Beer! The Best Film Ever Brewed (2019) - full transcript
A deep dive into the international beer industry and the second most consumed beverage on the planet.
(door creaking)
(beer spurting)
Oh man.
Perfect.
(voices clamoring)
(audience applauding)
I am super happy and super proud.
I never thought that this is gonna be like that,
like people really happy about crazy stuff.
Which is actually not crazy, that's how beer started.
Taste that.
I know independency really matters,
because then I can support the microbreweries,
go on the road, meet the brewers, taste the beer,
put it in your car,
hop to the other bar, clean your taps,
plug the beer, send it fresh and clean.
(voices clamoring)
(bright music)
(insects chirping)
Beer is my art.
It is a way to express myself,
an architect to capture whatever it is
that it has inspired you.
And how can you serve that in a liquid form?
And so it's, it's an art, like any other art in my eyes.
I just don't know how to paint, so I know how to brew.
So I started brewing.
Simple.
There's another deer coming here.
(upbeat music)
(valve spinning)
(speaking in foreign language)
(light music)
(machinery whirring)
(voices clamoring)
(glass clinking)
(bright music)
(beer pouring)
(light music)
(glasses clinking)
(energetic music)
(birds chirping)
(soft music)
(both laughing)
(light music)
(grass rustling)
(upbeat music)
(birds chirping)
(energetic music)
(siren wailing)
Every craft brewer I know had some connection
with home brewing.
(horn honking)
I was a journalist before I started Brooklyn Brewery,
and I was sent to Iran to cover the hostage story,
the wars in Lebanon.
I moved to Cairo and I was sitting behind President Sadat
when he was assassinated there.
But the biggest impact on my life
was meeting American diplomats
who had worked in Saudi Arabia,
where they have Islamic law, no alcohol,
and they were avid homebrewers.
And the idea of making beer in your kitchen
just seemed like, wow, I could do that.
My neighbor, his name is Tom Potter,
he thought my idea was ridiculous
because he knew that the big breweries were getting bigger
and the regional breweries in the U.S.
were going out of business.
But eventually I showed him that there were small breweries
that were successful.
Tom went to the Craft Brewers Conference
in Portland, Oregon in 1986.
At that time,
there were fewer than like 50 breweries in all of America.
And all of these new breweries were at this conference.
And there's my partner, Tom,
he's got a Brooks Brothers suit.
He's from New York City.
They all wanted to talk to him
thinking he could be a potential source of money, financing.
And they gave him their business plans.
He came back to New York realizing
that this could be a real business,
that it wasn't just his crazy upstairs neighbor's idea.
(upbeat music)
I was a brewer in Roeselare, Belgium.
In '96, I was invited to do some talk about sour beer
or Belgian beers in the Craft Brewers Conference,,
it was at that year in Boston.
That's where I met Kim and Jeff,
who had started New Belgium.
And they were looking for a Belgian brewer.
Alright, well, good luck.
(upbeat music)
We were staying at the brewmaster from Cambridge Brewing,
and he said, do you know where Colorado is?
And I go no.
That broody New Belgium,
it's kind of an up and coming brewery.
Yeah right, Darrell, what are you saying?
He's like aren't you on vacation right now?
I'm like, yeah.
He's like why would you not go to Colorado
and checked that brewery New Belgium out.
As we continued to drive,
we thought maybe we should check in with Kim.
So I called her on the coast in Maine.
It was a huge waves and I could barely,
I'm like, hey Kim, were you serious
that you were looking for the Belgian brewer?
She said yeah, I was serious.
So we're like, okay, we'll drive over there.
We drove all the way here through cornfields
to boring landscape.
Suddenly there were mountains.
Snowcapped mountains.
Wow.
There's mountains here.
And there's something we could do.
And then we came in in the brewery
and they just had moved in this location.
This, where we're standing right now,
was the packaging hall.
So it was really a very small brewery.
And there were a lot of issues.
So there were so many issues here that I was like, wow.
If I come in as a brewer, I'm gonna be able to do stuff.
I'm gonna be able to turn the rocks into gold.
(siren wailing)
(dramatic music)
1995, we began building our brewery here in Brooklyn.
The New York Daily News did a big story
about the first brewery in Brooklyn in 20 years.
The next day,
two big limousines pulled up in front of the brewery.
When they walked in,
all the workers disappeared from the job site.
You know, the plumbers, the carpenters,
the concrete guys, they were gone.
And I said, okay, let me take you guys to lunch.
And there was a diner nearby.
And the boss said, no, no, we didn't come here to eat.
Let's meet in your office.
I said well, no,
my office is way back in the warehouse there.
He said, perfect.
So we go out in the warehouse,
there aren't enough chairs for the whole group.
I said, let me get some chairs.
And the boss said, no, no, you stand up, we'll sit.
So the boss sits right in front of me and I'm just,
I'm telling them my background,
how we're bootstrapping the company.
I'm not sure if we have enough money.
At a certain point,
the boss says, look, we've heard enough.
We need to talk.
I said, okay, I'll leave.
He said, no, no, you stay here.
We'll go up in the warehouse.
And they're out in the warehouse,
like yelling at each other, like screaming, you know.
They come charging back in and the boss who's in the lead
puts his hand between my legs and squeezes
and puts his face next to me and says,
we're gonna have to hurt you.
And then he grabs me by the shoulders
and slams me into the wall and says, just kidding.
And he burst out laughing
along with the other guys and they left.
