls are going to be because of that reason yeah what how big our tables were going to be because of this you know it's come down to this plan to where now it's executing and just getting it done sure you know with your guys's help we'll just get there faster without your guys's help we'll get there you know [Music] his first house conspiring about how there had to be something more fun to do for a living right yeah for us what are we going to do how are we going to make our mark on this world you know and i think that's part of it we don't need to be millionaires but we want to be able to tell our grandkids you know wow granddad did that right right yeah you know this will hopefully propel us into you know getting these doors open and him and i just roll up the sleeves and tossing grain in the match time nice well done cool man all right thank you for coming by appreciate it very nice meeting you guys [Music] texas unfortunately was a little bit of a running joke when it came to the beer business because of the laws here we're the second most populous state in the country but when when we started jester king i believe that we were 49th in craft beer per capita just because of of the nature of of the laws and the restrictions that are in place [Music] when we first open we get people all the time you know like you don't have any domestic beer and i was like well i mean it traveled like this far so how much more domestic you know can it possibly get but we would love to get out in the market get our beer in more the hands of more texans we just can't right now by texas law a brew pub can only sell to the ultimate consumer on the premise of the brewery so i can i can sell you a bottle if you walk in my door but you can't go to local grocery store or liquor store and buy a bottle or even another bar so there's a restaurant next door we can't even have our beer at that restaurant right next door what's interesting is out of state brew pubs can distribute in texas so i could literally sell more my beer in texas if i moved out of texas and we're trying to get that changed we're in east austin so east 6th street 6th street's pretty well known in austin mostly is like the kind of shot bar party area on the east side of 35 it turns into what's now a really cool thriving kind of art district but used to be a really really sketchy sketchy neighborhood it's been an interesting transformation over here on this side of town just in the past probably eight to ten years [Music] we're sitting right at three months since we started producing started selling beer at the end of october i set out to do this just as a a way for you know to improve my own quality of life and then just be a you know positive part of this community such a cool neighborhood and it needs more stuff like this [Music] we've been open just a little over a year now i think a year and three months since we since we brewed our first batch of beer i think about seven months in we were already past where we thought we would be in five years so it's it's been kind of a uncharted territory since then and we're just trying to scramble to keep up so even though we're not allowed to sell anything at the brewery we can't have tours and we can't sell the beer but we can give it away so so that's kind of what we do and every friday from five day we kind of have a an open house happy hour tour so we let people kick off the weekend it sells out usually within a couple hours online the tickets are free we just we just kind of cap it just to make sure that it doesn't get too crowded when we get to talk to people face to face it's really the funnest thing we do just to actually be able to you know share what we make here with the people that are interested in coming by and seeing where the beer is made it's really a cool a cool thing [Music] so right here this will be probably the first section of just creating a wall across there where the common hallway is and then this whole area will be a space we can move into and then this is where the beer distributor is currently renting space a big cold room in the back corner and then a whole bunch of space back behind them so kind of the transition will just be spreading out this way we did copper tank brewing company we opened in 93 i was there until 96 sold out of there in 96 and then started working on putting northwest northwest together and i've been involved in the craft brewing industry in texas pretty much you know all during those years working on different things breweries do have different interests in brew pubs and vice versa but what we really want to do is be able to help each other get more beer to the texas craft beer market i think craft brewers in general i really do believe this i think nationwide craft brewers in general are very much more a community that we care about the success of our competitors which sounds kind of odd in a you know the american competitive society but you know maybe it's because we as the whole or the underdog part of my plan was to change the law which might be like the stupidest business plan ever like yeah part of our strategic plan is to do something that's currently illegal but we'll get that changed don't worry about it and certainly it can be that hard right is legislators are you know they're people they have common sense certainly they'll understand my point of view and it'll be simple yeah not so much so i performed an economic impact study on behalf of not just texas beer freedom but on behalf of the texas craft brewers guild and what lifting restrictions on those entities could do for our state we would be able to create almost 60 million dollars a year of new tax revenue for the state we could create about 9 000 new jobs we can create about 200 million dollars of new payrolls and that's a conservative estimate because that estimate is based off of beer following the trajectory that the wine industry took when they loosened the restrictions on them but texans consume 21 times more beer than they do wine [Music] from what i understand of what's happening in minnesota it sounds like exactly what we'd like to see happen here in texas this law's passed allows breweries to have tap rooms and it's just added jobs added more sales overnight added more tax revenue almost instantly and that's the kind of impact we think you can have here in texas a lot of people you know five years ago lost their their jobs from big companies i was one of them when we are opening up this we sell