I've always enjoyed a good beer, but when my in-laws gave me this book, and then suggested
that maybe my next movie should be about beer, maybe your next movie should be about beer.
Beer movie! Cheers!
Well, that's when this journey started.
Being somewhat of a beer novice when I started this project, it was clear I needed to do
some research. So over the next year, I poured myself into the wide world of beer. I experimented
with home brew, crashed all the best beer events, converted our guest room into a miniature
pub, and of course drank lots of beer. What I discovered along the way was that beer,
though sometimes overshadowed by whiner spirits, is perhaps the most interesting adult beverage
of all. One industry expert even describes beer as the Rodney Dangerfield of the beverage
world. Even to this day, you know, with, you know, there's 15, 1600 breweries in the United
States, you know, that many in Germany, thousands, countless thousands more across the world making
phenomenal, flavorful, full-bodied craft beer, people still treat beer with a little bit
of disrespect, and so beer really doesn't get all the respect that it needs to.
Nice to rediscovering beer.
The beverage admired by both our founding fathers and modern day patrons. Inspiration
for pub food and the best-selling adult drink in the world. Not long ago, most American
beer was pretty uninspired and boring. Over the next several decades, beer became big
business as breweries like Anheuser-Busch, Miller and Coors changed beer making from
art form into science, perfecting quality control, producing mass quantities, and putting
competitors out of business.
But some point along the way, beer really lost its soul and lost an edge to it, and
it became sort of a pedestrian beverage.
You know, Budweiser was taken over the world, so to speak, and they were making very good
quality, very consistent beer that was boring.
We had mass-produced corporate light lager and dry beer and ice beer, and they were all
15 variations on the same thing, and it can with a different label.
Both the next decade would see a rebirth for American beer. As pioneer brewers like Fritz
Maytag of the Anchor Brewing Company, Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada, and Jim Cook of
the Boston Beer Company began creating inspired and interesting brews.
In terms of pioneers, I guess the pioneers that I was aware of at the time were Anchor,
certainly in Sierra Nevada, both on the West Coast. I traveled pretty significantly out
of the West and visited a lot of breweries while I was doing my research into starting
this brewery, so I was aware of them, but those are two definite pioneers that I was
aware of.
Back in 94, the East Coast was really just starting to get into the micro thing, and
we owe a lot of that to Jim Cook from Sam Adams, because prior to Jim, nobody really
knew what a craft beer or a micro brew was.
But modern day brewers are creating beer recipes featuring everything from watermelon to jalapenos.
The basic ingredients were defined in German purity law, which states that beer is made
from water, hops, yeast, and malt. And with those four ingredients, you can make all sorts
of beers, because there are so many different kinds of each of those.
Beer brewers are working with many different ingredients, different types of malts and
cereal grains from around the world. Different hop varieties, different yeast strains, so
we have the ability to create a lot of different, very unique products.
To use anything from coriander and spices, you know, it's not unheard of to be using
cinnamon, nutmeg, fruits, you know, raspberries, cherries, peaches. I've even seen bananas
used. I've seen all sorts of things used.
Actually, the single to my beer was just a, honestly, it was a gimmick. So I figured,
you know, it might be something, do something like that for the single to my, add some spice
to one of the mellower menu items. So I actually made a very small batch, basically, for the
brewers dinner, and people loved it. I was actually, I was quite surprised at how well
it was received. So I figured it was one of those beers that was funky enough to basically
stand out. So I sent them to the Great American Beer Festival, and it won me a bronze medal.
So the last few years, it's been there. They said it was a little too hot, too spicy, but
I probably had Irish judges, so.
Yeah, we actually do a peanut butter porter, which came from my love of peanut butter.
And we've done a chocolate cherry stout. I love the mix of chocolates and cherries. We
did that for Valentine's Day a bunch of times. The watermelon beer was sort of a knockoff
on Jolly Ranchers. I love Jolly Ranchers. And I'm like, we should be able to make a
beer like this.
By the late 1990s, Kraft and Micro Breweries had developed a loyal following of sophisticated
beer drinkers. Today, Kraft Beer is the fastest growing segment of the U.S. alcohol industry.
So in the last 20 years, there's been a lot of people who were tired of basically this
one flavor offering from maybe four or five different breweries.
So I think people started to get a feeling of, hey, I want a little more interest in
my beer. Maybe have a little more of a local quotient instead of having a big Midwestern
brewery. Maybe I want something a little more local. And so that's part of it. I think the
other part of it, people's palates changed. People care more about specialty soda, specialty
coffee, specialty teas, and I think specialty beer and wine is all part of that. People
want more choices, and this gives them more choices.
We have websites now and magazines and books, and people are beginning to now have grown
up in a generation where when you say beer, they sometimes think Sam Adams or Sierra
Nevada or Ankerstein.
I really think since the late 80s, it's the golden age, and we're still in it. We're
in the highlight of it right now. There's still a lot of breweries opening. There's
places like us that are established, which have the ability now to open more stores and
enlighten more people on micro-brewed beers.
I think it's an extraordinary event for us to have had this explosion of craft brewing
reticence, if you will.
As a beer drinker, right now is probably the best time in the last 200 years to be a beer
drinker. There is more variety. There's better quality out there. It's just amazing the
selection that you get. It really is a great time to be enjoying beer.
America may not have invented beer, but we've embraced it, mass-marketed it, and made it
part of our own culture.
St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch is the biggest beer company on the planet. The world's largest
brewery is the Adolph Coors Plant in Golden, Colorado, and we have arguably the most competitive
craft and micro-brewery movements anywhere, with more than 2,000 independent brands of
beer available today.
According to the National Restaurant Association, fierce sales rose for the eighth straight
year in 2006, and the forecast calls for continued growth over the next several years.