(soft music)
(birds chirping)
(speaking in foreign language)
(light music)
(machinery whirring)
(upbeat music)
(hops pouring)
(soft music)
(voices clamoring)
A little bit earthy,
not dense, oil-like.
Almost a little bit towards mint or oregano.
Just kind of darker green or earthiness.
All right, you're in you're with me this time.
I am so glad for that.
So I brought a couple of different local beers
for us to try.
This is a hazy IPA from The Veil,
and this is a pure butter stout we make
at my brewery, Bluejacket.
Everyone that works in beer, has a passion for beer,
brews beer, I think has a story.
I worked at CNN, Washington, D.C. bureau,
and I wasn't happy.
I didn't like working in corporate news.
So threw it all to the wind, quit my job at CNN,
my friend Christie quit her job.
We traveled cross-country for almost a year.
That was the best
trip of my life.
Changed my course.
Yeah, that's good, lemon verbena is definitely in there.
And we would go national parks, BLM land, national forest,
camp, lived off of $15 a day.
What we realized is when we ran out of friends,
almost a year, you're gonna run out of friends,
who let you sleep on the couch or camp in their backyard.
We always had friends if we went to the brewpubs.
So that's where I really realized
I don't just want to homebrew
and get more interested in beer as a beer lover,
I want to work in beer.
I moved to Colorado and I became craft beer program director
at the Brewers Association.
(funky music)
Biked here all the way from the top
of Rocky Mountain National Park.
You start in the snow
and you bike down and it's like 160 kilometers back home.
There's a few Hills here that you have to cross again,
but you pass on this side the reservoir.
And then I live all the way there.
The first time I met Peter,
he was a brewmaster at New Belgium already.
And I had just started here.
And I remember I was working on a story,
I was trying to explain that style of beer.
And I had to do the writing of that.
And Peter does not like to talk about styles.
He's like, what's your style?
So, I was kind of intimidated.
I'm like, all right, Peter,
we're making a beer to Mars at the time,
and I said explain this style of beer to me.
And he got all excited and he took me across the room
and he opened up a book about an architect, Victor Horta.
And he showed me this architect's work.
And it's very vinous,
so it has very sinewy elements to it,
but very strong structurally.
He's like, that is what I want to put in the beer.
I want structural integrity,
yet I want it to be very organic.
And I said, this beer is based on an architect.
And he said, absolutely. And he said, and I want the color
to look like a Belgian sunset.
And it just blew my mind as to how a brewer
might approach his creative craft.
(soft music)
A good beer only has three ingredients,
knowledge, experience, and creativity in different blends.
There's another little one there.
This is the best place ever in history to be a brewer.
Because we educated our customers to try stuff
and they are willing to try.
They're not like in Belgium, oh,
I'm gonna drink my Westmalle and my tripel and my dubbel.
That's what I drank, you know?
No, they're coming in and they're gonna try,
they're gonna ask for what's new.
And so we are now, the brewers here,
we can do whatever with beer.
People are gonna try it.
They will comment on it.
They will get feedback on it to you,
but it's really the best place to do so.
It's also beautiful now to see that with transpired
to other countries, and it goes back to Germany,
it goes back to Belgium, it goes back all over the world.
Creating beers takes three years and three months.
There's always stuff happening.
And I was looking if there were berries over there
and there's always things that you feel smell, eat,
talk to people, and those are in the back of your brain.
And so those are things that you don't know why
they are useful at this point,
but maybe they will come useful after that.
(motor revving)
We used to come on Monday together
and we're like, what should we make?
What should we brew?
What are we gonna serve this weekend?
We're going to Shaun in the Old Town Spice Store.
And we're like, hey, we need something that's fruity
with some body.
It shouldn't be too exaggerated in
the sharpness of the sourness.
What do you think?
Or we talk with Toby in the chocolate store.
And we're like, what type of chocolate husk do you have?
And do you have something that's more fruity
and a little bit good.
And he's gonna be,
oh maybe I have some Ecuadorian cafe husk right now.
Give it a try, smell it.
Let's make an infusion right away.
(soft music)
On the brewing side, it's a little bit more different.
It's by tasting around that we decide on the brews
that we're gonna make.
Sweet little lies and dirty leeks.
And we really wanted to do something with leeks
because that was only thing
that was still in the field in Belgium.
And so we bought some leeks
and then we started playing in the kitchen.
It was really bad to dry hop.
We dry hopped some beer with it
because you get all the sulfur from the leeks.
So we started boiling it.
We started doing a hot extraction, like in the mash.
And so based on that, we decided to go with a mash.
Mash and boil so that we strip the sulfur off.
And then we still had the texture of the leeks.
But so, the idea comes from us biking in Belgium
and finding leeks.
And we're like, oh, we never brewed it with leeks.
Now we get leeks and we're trying to figure out
how to work with leeks
because there's no brewing book I can pick up
that's gonna talk about how to brew with leeks.
(speaking in foreign language)
(funky music)
(drill whirring)
(hammer banging)
This is the perfect lambic to make.
It goes, we could use your 50% of this one.
Have you noticed?
I've been looking at the difference in color,
the difference in aroma.
It tastes much cleaner.
Much cleaner.
Yeah.
It's getting cold now.
It's getting cold now, it will be completely clear.
So does that mean there's a lot of sediment
in these barrels?
If you would put it in a bucket,
you will have half a bucket or less than 5, 6, 7 liters
of yeast, you will find.
Maximum, not more.
There is a difference between the casks
so that it is not certain that all the cas,s of the same age
have the same taste flavors.
Flavors, yeah.