alcohol usually there's somebody who jumps out and says i don't want this alcohol place here someone who this bar and uh in this particular neighborhood there was nobody and we opened up and people are coming in and saying thank you thank you you know thank you for opening this place and and that was unexpected when we started planning uh taprooms weren't legal in the state of minnesota and there was kind of a slow movement in the brewing scene to make them legal so while we're planning the tap rooms boom became legal when you start a production brewery what we learn is that you're going to go out and find some accounts some bars and restaurants to sell your kegs to and they're going to say like you know another local brewery i don't know maybe let's try the beer okay your beer is okay i'll buy two kegs and you sell them two kegs and and then they sell in that week and then you go back to them and they say oh your beer sold pretty well and you know i'll take three kegs this week and then you know hopefully the next week they take four and then hopefully you're adding accounts as well and so it takes a while to build that revenue but the tap room you know open the doors and 1200 people show up i mean in eight days of business we've we've sold 65 kegs of beer i mean almost 8 000 glasses of beer in eight days of business so purely from a business perspective it's incredible because there is no waiting around to get these accounts or build it i don't think any of us in this business could imagine starting this business without this tapper i i don't know how how you would do it really i mean you'd have to have a lot more capital you'd have to make you know you'd have to go a lot leaner for a lot longer period of time you can go here and it's a great place to meet and have a couple beers and have a good conversation and that's what you know in a lot of ways i think craft beer is about having a beer and a beer that even makes you sort of think on its own because it's it's not just ambiguous and colored water it's it's a flavorful thing that's been crafted by real people that work just behind these walls right here so it's about 5 30 on tuesday right now the twins are here tonight they play at seven o'clock so um between now and seven in the next hour and a half we're going to get just a steady stream of people coming in we're downtown minneapolis right next to target field where the twins play there's no way we can not have a tap room in here so we went to work on that as soon as we got the the production side of the brewery done we got it open mid-march right before the twins started and it's been uh it's been a busy summer we'll put it that way most people who tell you oh i don't like beer have only ever tried something from the big three they really don't know what beer can be probably 90 of the people who come in this store are not beer enthusiasts they've heard about all these new breweries popping up and they're excited to try new stuff but we embrace these people and we make them feel welcome and um you know we get them excited about beer and they come back [Music] so how many six-packs are we turning over every month you know an average month is in between 110 120 000 a month december last year we did over 220 000 dollars in sales you know these people who come in and they're brand new to craft beer the first thing out of their mouths is sometimes well i want to start with the local ones people that say can you make me a six pack of local beer is there enough to do like well you know six different beers of course there's enough to do six different beers we have probably we could do easily a case you know 24 different beers made you know within 20 miles of here we want to support the small independent family-owned brewers who absolutely love what they do it's been amazing that we now have hundreds of jobs solely because of the change that allows more local breweries the great thing is you know as a mayor we're getting new applications literally every week for new breweries for new pubs for new things that are connected to that you can either go down the liquor store and spend some money that goes to some corporate behemoth somewhere else or you can come to a tap room employ that guy you can point to and see and get to know and have something that by the way tastes probably a whole lot better cities right now i think have a sameness to them chain stores same old same old you know you go from city to city what's great about what's happening now is that if you have a lot of local beer a lot of local food local art local music you can be one of a kind we really want to be a cutting edge place a one-of-a-kind place that's really about saying come here see something and experience something totally different have a great time doing it and by the way every dollar you spend goes back in the local market i was paid to come in and scale up processes that's what i did for a living i thought oh i was successful as a as an engineer as a project engineer doing this for other companies i'll be successful doing it for my for myself and i started the brewery and it's been a lot more than i expected you know the workload the hats that i have to wear and everything else but i've invested everything that i've worked for my entire life into this place i'm working this hard because i need to make sure it succeeds we're supporting all these different entities that have nothing to do with beer absolutely nothing it's costing us as a business to do it but we're still making money our margins are still good and we're able to pay ourselves and pay our staff pay everyone who comes in the door what they deserve to be paid and at the same time we're crushing off our debt and we're reinvesting in big ticket items every month so there's there's there's money there and there's a lot of low-hanging fruit so i'm i'm extremely optimistic but i refuse to become complacent [Music] one of the things that i've learned in 28 years of craft brewing is that we will all succeed together or not at all i've been through boom times and then i've been through some tough times and one of the things that we all have to remember is we're all small we're all in this same tiny boat on this huge ocean and in that huge ocean are battleships you know the big global brewers they are all a hundred times our size and today ninety percent of the beer made in the united states is not made by craft brewers it's made by two huge global companies they don't necessarily