No one's ever going to touch AB, or Miller, or the big boys like that, because their
barrelage is enormous and they're worldwide, but the micro-scene has flourished enormously
as well. Ten or twelve years ago, micro-brewies were predominantly making pale ales. Well,
the consumers have been educated, if you will, to what an IPA is, or what a blueberry beer
is, or what an imperial stout is, or a strong beer. The growth with the micros has been
a natural progression from pale ale and light beer all the way to more exotic and more funky
craft brews.
We started small with probably about twenty-five, thirty different beers, and it went over very
well, and we continued to expand on that every month, and at this point we have over four
hundred different craft beers, American craft beers, and imports, and all of them available
as singles, so you can mix up your own six packs, and we give a discount for that. Most
of the customers seem to appreciate that. They can try different beers without having
to buy whole six packs of other different beers.
That's the great thing about the craft beer segment is, you know, if you don't like the
Gulf Izzy stuff, or you don't like the dark stuff, there's tons of things in between.
You don't have to be one or the other.
Then we brew beers from pails, and IPAs, a couple of weeds, a couple of different quarters,
and stouts, and we do that because the American beer drinker loves beer, and I like the selection,
and we didn't want to get stuck with just, you know, one or two.
One of the biggest beer bars in the country, one of the ten largest as far as selection
goes. We have over, right now, 112 drafts, and we do a little bit over 500 bottles. We
update our menus every single day.
The contemporary brewing scene is fantastic, and I don't think that there is a stronger
beer culture anywhere in the world outside of the U.S.
Author Ian Lendler writes that drinking rituals have been going on for thousands of years.
Along the way, they've been the catalyst for camaraderie, good times, and karaoke.
In other words, as cultures go, drinking is pretty interesting.
So tell me, tell me what you love about beer, or I like that it gets you drunk.
I like the delicate aromas, the flavorful aftertaste, and getting drunk.
Well, I started, as a lot of people did years ago, as a home brewer, about 16 years ago.
It was quickly developed into a bit of an obsession, where I was brewing every free
day I had, every Saturday and Sunday, kind of got to the point where I had to throw a
party at the end of every month. I moved from bottling my beers to putting them in old soda
kegs that I could get from restaurants and bars, and then just so that I constantly had
fermenters and kegs available to continue brewing, I'd have a party once a month for
my friends with eight or ten different beers on draft at a time, all of which I'd made.
So it was a lot of fun, and after a couple of years of listening to my friends say that
I should get a job doing it, I took them up on the idea.
Brewing beer, or going to class, that was pretty much all I did during my college years
in Flagstaff, and basically what I say is hobby, turn passion, turn obsession is sort
of where it went. Everything. Everything. Everything. I love the process, I love the
people who make the beer, I love the end result.
Love socializing with it.
Yeah, I love people who drink beer, love the social aspects of it. Yeah, everything. Couldn't
put it on one thing, I just love everything about it.
I mean I like beer, and I think beer and the society around it, it's a social beverage,
it's interaction, so for me it's festivals, events, it's our tour room, it's getting
together with friends and having a great beer, so that's what drew it to me was the social
elements of it, and then the actual beer itself and what a great thing it is to drink.
But regardless of the reason that come in here, people leave educated, they leave happy,
because we want to talk to them, not just about what makes our beer great, but what
makes beer great in general, something that we take a lot of pride in, we're passionate
about this stuff, and I think when people leave they take a little bit of that with
them as well.
There's not a lot of money to be made in craft beer, it's about hard and really kind
of doing it right, and in the last 20 years the people who stuck it out are really making
outstanding products, their beers are excellent, and again they're in it for the creative
development of it, and really trying to offer something unique to people, and really believing
in it.
This industry is amazing to be part of, it's neat, you know, and the combination of being
a very young part of what is a very old and ancient tradition, there's that neat sort
of juxtaposition between the two that I kind of get off on, it's nice.
Craft beer drinkers rock, they're so nice, and it really makes you just proud to want
to be part of the community.
People tell you how good the beer is, how much they enjoy the beer, it just makes you
feel good, and know that you're at least doing something good, making people happy.
And where we've come to this point, such a short period of time, over a course of say
25 or 30 years, it's kind of an amazing thing.
People expect a little bit more flavor now, so when you go to a party, a little bit like
the wine list, people stop and think, well what kind of person do I want to be perceived
as?
Do I want to be the guy who just brings a six pack of Budweiser, or do I want to be the
guy who brings a 12 pack of Sam Adams Winter?
We weren't just like a couple of guys drinking beers anymore, we were like, let's really
think about this, let's start promoting it, let's start getting other people involved
with talking about good beer, and I guess respect beer kind of stemmed from that.
The whole point of drinking better, drinking less, drinking in moderation, yeah, appreciating
it, just don't drink it.
We all like to just drink beer, but while you're doing it, look at it, smell it, think
about it, think about the flavors.
Like I said, the whole moderation part comes into that too, that we all love the social
lubricant sort of factors of beer and getting our buzz on, but show some moderation, respect
beer.
I mean, it means a lot of different things to us.
If things have been made for many millennia in human culture, I think that shows that
there is a rightness about it, there is something that fits.
I don't believe that there's such a person as somebody who doesn't like beer, that they
just have not found the beer that they yet enjoy.
So beer culture in America is something that continues to evolve, you still have a lot of
people who are new to it, you still get a lot of people who start off drinking whatever
the lightest beer is that a brewery has to offer, and then they try their amber, and
then they're drinking the pale ale and the porter, and then they want to know what else
there is, and they get excited to try the Belgian ale that's on, and the more interested
you are in theory, the more questions you start to ask, and the more educated you become,
and from there your palate and your brain just want more and new experiences.
So I don't think we'll be running out anytime soon.
Okay.
Thanks.
Bye.
Bye.