(soft music)
(speaking in foreign language)
(upbeat music)
(machinery whirring)
(bell tolling)
(voices clamoring)
I think you'll find something in lambics
that you don't find in other kind of beers.
Of course, you can find the black beers,
that's like a hammer.
But the sour thing is just absolutely fantastic for me.
I have some friends in Denmark
who's working on beer barrels
and we started, yeah with IPAs, and stouts and stuff.
And then suddenly they got home,
actually from trips to Belgium with lambic.
And we tried it in the bars.
And at first it was really, really strange,
but after a few beers and some thinking,
suddenly it starts to really mind blow you in some way.
And at some point you just need to,
you realize you just need to travel to Belgium
and try it yourself.
(glass clattering)
(speaking in foreign language)
(voices clamoring)
I've headed up four breweries for 800 people.
Wow.
And 68 pubs or something.
Everybody.
Salute.
Cheers.
(glasses clinking)
We're here for a week
drinking the best beer on the planet.
Yeah, and we're gonna pop open every single beer
that we brought.
We brought two case's worth of beer here.
So if we don't trade 'em,
we're gonna pop 'em open and drink them with, you know,
with everybody here.
You know, that's what it's about.
That's how I made this friend here,
by popping open a beer and saying, hey, how you doing?
My name is Carlos.
Hey, try some of my beer.
And then he tried it and he loved it and (laughing).
Now, this is my best buddy here, you know?
And we're traveling and, man.
(upbeat music)
(speaking in foreign language)
(easygoing music)
(horn honking)
(upbeat music)
Hello.
Peter.
Hi there.
Chris.
Chris?
Yes.
Nice to meet you.
This is Frezi.
Hello, Chris.
Nice to meet you.
My wife.
Wanna see the hops, man?
(speaking in foreign language)
You know what goat heads are?
Goat heads?
They came up from the
east, so it's such a dry area there.
And then suddenly becoming the valley here of the Yakima.
And there were a lot of grapes initially,
but then it starts to switch to hops.
That's still really green?
This valley, the Yakima valley, and really from Yakima,
the city of Yakima on until Toppenish,
it's all irrigated by the Yakima River.
The hop growing is always like that, eh?
Every year is like that.
A big hit here was when a Budweiser was bought
by ABI, or became ABI, basically.
At that point, they were having a stock of hops
that they kept a strategic reserve
and they, especially the elaborates,
were suddenly in excess.
And you saw so much corn grown in between the fields here.
Really?
And they've made smaller harvesters
so that they could go in between the poles.
(light music)
(water splashing)
Hi, Eddie.
Hi, Sue.
How are ya?
Great, how are you doing?
Good.
Hey, Chris.
Chris, nice to meet you.
I'm Peter.
Peter.
Pleasure.
Frezi.
Frezi, pleasure to meet you.
Welcome.
Thank you.
(both laughing)
All hops that are grown commercially in the U.S.
came over from Europe.
All the new stuff that we've bred since then
has bred with that rootstock and then modern rootstock.
The acres are on this sign?
Those teepees right there.
Those little endposts,
that separates.
Okay.
Just separates 40s.
That switches into Ekuanot right there.
So there's the section of 67 that's.
Mosaic.
Mosaic.
And then it goes Ekuanot and at the end it's Simcoe.
It'll have it like a red bine
or kind of like a red striped bine.
But if you look at Ekuanot,
it's just kinda like pale.
Same like Mosaic, Citra.
Yeah, it's like it's diverse.
You have blueberry, you have stone fruit,
you have passion fruit,
you have a little bit of mango.
It can be a little bit dank as well.
And that's why I sorta like it.
And it's always a safe bet to go with Mosaics.
It's hard to overdo it.
And as you can see, just agrinomically, it's.
It's a good growing hop.
Yeah, the farmers like to grow it.
Fairly easy to manage, good yields.
(soft music)
(speaking in foreign language)
(machinery whirring)
(energetic music)
This is the last of it.
We have two fields though today.
Only one field that we'll add in.
A few hundred acres of Simcoe and 200 are sittin' here.
(horns honking)
In 1988, when we started selling beer, this bar, Teddy's,
was one of our first customers.
On day one, we delivered to Teddy's.
It doesn't say Teddy's anywhere here,
but that's what everyone in the neighborhood
knows it by.
Actually, it was owned by a brewery
back in the 19th century,
(upbeat music)
You can imagine 30 years ago,
Brooklyn Lager was the only craft beer here.
It was basically Budweiser, Heineken, and Brooklyn Lager.
Today, you see there's a little bit of competition
among craft beers.
(soft music)
(speaking in foreign language)
Independence defines us.
It's the freedom to create with no limits.
It's the difference between real craft beer and the rest.
For more than 6,000 independent craft breweries,
there's a seal that represents that independence.
It marks a community that answers only to beer.
They see the seal, they know
that's independence you're tasting.
Hey, it's Julia Herz.
How are you?
I'm good.
Am I catching you at a good time?
The Brewers Association is the national trade group
in the United States that represents
the majority of breweries.
Frankly, 99% of the beer in the U.S.
is under our membership.
Okey-doke, bye bye.
What we launched this morning
is a new campaign on behalf of independent craft brewers
called That's Independent You're Tasting.
The way we launched it is through communications
in email that would drive breweries in the United States
to this webpage, which is a blog post.
And it talks about the campaign,
shows the two commercials that we have produced,
and then also links people to the social media channels
that we just launched this morning on Facebook,
Instagram, and Twitter.