want us to keep growing they would love to get a whole bunch of our mojo i wouldn't name my beer sam adams if i didn't think there was hope because you know sam adams started to spark and opposed the greatest empire in the world at that time and had he failed he'd have been taken to london and hanged as a trader so i wouldn't have named my beer sam adams if i didn't think that that small hope that you know the weak the powerless the little guys could maybe create a revolution and topple the big guys in the last two years we've grown over 300 we now are strained on the space that we have we still have our original little seven barrel brew house which was supposed to be plenty big enough for quite some time i see people's eyes light up when they walk in here they're not expecting this and they ask where we can our beer and i say come on back i'll show you our candy line and you know you do it all right here yeah we really enjoy what we've created here but the space really isn't permitting our growth we are looking at other space in boulder larger warehouse space that would enable us to grow and see this toddler grow up we're doing this not just because we think it's a good idea but because we can't satisfy the demand walking in accounts and they're ordering 25 cases and we say can you take 10. yeah people get upset they get mad and you just have to really work on making sure that those customers are taken care of when you have the beer i don't really see what's there i see what's going to be there we're going to make it alive and manufacture in here and bring people in [Music] we were next door to upslope they had a manual canning system that wasn't really keeping up so they came to us on a number of occasions of hey how do we speed this up how do we speed this up and you know we were a prototype engineering house and they made it very clear that there's a big hole in the market for you know a mid-level a small to mid-level canning system and that they were very interested in having the first one i think we just figured out we're about 30 systems installed and running we have 25 employees now this one's going to bonfire brewery i think that one is denali i know that one's going to fiji so we've actually got the biggest geographic uh difference we could we could almost ask for in one of them's going on this one's going to alaska this one's going to fiji so we're going to continue to be diverse but i think the craft beer equipment and mechanic stuff is gonna be uh you know the main staple for a long time watching something that you put your hands on to do that and then now it's going and working for someone else and it's making them money it's such a crew it's such a cool thing somebody from twisted pine brewery up in boulder was in my tap room chatting with me and they said hey have you heard about these new guys mobile canning they're driving around bringing the canning line to you and cans are are better for the beer more protection from light there's more protection from oxygen they're better for the environment they travel a lot lighter glass is much heavier they recycle a lot easier and colorado being such an outdoorsy state people like to travel with their beer hike with it camp with it whatever and you can't do that very easily with the bottle the way that colorado runs full strength beer has to be sold out of a liquor store and so we have all these little corner liquor stores in a bunch of neighborhoods and that's really what we're after is to get out into the neighborhoods and we want people walking down to get our beer biking down to get our beer the same way they do down to our tap rooms hey brian we're ready uh we're ready for beer you ready finally sweet all right we got beer on [Music] we are loading up my personal car pretty fancy uh delivery vehicle we have here all right let's go deliver some beer colorado allows for breweries to distribute their own their own beer we don't have to use a distribution company for us it's huge our margins on the beer just aren't big enough to pay a distribution company and still make money off of it it's great about liquor stores especially wants to support micro beer they will say bring buy a case see how it does so if you have the support the beer sells it's not politics it's just products being in a industry with this of small businesses you can really use genuine friendship to get somewhere when it's two small businesses when we have an opportunity to help each other out most people take it all right enjoy next thank julie or logan either one [Music] it's like asked of course this is training for the brewers olympics i pick up a new skill every day when we did our first run we pre-sold half of the amount and we intentionally held back the other half so that we could restock cases even with holding back and restocking we we still ran out of cans [Music] we're gonna sign on the cef loan in the next week and a half or two weeks if we can get all the stuff to them and so that's helping you know if we didn't have the money to do it then it's it's a slower process but looks like we're moving on that [Applause] it's the very edge of it right there see what you have here is you've got necessary completely unnecessary necessary get out of here budweiser keep moving [Music] i think the copper may have just come through and then once they come in on this end and they put in the new meter pit do the meter and then they go in into the building after this should be really exciting [Music] every single red ale that's ever produced at black shirt brewing company is going to be made with water that comes through that copper line right there that's a pretty cool thing [Music] for me when you talk about these breweries they're not like companies or entities they are people and people's stories they're the stories of individual human beings [Music] i think it's the same thing that my dad taught me i mean hard work brings success you can manifest you can if you have a goal and you set out to do something and if you work hard enough for it and you have a good enough plan you can make it happen my family means a lot to me and i wanted there to be a connection between the beer the business and my family i bring the family to work you know on the weekends when we're doing stuff kids are running around megan's helping out rowan doesn't see us drink a lot of beer he sees us working in the brewery and filling kegs and talking about a 15 barrel brew house and the ingredients that we're working with and sourcing local ingredients and so it's not about consumption it's about a family business we woke up this morning and decided it was a good day to pour concrete stuff like this happening like we're moving forward i'm proud of you guys [Music] [Music] and that tall grass grows high and brown well i dragged you straight in the muddy ground and you sent me back to where i roamed when i cursed and i cried but now i know [Music] man oh it's ringing [Music] [Music] [Music] turn this diamond straight back and [Music] [Music] life and limb is the perspective of any craft brewery that's made it through the painful start-up years i remember mariah in tears in the brewery in like 96-97 printing out a peachtree report that was just bleeding red all negative numbers holding you know infant son uh sammy they're kind of both crying bringing me uh nothing but bad news in that era and uh you know it was it was you know i looked at her and i'm like you know we'll get through this we'll get through this and uh she's like i know we will i just suck you're not gonna make it through unless you're willing to put your life your your blood your sweat your tears into those early years sierra nevada had never done a collaboration with a brewery and so i said hey you know we'd really like to do something with you but let's do something where what we make becomes a 750 milliliter torch that we can hand to the next generation the term life and lamb we both you know pretty much risked everything we risked life and limb building our breweries we also liked the concept that the limbs on the tree were like the whole craft brewing industry with all the little branches and little tangents off of the main front i often tell aspiring brewers and entrepreneurs in general you better be more passionate about something other than money because invariably as a startup business regardless of the industry you're going to find a point in your existence where you're you're out of money and if that was the only thing driving you you're going to give up it's surreal and rewarding at the same time to see you know the scale we now produce in i think 17 hours what it used to take me a full year to make in our brewery in rehoboth where we started what's up guys uh but you know those are the guys that are helping it seem so uh smooth the growth there's all these awesome people doing their jobs around me that have made the transitions that happen as we grow into bite size issues you know when we were doing our first expansion and mariah and i frankly i think we were borrowing 300 000 we started dogfish with 220 and then to build the the next scale brewery uh two years later it was three hundred thousand dollars and i was scared shitless because i i mortgaged everything there was only a handful of people helping me grow dogfish in that era and you contrast that to now and where in the midst of a 52 million dollar expansion and i'm sleeping better than i did when we had the 300 000 expansion a because there's so many amazing people working alongside me at dogfish helping me do this b there's all these consumers that i know are out there pulling for us and want us to make more beer and see we're not alone in this there's 2 200 breweries doing it shoulder-to-shoulder with us you know [Music] [Music] one day uh the cattle were out here in the pasture and a man brought in a trailer full of uh something i had no idea what it was but as he pulled the trailer in the cows just ran after that trailer their tongues were hanging out and the eyes were turning red and slobbered and snorting and running after the trailer and they attacked it tore into it you could just see this stuff flying out of the trailer and they were butting each other to get out of the way and i came down here and said whoa man what in the world's in that trailer he said well these are grains from the brewery i said what brewery well i didn't even know there was a local brewery just five miles down the road it had been there for a year [Music] so i went over to the brewery and it was pisco brewery company and asked them you know is there something i could grow to help since we're right next door we're five miles from the road they said what about hops and i said what about them i use their spent hops here after they're used i use them put them bring them right back here to the farm i take my fresh hops over to them they use them in the boil to create a delicious wet hop beer with small farms decreasing in size every day getting chopped up getting sold to developers and that kind of thing we do not want to see that happen here the economic impact of growing hops alone is probably one of the the leading boosts that i have here on the farm there's a big movement in this community local supports local bottom line it's expected by the consumer in asheville for the ingredients for the beers for everything involved to be local we've adopted the old belgian style brewing which is be the best at where you're at the best beer the best customer service the best collaborations with local businesses that we possibly can within a tiny radius 30 miles ugly growth to me is the proliferation of strip malls and national chains that pay 650 758 dollars an hour and do not add anything from a beauty standpoint from an architecture standpoint where nationally mom and pop businesses are falling by the wayside in droves and that in asheville the reverse effect is happening the chains just aren't finding the support here people are going out of their way to go to the local steak place rather than outback or would rather buy a pizza from a local family than to support dominoes or papa john's [Music] we try to source all our ingredients with 100 miles of asheville i have a network of local farmers local foragers that uh that i work with to create the farm-to-table cuisine that we have here it's helping farmers kind of get out in the mainstream it's helping restaurants kind of give back to their community and it's it just tastes better we try to serve as many local beers as possible there's a symbiotic relationship between the two you know we're all small business owners we're all passionate about our community and we all want to see our community grow in the right way in craft beer is the underlying fundamental energy of all that i really think a lot of folks who are in craft businesses kind of get the idea of what craft means in economic terms when you see money turning over six eight ten twelve times