The acquired breweries that are formerly
independent craft brewers that are now part of big beer,
they don't have their new parent company name
on their labels.
There's 10 breweries now under Anheuser-Busch's control
and ownership in the United States.
There's multiple breweries that Molson Coors
has now purchased.
Heineken has purchased several.
If I was a beer lover and not involved in the beer world,
I wouldn't maybe know that, you know,
a brewery was purchased.
Breckenridge was purchased by Anheuser-Busch,
or Devil's Backbone.
I just wouldn't know that because the name
of the parent company owner is not on those labels.
It's not transparent.
The most important thing about choice
is that you have one.
Independence depends on it.
Choice lets you take a stand against the status quo
by catching lightning in a bottle and in turn,
leave your mark on the world.
We're leaving our mark on beer with a seal that represents
more than 6,000 independent craft breweries.
Seek the seal and know that's independence you're tasting.
Don't you have a calculator that can just tell us?
We have 10 gallons of water and we want 9% alcohol.
It doesn't work that way?
I was just meshing and.
Go for it.
Yeah, so okay.
Yeah, bring it out.
I'm not adding any more water, that I agree with.
Gotta taste it.
Our morning cereal.
That's what I would love in homebrewing
because you just can really play around.
It doesn't matter if it ingredient costs,
like I don't know how much money
because you're doing a very small scale.
What is the temperature now?
I'm gonna call it
160.
Do you want to still have some more?
I don't want it to become stuffed dough.
(grains pouring)
It's mesmerizing.
This independent logo with the upside down bottle.
Yeah.
That's just available for American brewers.
Yeah, only American.
There's no chance as a European brewer just to use it?
We've been asked.
We've been asked a lot, but it's a certified mark.
You have to be small, independent, traditional
and U.S. craft brewer with TTB.
You have to be licensed to brew as a U.S. brewer.
Okay.
Chokecherries.
Dries out your mouth.
What do you think?
I think that could combine well.
Yeah.
(bright music)
It's a little cloudy.
But it's still--
It's actually more clear than I would've expected.
It's about flavor, not by style.
That's exactly right.
And we always have to taste it
every step in the brewing process.
Yes, that's true.
Cheers.
Ooh, it's good.
What I love about brewing with somebody
is you could completely not know them
and you always find common ground.
And it's not interesting so much that it's gonna be fun.
Cheers.
Nice brewing view.
I come over more often if we drink beers like this.
Yes.
(Chris laughing)
(upbeat music)
We moved to this neighborhood in 1990.
At the time, most of these buildings were abandoned.
It was an old industrial area.
Actually our first warehouse was in this building.
When we first opened to the public on Friday night,
we'd be lucky to get two dozen people.
And now we get three to 4,000 people in very limited hours
of tours on the weekends.
So the brewery has definitely been an economic development
engine for this neighborhood.
And I think that's true of craft breweries
all over the world.
(light music)
(water splashing)
My girlfriend, who's now my wife,
had an apartment right across the street
and I used to sit on her fire escape,
just staring at the building kind of like in a daze.
And she'd be like, what are you looking at?
And I'm like, I'm looking at the building.
Someday she's gonna be mine.
So this is the old part of the building.
This was built in the 1820s
and actually eventually became hat factories and such.
So this is all part of the old factory complex
that was here on this property,
mostly because of the creek and the water
and the hydro power.
There was a lot of other buildings that we were looking at
and each building kind of like fell through
kind of like buying a house where it's like,
it just doesn't work out, doesn't work out.
And I was really interested
in the factory building next door,
but they wanted to turn that into high end condos
and they weren't taking me serious at all.
And I came down here angry one day, kind of upset,
almost in a way to say goodbye.
I was walking around down here and there was other buildings
and big trees on this property.
And I looked up and I saw this building from the side.
I saw the brick character in the old building on one side.
And then I saw this huge factory,
kind of modern industrial building on the side.
And it was just like the drawings that I had sketched
in the beginning.
And in that moment, I romantically fell in love
with this property where it makes your heart
skip a little bit.
And I literally had that moment of this is it.
And I knew right away, I just knew it.
My ex was brewing at a small brewery
with our now partner, Jason.
And they were creating new styles
and being really expressive in their brewing
and kind of pushing some boundaries.
We all had these ideas of like what we want to do
for a real brewery.
Like build this big thing and make it, you know,
something that represents what we love about the area,
what we love about like our hometown.
And it really also comes down to
is this is not a one person thing or operation.
You need a team
and you need a bunch of different personalities
and skillsets to make this happen.
When you started releasing beers,
you always had this like, okay, we have a release,
let's say Saturday, and there people have to come.
Was it that idea from the beginning?
We never really tried to have a line outside.
But we made beer we liked and we made it the best we could
and people came.
And maybe there was a hundred people the first time.
And I remember coming to work that day,
what are all these people doing here?
But that beer was really well-received.
And the next one after that, a couple more people came.
And I think by like the third release,
we had enough people following us
and knowing what we were doing and kind of raving about it,
that there were, you know, close to 500 people
wrapping around the building one morning.
It's not like you're just standing in a line waiting.
You're surrounded by all these like-minded individuals.
Like you might not have anything in common with them
at the beginning of the day, but by the end of the day,
you all share the same things.
So they'll come the night before,
they'll meet up with their friends,
they'll have beers at our bar, maybe stay in a hotel,
maybe sleep in the car,
come out the next morning
to have some food at the diner down the street
and have a couple of beers throughout the day.