in the community versus once it could be a lot more money and do a lot more good and everybody's gonna come out better in the past six months we've seen sierra nevada new belgium oscar blues all commit to opening uh east coast brewery and distributor ships here in asheville and that's a big deal sure they could easily out-market anybody here in town and push the little guys out but they know it's the little guys that that make the city and make the community what it is that's why they're here because they were that little guy at one point too we needed to build a new facility that's efficient and works well and is in a cool town we narrowed it down to asheville as our choice for the city and then this is this is the site where we're looking to build and we also wanted to find a site that was in need of a little bit of love and we can take this site and really turn it into something that that we're proud of and i think the whole community can potentially be proud of too this is not our market anymore than it was yesterday the local brewers are the ones who are are really doing a good job and they sell a lot of beer here and this is their home market the key thing at oscar blues is that we will slow down if we have to because the first thing first is the beer because otherwise we can't do anything else oscar blues is about the people but we all but our life force is the beer the beer has to be world class this is a a lot of open space that will be filled with lots of beer well let me just say we're starting at 40 000 barrels in our first year our first year in lawn mall we did 17 000 and then the next year did 29 and the third year we did 40 000 so we're starting three years ahead and let's just say the growth kind of works like this just accelerates this pedal faster and that's the way that he's going to lost crews [Music] in high school i was voted most likely to enjoy life and it uh i just want to enjoy it you know and it uh that's the culture of oscar blues and it's not to grow for the sake of growing and it's to enjoy the people and the staff and the family of oscar blues as you know one and make sure that we hang on to that soul the farm was never really to be a money maker or a profit center it was a originally a place that my family and i you know felt at peace and comfort and it was just a vibe out here we can hardly believe you know that it's i get to make beer and do what i do and engage with people and make a living off of it and watch our children grow up in the middle of all that [Music] i had a 57 chevy flatbed with a 8 foot wide bed on it and i would go up and down oregon washington california looking for used dairy equipment tanks pumps valves whatever i could find and that's how i equipped the original brewery was pretty much all out of salvaged equipment out of soft drink operations and dairies primarily we started in our our chico facility with a 10 barrel brew house in 1980 my first business plan called for me to put out up to 2500 barrels and we rapidly exceeded that we then installed in in 1998 a 200 barrel brewery which took us from about 300 000 barrels now to about a million barrels [Music] we've got more than 10 000 solar panels we've got a megawatt of electricity produced by fuel cells between those two systems we've produced as much as 82 of our power needs for the year those days of the week where we'll sell power back into the grid maintaining a healthy environment not just locally but globally so reducing our emissions reducing our energy consumption creating less waste reusing things composting recycling we're growing vegetables microgreens color spots for our landscaping in the greenhouse the greenhouse is kind of in the middle of our field we've got an eight acre hot field and we have a two acre organic garden for the restaurant right here that's one of the beautiful things about working for sierra nevada is that we can see things big picture and even if it doesn't make entirely economic sense if it's the right thing to do it's likely that we will move forward with it i think the fact that we make you know consistent great beer has allowed us to survive and prosper all these years i started at the brewery when i was 15 years old i had to uh to beg my dad for a job you know i read a bunch of the brewing books and i understood what i thought making beer was and with my dad we walk in and parents hands me these two buckets and it's like what the hell are those for you don't need that for brewing beer it's like you're right go scrub the fermenters i was very naive in what i thought i was going to be doing and what making beer really was it's been about 12 years so i was 27 when he said i want you to i am 27 i want you to run a brewery one of the reasons we chose asheville was we thought it had a really great quality of life you know very similar to chico with a lot of outdoor activities fishing and river rafting and mountain biking and road riding having a great place to live and a great place to work is really important i wouldn't want to have a business that i wouldn't want to come to work at every day we sat in front of the entire asheville brewers guild and had a q and a with them they had some concerns for the right reasons and they wanted to make sure that they weren't going to regret having other brewers come here and we didn't want to upset them in any any way so we had a very open dialogue over some some great beers they didn't like some of the answers that we gave but they were honest they liked some of the other ones and i think that's what they really realized was that you know you're going to get a straight shot and we're going to do what we say the average american now lives within 10 miles of a brewery that's pretty remarkable statistic when you really think about it they're entwined into the social fabric of each community the philanthropic efforts the sustainability focus of of all that what american brewers are trying to do just really you know dovetails nicely into into the values that so many other people in this country hold [Music] currently we're seeing growth unlike what we've ever seen in this industry ever before both in terms of the existing breweries are growing in production and we're also seeing a huge upwelling of new breweries coming online as well we directly employ about 22 000 people here in california in the craft brewing industry this is an industry that continues to hire people and they're well-paying jobs good jobs good steady jobs in an industry that's growing so they're going to be stable jobs i've been to a russian river brew pub in downtown santa rosa california well i've walked down that main street and you can't tell me that there's a more vibrant thriving business in that community and the russian river brewing company on fourth street in santa rosa that's just it is the heart of that community the day we opened the pub everything was delayed and delayed delayed delayed and we had to do this earthquake retrofit we had to dig up fourth street we had to do all these things that just cost more and more and more money and so we uh we racked up all this debt with the landlord with like six months of back rent so the day we opened finally on april 3rd 2004 literally six thousand dollars in the bank we had like nothing on the walls nobody had any experience so we opened the door that day i also had 102 degree fever and we just stood in the corner back by where the jukebox is now and just said holy crap what have we done what have we gotten ourselves into it's a little surprising you know that it just kind of took off seemingly overnight but it continues to grow and grow and grow this is always cool like this is like the crescendo tour right now [Music] this is a thousand square foot uh barrel room it's our main barrel room out of three we've got a barrel room at our uh brew pub which holds about 60 or so wine barrels and then this being our main barrel room which holds when it's totally full every row is stacked five high uh we can get 450 barrels in here and then next door in our third barrel room we have about 100 or 150 barrels stored in there so we actually have more wine barrels than many small wineries do the demand is is obviously challenging for us to manage we've really mastered the art of saying no you know everybody's always looking for an angle they'll ask 10 different people you know how can i get your beer in my restaurant or my bar or my wholesaler in texas or wherever and so all of our employees are very have become very very good at the art of saying no it's not that we're opposed to growing we just want to do it on a more organic pace and what feels right to us we've already done the the startup phase we've already done the expansion phase and you know it's scary when you take on a lot of debt and then you know that month that you can't make that payment is is is a problem you know the biggest vote for us is by the consumer that says you know i love your beer and and i'm gonna i'm gonna come to your brewery and you know give you money for your beer which is just really cool when i left the office world when i was 30 i decided to kind of ditch it all and become an assistant brewer at a triple rock brewery in berkeley i worked there for nine months for free just volunteered my time i knew where i wanted to go and knew where i wanted to head and that was to brew beer professionally you know never thought that in a million years that i'd be here right now and i never thought in a million years that i would touch as many people as i have with a pint of beer the ability to reclaim that local pub atmosphere anywhere you go in the country is vital i think to who we are as a society to start the 21st amendment and thinking it wasn't going to take any time at all to open it up and being naive that way which i think is important actually to be naive to throw yourself into something not worrying about how hard it is not worrying about the money not worrying about the sleepless nights that are going to occur not worrying about the 80 hour work weeks just to jump in feet first pedal the metal i mean that's that's how you that's how you open places like this that's how you that's how you're successful [Music] they're gonna hopefully approve us to split the building like it is then i gotta get new electrical boxes put in new service put in i gotta jump the existing service above the roof now we gotta run new ground wires clear from water service up here clear to the back through the roof and that's just to put the new service in so not that it wasn't you know i expected a lot of work but it's more than i expected yeah but if you don't do it they're not gonna pass this okay are you all right here you need some help is there any chance that uh you would be able to help davey with some of this stuff you know you got other stuff going but man i'm trying to make a push to get this thing done our backs were against the wall you know me and chad like had a fist fight last week pretty much we just got after it with one another because if we don't do it now we all get to walk away from this thing in august we all just get a watch it go to the banks and go to the people that have first liens on it and it goes away you know the dream of 10 years goes away so our backs are firmly against the wall with the amount of things that are you know bills that are coming in and debts that have to be paid it's even hard to admit that we're in that position because it feels like a failure to even be in that position you know to be going like we're so close we're so close but then again like we're also really close to losing it all it's tight it's tight all the stuff that we've managed to make happen i don't feel it quite as much because my mortgage is not leveraged in the whole deal and you know my brother's got it all on the line so if we don't make these payments they start taking away his house and he's got a you know such a young family got married a short while ago just had a bit you know a kid and yeah to to think that that could all go away is a huge stress on chad [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] again [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] i want to do this from from my creative side to fulfill that creative drive that i have but also like a big factor in this is my brother has never slept well and he's always been stressed and my goal is to make the best red ale in the world and allow him you know just allow him to relax and to finally rest and to sleep like that would be the best gift i could give to that guy i like the concept of moonlight it's not something you can hold in your hand it's not something you have any control over it's just there of course sometimes it's not there it's elusive i've been designated as an abbot by my church it was 20 online to become an abbot and i then have designated this to be the abbey design humulus being able to walk in the dirt see the hops growing see the hawks flying