And here you can tell it's super fresh
and the conditions you want,
like it's always cold and people take it home
and they're like, we want more.
And then you can communicate directly to the people.
They know your face, they know who's producing it.
It's awesome.
And it's cool for us if we bartend on a Friday night,
we can go outside and like, hey guys, what's up?
There's a few people sitting in chairs
and invite 'em in for a beer and hang.
it's like direct person to person kind of interactions
rather than like a bigger thing trickling out.
The way we think about beer is in like two fold,
one, we try to create a product
that is like nostalgic in a way.
So a lot of our fruit forward beers,
a lot of our flavors come from childhood memories.
So we want our beers to be like experienced as fun and novel
and creative in a sense of flavor combinations.
On the other side, like some of our more complex beers
we approach the same way, we want flavors that are,
they might be in this shroud of like a really complicated
maybe year old barrel aged sour farmhouse beer.
But when you unfold them a little bit, they're familiar.
So we try to strike this balance.
And I think this is what good beer is,
is a balance of like a familiarity to it,
but also some kind of like edge,
some sort of novel creative component here.
So even our pilsner, you know,
on a day when it's sunny out at you're at the beach,
it drinks just like a Bud Light would, you know.
But if you really want to sit down
and think about the pilsner,
there's layers of flavor there
that are like a bigger component of the overall thing.
(bright music)
(speaking in foreign language)
It needs to have like a year
to remain hot for a little while,
and then almost like lager for a little while
and get that again.
So yeah, all of these have a very slow
and different course of fermentation.
It's all wine barrel here?
These are all red zinfandel barrels.
A couple white wines.
Zinfandel?
Zinfandel, yeah,
from the Napa Valley.
(speaking in foreign language)
(forklift whirring)
(light music)
(horn honking)
Watermelon mix sounds nice.
It's lighter.
It's fresh watermelon.
Enjoy.
We've seen styles
we talked about it recently,
we saw an entire Douglas fir tree put into the brew kettle
to make a--
Like a Christmas tree.
Like a Christmas tree.
Actual Christmas tree.
We've seen Chipotle ants from Mexico used in brewing.
The one rule we do have
is that things have to be flavor positive.
If it doesn't enhance the flavor of that beer,
whatever that means in the context of that beer,
if it doesn't enhance the flavor,
you probably shouldn't do it.
If I got a piece of the moon
and threw in a tiny bit of the moon, if you can't taste it,
then what are we really?
We're just marketing at that point.
We're saying it's there.
Take the ornaments off the Christmas tree.
If they taste good, throw them in. (Chris laughing)
There's just not really a rule
Into the catacombs.
That idea of like really people going to the source of beer,
but driving five states to get it.
That's a weird new thing for us.
I keep waiting for this generation of 22 year olds,
that as soon as they have kids and get married,
the amount of time you have to wait in line
and drink and have downtime,
they're gonna come back to the other beers.
Pils is gonna come back big. As soon as they have kids,
they're like I just want a beer please.
My kid's sleeping.
(upbeat music)
(voices clamoring)
(speaking in foreign language)
(hammer banging)
(audience applauding)
(somber music)
There is a gulf in the way that the companies think,
on that global level,
they can hide malpractice in another continent
and pretend that that being awesome and upright in Europe
whilst they're being destructive in Africa, for example.
This is not something that a traditional brewery
would aspire to replicate,
nor is it something that a craft brewer
aspire to replicate.
(machinery whirring)
Being rated second best brewer in the world
was absurd and really took us by surprise.
We don't make beer.
That's not what people are coming to us to consume.
If we were just thinking about making beer alone,
we would be running a very different type of business
for a very different set of people.
I think people come here
because they want to drink our values
and they want to drink the values that they hold dear to,
so that those values of independence, of community focus,
you know, ethical business,
these things and more at what people are really consuming.
(funky music)
(birds chirping)
ABI and MillerCoors have lost 30 million barrels
of production in the United States in the last 10 years.
And a lot of that of course,
has been taken up by craft brewers.
In the United States,
independent craft is like 13% of the U.S. market now
in volume.
By dollars, it's like 24%.
If you add in the mega craft brands,
it's probably close to 30% dollars of the U.S. market.
Imports are probably about 24%
of dollars in the U.S. market.
So better beer, beer with flavor,
is more than 50% of the U.S. market.
There are three brewers, big brewers,
and basically they consolidate 50% of the beer volume,
the beer production on Earth, planet Earth,
70% of profits, just three brewers.
And then there are almost 19,000 other brewers.
And I think this phenomenon
is not a beer-related phenomenon.
I think it's basically a humanity.
I mean a 21st century phenomenon.
If you allow me, there's also an non-economic impact
of that phenomenon, which has to do with the human nature
and who we are.
Are we the creative human beings?
Especially this is a very relevant discussion
with the artificial intelligence coming.
So are we or are we homo creativus
or are we becoming consumers?
We all grew up basically getting taught
you need to finish your school,
you need to finish your university,
you need to finish your master's.
You need to get in the best position in the best company
to get a nice salary to one day get married
and to have kids and a car and a family and so and so.
Which is basically the comfort zone for every human being.
Everyone likes to be in the comfort zone.
So I followed this whole thing, finished my school, my uni,
so, so, so,
started joining really the companies.
Then I went from a junior position
to a really nice big position
that I was earning actually good amount of money.
But during this whole 13 years of working for a corporation,
I lost a lot of my manners.
I lost a lot of my personality
because in the corporate life, there's no mercy.
Well, it doesn't exist.