overhead i don't know it's just it's what i need to make there i think everything ebbs and flows and the major breweries have gotten to where they are by understanding efficiencies understanding marketing and they've done a fantastic job convincing the american public that these beers bud miller cores whatever are what we want to drink we know that because the ads tell us we do on the bikinis how can you go wrong with bikinis but the funny thing is it's kind of empty you know america's outgrowing lack of character i think we're tired of that we've seen through that we want character we want personality in our beer our lives everything we do and by getting bigger and bigger and more impersonal with each step of the way they're setting us up for [Music] not giving a damn about them because there really is obsolete dinosaur i think that's most of the problem isn't it people make the beers we make [Music] something made with pride something made that has character by people that care what they're doing and have the knowledge the understanding that what they do makes a difference [Music] and if you want to have a vibrant personality and be alive in this world then we should all drink wonder bread and drink the lightest possible watery beer we can find wait but that doesn't work no then don't do that live life live life to the fullest safely yeah live life to the fullest [Music] brewing beer to me at the end of the day you put your hand on that tank and you say man i made 12 barrels of beer today i made 372 gallons of beer today that people are going to enjoy and it was man it just gets you [Music] we like finished up a couple projects and looked over at him and he was like well do we take the tools out of here now so we're kind of looking around we're like done done done you take the tools out and uh it's like yeah i think we do and he looks over he goes i think we're done and like for my brother to say we're done i was like waiting for the butt you know like but what else we gonna work on knowing that the the hard stuff is behind us and now we can just concentrate on the brewery on the beer and serving people not building a brewery anymore now if we can just hang on to it and get the doors open will be good [Music] so [Music] it's frustrating 10 gallons of glycol leaked out [ __ ] pumps not working the compressor ain't working [ __ ] it piss on it we'll just brew on the small [ __ ] we do everything by hand anyway small brewery small batch beer oh well we're waiting for a word back from the electrical inspector the chief electrical inspector for the city of denver to make a judgment call on whether the way we wired the building is okay which has been for a hundred years or if they're gonna play hardball with this new code change that they have and so the call is going to go one of two ways either we get to open the brewery and they're okay with it or they're going to make us rewire the whole building so this is the issue that we're having electrical inspector is saying that all of the wire coming in cannot be identified by tape as it is here that would need to be a continuous color all the way to its source it's frustrating it's frustrating as a small business owner to have those you know have red tape and to have just obstacles that don't need to be in your way in your way they've been out four times seeing our work all the way through and now they're bringing this up they could make us pull all that wire out of the whole building and rewire it and i don't know how we would do that i mean i we couldn't afford the 5 000 feet of wire that's in this place let alone paying a guy to redo it [Music] there's big brother and there's a little brother and we're fighting over a ball and mom says all right y'all coming up to an agreement to share this ball or i'm not going to do anything well big brother's just going to keep hogging the ball because what does he have to lose well now our parent the legislators called us in and said okay i'm saying y'all work it out or we're going to work something out for you and this is the first time this has really happened and i think it's a real testament to the hard work that's been put in by fellow brewers but also consumers in going out there and beating that drum and saying that this is an issue we care about i mean this is happening all over the country and it's going to continue to happen and whether this is plays a part or not i don't know but i know for some anyway texans don't like to you know be the one who comes to the table second they want to be the guys out front a lot of the times now and we're not even second in this case we're like coming to the table 47. we are very very very inefficient at what we do the amount of it takes me 40 people 40 employees to produce and sell 1100 barrels of beer i mean if you get those same 40 employees to budweiser they can produce millions of barrels of beer but that inefficiency is what creates jobs those are jobs 51 of all the jobs and breweries in this state in the state of texas are at small craft brewers but only 0.7 of the beer that's consumed in the state is made by those breweries that's why we see the numbers that you look at say well so if we could increase these this number of small breweries look at what happens in terms of you know the multiplier effect so [Music] we have the starting now of what we're calling the stateless brewers guild megan was driving our two kids to the brewery one day and our brewery is right across the street from the old rock house which is the music venue and megan was turning at the old rock house and merlin goes our oldest son he's four and a half he goes hey mom do you know i've got a brewery across from the old rock house also she said no bro i didn't know that what's it called forehand superhero brewing for kids he's going to have some legal issues yeah yeah you know as young parents you're kind of in a cloud you're just kind of getting through the days and when you're a small company you're just doing the same thing if i'm not thinking about the brewery or at the brewery i'm you know i'm with my son and babysitting and you know doing all the dad stuff so it's it's kind of on off you know you're either on one or off the other side kids just kind of you know when you get home you're excited to be with your kids when you get the brewery you're excited to be the brewery so if you go if you will if you go home i'll get a test right yeah i'm in new york the driver goes so where are you from st