So that's why I was always hating to be in a corporate life
because it kills your creativity.
It kills what you actually want to do.
It kills your morals that you grew up.
It change your personality.
It change how you actually should be.
(hammer banging)
In your bedroom, I had a lot of opportunities,
but in the end it gets pretty large
and I've always felt like a small brewer.
I got stuck in meetings and other people had the fun for me.
I'm like, maybe I should have the fun again.
I talked with a lot of other brewery owners
and it was really beautiful to discover
what was happening in American craft
and what niche could I fill in now?
I chose really to go very, very small.
Currently we're the smallest one
from the 22 breweries in our town.
We are complete rotators.
Our beers are always new every weekend.
We're only on the weekend open.
We only have four new beers.
So slight sour bit.
Every weekend.
Sun-dried tomato.
Exclamation mark.
Whoa.
(machinery whirring)
(speaking in foreign language)
(funky music)
(audience applauding)
(bright music)
⪠When I was younger, I knew where I wanted to go âª
⪠I set my dreams, set my path, and set my goals âª
⪠And those goals ruined my way âª
⪠I should have stuck it out, gave up anyway âª
⪠'Cause all my life all I knew âª
⪠Is that's my destiny âª
⪠You see âª
⪠Party people never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠In all the years that have passed âª
⪠I'll now think back âª
⪠I've got no worry for his soul âª
⪠Just after when âª
⪠And those things really in my way âª
⪠I just knew that I would give up anyway âª
⪠'Cause all my life all I knew âª
⪠Is that's my destiny âª
⪠You see âª
⪠Party people never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠No âª
(beer spurting)
Oh man.
Perfect.
(voices clamoring)
(audience applauding)
I am super happy and super proud.
I never thought that this is gonna be like that,
like people really happy about crazy stuff.
Which is actually not crazy, that's how beer started.
Taste that.
I know independency really matters,
because then I can support the microbreweries,
go on the road, meet the brewers, taste the beer,
put it in your car,
hop to the other bar, clean your taps,
plug the beer, send it fresh and clean.
(voices clamoring)
(bright music)
(insects chirping)
Beer is my art.
It is a way to express myself,
an architect to capture whatever it is
that it has inspired you.
And how can you serve that in a liquid form?
And so it's, it's an art, like any other art in my eyes.
I just don't know how to paint, so I know how to brew.
So I started brewing.
Simple.
There's another deer coming here.
(upbeat music)
(valve spinning)
(speaking in foreign language)
(light music)
(machinery whirring)
(voices clamoring)
(glass clinking)
(bright music)
(beer pouring)
(light music)
(glasses clinking)
(energetic music)
(birds chirping)
(soft music)
(both laughing)
(light music)
(grass rustling)
(upbeat music)
(birds chirping)
(energetic music)
(siren wailing)
Every craft brewer I know had some connection
with home brewing.
(horn honking)
I was a journalist before I started Brooklyn Brewery,
and I was sent to Iran to cover the hostage story,
the wars in Lebanon.
I moved to Cairo and I was sitting behind President Sadat
when he was assassinated there.
But the biggest impact on my life
was meeting American diplomats
who had worked in Saudi Arabia,
where they have Islamic law, no alcohol,
and they were avid homebrewers.
And the idea of making beer in your kitchen
just seemed like, wow, I could do that.
My neighbor, his name is Tom Potter,
he thought my idea was ridiculous
because he knew that the big breweries were getting bigger
and the regional breweries in the U.S.
were going out of business.
But eventually I showed him that there were small breweries
that were successful.
Tom went to the Craft Brewers Conference
in Portland, Oregon in 1986.
At that time,
there were fewer than like 50 breweries in all of America.
And all of these new breweries were at this conference.
And there's my partner, Tom,
he's got a Brooks Brothers suit.
He's from New York City.
They all wanted to talk to him
thinking he could be a potential source of money, financing.
And they gave him their business plans.
He came back to New York realizing
that this could be a real business,
that it wasn't just his crazy upstairs neighbor's idea.
(upbeat music)
I was a brewer in Roeselare, Belgium.
In '96, I was invited to do some talk about sour beer
or Belgian beers in the Craft Brewers Conference,,
it was at that year in Boston.
That's where I met Kim and Jeff,
who had started New Belgium.
And they were looking for a Belgian brewer.
Alright, well, good luck.
(upbeat music)
We were staying at the brewmaster from Cambridge Brewing,
and he said, do you know where Colorado is?
And I go no.
That broody New Belgium,
it's kind of an up and coming brewery.
Yeah right, Darrell, what are you saying?
He's like aren't you on vacation right now?
I'm like, yeah.
He's like why would you not go to Colorado
and checked that brewery New Belgium out.
As we continued to drive,
we thought maybe we should check in with Kim.
So I called her on the coast in Maine.
It was a huge waves and I could barely,
I'm like, hey Kim, were you serious
that you were looking for the Belgian brewer?
She said yeah, I was serious.
So we're like, okay, we'll drive over there.
We drove all the way here through cornfields
to boring landscape.
Suddenly there were mountains.
Snowcapped mountains.
Wow.
There's mountains here.
And there's something we could do.
And then we came in in the brewery
and they just had moved in this location.
This, where we're standing right now,
was the packaging hall.
So it was really a very small brewery.
And there were a lot of issues.
So there were so many issues here that I was like, wow.
If I come in as a brewer, I'm gonna be able to do stuff.
I'm gonna be able to turn the rocks into gold.