louis cause texas nice place man we have this arch we got a great baseball team and and a lot of times you know when i was traveling too is a you know we are identified by av you know a lot of times recognize the city uh by our biggest company i think what you know what dan went through the first 17 years here has made our you know ventures so much easier like we don't have to do all this education to get someone to try craft beer you look at the few dozen craft breweries that have been in operation for 20 plus years i mean they've i mean they've really blazed the trail that's allowed the rest of us at this table to do what we're doing you can't imagine what i'd be doing right now if it wasn't for that you know it wouldn't be nearly as much fun i mean that crap you're a customer and consumer right now they're busy i mean there are multiple events every month and if you just look at tastings and everything that goes on you know with all the breweries i mean there's something probably every week the great thing about it what i see though is everyone that i attend it's packed the past three years in a sense reflect a new beginning and we've just happened to be here for the first 17 years we were being pushed three years ago to become something that we are not i remember the phone went off in the early days i think i maybe saw florian not long after that people were phoning here asking where they could buy schlafly light and 30 pack cans because there's some structural issues and pricing issues there's still a lot of consumers that that if they bought schlafly light 30 pack cans they'd want to pay 15 30 pack for it and we couldn't produce the beer for that price so there's always going to be that structural difference the excitement that is being built right now in st was because of everything that's going on is is huge there's a really good toe right now supporting local and i think you're seeing it all over the country but and st louis is they really take to heart local companies they've got it in them to support the local brand as long as you're helping them also i think there's going to be some you know some satisfaction of you know building something in a community in each of our individual neighborhoods and having other businesses build around those and and making those neighborhoods more attractive for for residents and and other businesses that can thrive as well there is clearly a mission that we're part of trying to make the community in which we live better what's great is having lots of other people be part of it now and have the consumers be so excited we're just the caretakers of these brands we're the caretakers of these breweries the consumers own them [Music] they may just be you know four ingredients hops malt water and yeast but when you put your soul into it and you come up with these recipes and you're able to be creative and to pass that along to the customer the craft beer drinker it's just not about those four things anymore it's about your passion and their enjoyment [Music] actually just a little bit higher yeah for that bottom shelf so that you're not having to reach so far down you know [Laughter] oh my dad hi boss man what do you think son it's opening day nice pretty big day yeah it's been a long road you know we had no idea that we'd be able to open this weekend and our last inspection you know when bernie called and said he was signed off you know just i wasn't even prepared for it i wasn't even thinking he would sign off it was just how many items do we have to change or fix you know like oh i mean we can open you know holy crap it took a little while for it to hit me finally we're able to share what we've been doing for the last few years with people and you know it's finally here so just move forward [Music] it's surreal how do you feel 13 years in the making that hasn't hit me yet yeah i think seeing those people come in and it's going to be like oh my god yeah definitely i'm excited [Music] how do you feel i'm just so proud of you guys walking in here it was like oh man this is great knock down a few walls put in some tanks open for business wrong again [Music] have we run the card reader yet somebody please do that here [Music] are you in front of us they're all maxed really please ask guests for card and retain until authorities are notified [Music] all right man let's uh let's just run through things like real quick brother as i see you know as this fills up i'll go out and back you up you back us up i mean we all have our own duties but yeah just the valentine cool sweet all right t-minus 10 minutes how's everything pouring us well actually it reminds me where's the music [Music] he's going today [Music] [Music] nice to meet you with love and a strong heart weekend [Music] and without shame i figured you were going that way [Music] thank you guys thank you very much thank you very much [Music] yeah let's uh let's maybe tame it down maybe uh [Music] these walls and trusses put my name and number on what [Music] all to give the life and love it gives i tear it all down to save what matters give the bank everything it's after sell my records and our silver platters give up what i have for what i will cherish the ones i love and what we feel [Music] and all [Music] [Music] there [Music] [Applause] like a beer [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] like i said we'll get them topped up here [Music] i'm facing the world for what's mine and what is [Music] [Applause] imagine what we will [Music] and we'll [Music] i'm a revolutionary but now you have these dinosaurs right now the dinosaurs are crying and maybe global warming but for them those dinosaurs is getting really cold you can tell it's getting cold because it turns blue on the cane got a point there [Laughter] i'm sorry i don't know where that came from

Channel: Janson Media

Views: 36,739

Rating: 4.8684721 out of 5

Keywords: taverns, bars, beer, pint, restaurant, history, full movies, guinness, celtic, history documentary, the irish pub, craft beer, pubs, best beer, crafting a nation full movie, ipa beer, ipa, best beer in america, budweiser, budlight, beer film, crafting a nation trailer, brewing beer, crafting a nation, beer documentary, crafting a nation watch online free, crafting a nation documentary, craft beer documentary netflix, beer trailer, movies about beer, craft beer documentary

Id: mftpB_qbN1I

Length: 95min 56sec (5756 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 05 2020