(siren wailing)
(dramatic music)
1995, we began building our brewery here in Brooklyn.
The New York Daily News did a big story
about the first brewery in Brooklyn in 20 years.
The next day,
two big limousines pulled up in front of the brewery.
When they walked in,
all the workers disappeared from the job site.
You know, the plumbers, the carpenters,
the concrete guys, they were gone.
And I said, okay, let me take you guys to lunch.
And there was a diner nearby.
And the boss said, no, no, we didn't come here to eat.
Let's meet in your office.
I said well, no,
my office is way back in the warehouse there.
He said, perfect.
So we go out in the warehouse,
there aren't enough chairs for the whole group.
I said, let me get some chairs.
And the boss said, no, no, you stand up, we'll sit.
So the boss sits right in front of me and I'm just,
I'm telling them my background,
how we're bootstrapping the company.
I'm not sure if we have enough money.
At a certain point,
the boss says, look, we've heard enough.
We need to talk.
I said, okay, I'll leave.
He said, no, no, you stay here.
We'll go up in the warehouse.
And they're out in the warehouse,
like yelling at each other, like screaming, you know.
They come charging back in and the boss who's in the lead
puts his hand between my legs and squeezes
and puts his face next to me and says,
we're gonna have to hurt you.
And then he grabs me by the shoulders
and slams me into the wall and says, just kidding.
And he burst out laughing
along with the other guys and they left.
(soft music)
(birds chirping)
(speaking in foreign language)
(light music)
(machinery whirring)
(upbeat music)
(hops pouring)
(soft music)
(voices clamoring)
A little bit earthy,
not dense, oil-like.
Almost a little bit towards mint or oregano.
Just kind of darker green or earthiness.
All right, you're in you're with me this time.
I am so glad for that.
So I brought a couple of different local beers
for us to try.
This is a hazy IPA from The Veil,
and this is a pure butter stout we make
at my brewery, Bluejacket.
Everyone that works in beer, has a passion for beer,
brews beer, I think has a story.
I worked at CNN, Washington, D.C. bureau,
and I wasn't happy.
I didn't like working in corporate news.
So threw it all to the wind, quit my job at CNN,
my friend Christie quit her job.
We traveled cross-country for almost a year.
That was the best
trip of my life.
Changed my course.
Yeah, that's good, lemon verbena is definitely in there.
And we would go national parks, BLM land, national forest,
camp, lived off of $15 a day.
What we realized is when we ran out of friends,
almost a year, you're gonna run out of friends,
who let you sleep on the couch or camp in their backyard.
We always had friends if we went to the brewpubs.
So that's where I really realized
I don't just want to homebrew
and get more interested in beer as a beer lover,
I want to work in beer.
I moved to Colorado and I became craft beer program director
at the Brewers Association.
(funky music)
Biked here all the way from the top
of Rocky Mountain National Park.
You start in the snow
and you bike down and it's like 160 kilometers back home.
There's a few Hills here that you have to cross again,
but you pass on this side the reservoir.
And then I live all the way there.
The first time I met Peter,
he was a brewmaster at New Belgium already.
And I had just started here.
And I remember I was working on a story,
I was trying to explain that style of beer.
And I had to do the writing of that.
And Peter does not like to talk about styles.
He's like, what's your style?
So, I was kind of intimidated.
I'm like, all right, Peter,
we're making a beer to Mars at the time,
and I said explain this style of beer to me.
And he got all excited and he took me across the room
and he opened up a book about an architect, Victor Horta.
And he showed me this architect's work.
And it's very vinous,
so it has very sinewy elements to it,
but very strong structurally.
He's like, that is what I want to put in the beer.
I want structural integrity,
yet I want it to be very organic.
And I said, this beer is based on an architect.
And he said, absolutely. And he said, and I want the color
to look like a Belgian sunset.
And it just blew my mind as to how a brewer
might approach his creative craft.
(soft music)
A good beer only has three ingredients,
knowledge, experience, and creativity in different blends.
There's another little one there.
This is the best place ever in history to be a brewer.
Because we educated our customers to try stuff
and they are willing to try.
They're not like in Belgium, oh,
I'm gonna drink my Westmalle and my tripel and my dubbel.
That's what I drank, you know?
No, they're coming in and they're gonna try,
they're gonna ask for what's new.
And so we are now, the brewers here,
we can do whatever with beer.
People are gonna try it.
They will comment on it.
They will get feedback on it to you,
but it's really the best place to do so.
It's also beautiful now to see that with transpired
to other countries, and it goes back to Germany,
it goes back to Belgium, it goes back all over the world.
Creating beers takes three years and three months.
There's always stuff happening.
And I was looking if there were berries over there
and there's always things that you feel smell, eat,
talk to people, and those are in the back of your brain.
And so those are things that you don't know why
they are useful at this point,
but maybe they will come useful after that.
(motor revving)
We used to come on Monday together
and we're like, what should we make?
What should we brew?
What are we gonna serve this weekend?
We're going to Shaun in the Old Town Spice Store.
And we're like, hey, we need something that's fruity
with some body.
It shouldn't be too exaggerated in
the sharpness of the sourness.
What do you think?
Or we talk with Toby in the chocolate store.
And we're like, what type of chocolate husk do you have?
And do you have something that's more fruity
and a little bit good.
And he's gonna be,
oh maybe I have some Ecuadorian cafe husk right now.
Give it a try, smell it.
Let's make an infusion right away.
(soft music)
On the brewing side, it's a little bit more different.
It's by tasting around that we decide on the brews
that we're gonna make.
Sweet little lies and dirty leeks.
And we really wanted to do something with leeks
because that was only thing
that was still in the field in Belgium.
And so we bought some leeks
and then we started playing in the kitchen.
It was really bad to dry hop.
We dry hopped some beer with it
because you get all the sulfur from the leeks.
So we started boiling it.
We started doing a hot extraction, like in the mash.
And so based on that, we decided to go with a mash.
Mash and boil so that we strip the sulfur off.
And then we still had the texture of the leeks.
But so, the idea comes from us biking in Belgium
and finding leeks.
And we're like, oh, we never brewed it with leeks.
Now we get leeks and we're trying to figure out
how to work with leeks
because there's no brewing book I can pick up
that's gonna talk about how to brew with leeks.
(speaking in foreign language)
(funky music)
(drill whirring)
(hammer banging)
This is the perfect lambic to make.
It goes, we could use your 50% of this one.
Have you noticed?
I've been looking at the difference in color,
the difference in aroma.
It tastes much cleaner.
Much cleaner.
Yeah.
It's getting cold now.
It's getting cold now, it will be completely clear.
So does that mean there's a lot of sediment
in these barrels?
If you would put it in a bucket,
you will have half a bucket or less than 5, 6, 7 liters
of yeast, you will find.
Maximum, not more.
There is a difference between the casks
so that it is not certain that all the cas,s of the same age
have the same taste flavors.
Flavors, yeah.
(soft music)
(speaking in foreign language)
(upbeat music)
(machinery whirring)
(bell tolling)
(voices clamoring)
I think you'll find something in lambics
that you don't find in other kind of beers.
Of course, you can find the black beers,
that's like a hammer.
But the sour thing is just absolutely fantastic for me.
I have some friends in Denmark
who's working on beer barrels
and we started, yeah with IPAs, and stouts and stuff.
And then suddenly they got home,
actually from trips to Belgium with lambic.
And we tried it in the bars.
And at first it was really, really strange,
but after a few beers and some thinking,
suddenly it starts to really mind blow you in some way.
And at some point you just need to,
you realize you just need to travel to Belgium
and try it yourself.
(glass clattering)
(speaking in foreign language)
(voices clamoring)
I've headed up four breweries for 800 people.
Wow.
And 68 pubs or something.
Everybody.
Salute.
Cheers.
(glasses clinking)
We're here for a week
drinking the best beer on the planet.
Yeah, and we're gonna pop open every single beer
that we brought.
We brought two case's worth of beer here.
So if we don't trade 'em,
we're gonna pop 'em open and drink them with, you know,
with everybody here.
You know, that's what it's about.
That's how I made this friend here,
by popping open a beer and saying, hey, how you doing?
My name is Carlos.
Hey, try some of my beer.
And then he tried it and he loved it and (laughing).
Now, this is my best buddy here, you know?
And we're traveling and, man.
(upbeat music)
(speaking in foreign language)
(easygoing music)
(horn honking)
(upbeat music)
Hello.
Peter.
Hi there.
Chris.
Chris?
Yes.
Nice to meet you.
This is Frezi.
Hello, Chris.
Nice to meet you.
My wife.
Wanna see the hops, man?
(speaking in foreign language)
You know what goat heads are?
Goat heads?
They came up from the
east, so it's such a dry area there.
And then suddenly becoming the valley here of the Yakima.
And there were a lot of grapes initially,
but then it starts to switch to hops.
That's still really green?
This valley, the Yakima valley, and really from Yakima,
the city of Yakima on until Toppenish,
it's all irrigated by the Yakima River.
The hop growing is always like that, eh?
Every year is like that.
A big hit here was when a Budweiser was bought
by ABI, or became ABI, basically.
At that point, they were having a stock of hops
that they kept a strategic reserve
and they, especially the elaborates,
were suddenly in excess.
And you saw so much corn grown in between the fields here.
Really?
And they've made smaller harvesters
so that they could go in between the poles.
(light music)
(water splashing)
Hi, Eddie.
Hi, Sue.
How are ya?
Great, how are you doing?
Good.
Hey, Chris.
Chris, nice to meet you.
I'm Peter.
Peter.
Pleasure.
Frezi.
Frezi, pleasure to meet you.
Welcome.
Thank you.
(both laughing)
All hops that are grown commercially in the U.S.
came over from Europe.
All the new stuff that we've bred since then
has bred with that rootstock and then modern rootstock.
The acres are on this sign?
Those teepees right there.
Those little endposts,
that separates.
Okay.
Just separates 40s.
That switches into Ekuanot right there.
So there's the section of 67 that's.
Mosaic.
Mosaic.
And then it goes Ekuanot and at the end it's Simcoe.
It'll have it like a red bine
or kind of like a red striped bine.
But if you look at Ekuanot,
it's just kinda like pale.
Same like Mosaic, Citra.
Yeah, it's like it's diverse.
You have blueberry, you have stone fruit,
you have passion fruit,
you have a little bit of mango.
It can be a little bit dank as well.
And that's why I sorta like it.
And it's always a safe bet to go with Mosaics.
It's hard to overdo it.
And as you can see, just agrinomically, it's.
It's a good growing hop.
Yeah, the farmers like to grow it.
Fairly easy to manage, good yields.
(soft music)
(speaking in foreign language)
(machinery whirring)
(energetic music)
This is the last of it.
We have two fields though today.
Only one field that we'll add in.
A few hundred acres of Simcoe and 200 are sittin' here.
(horns honking)
In 1988, when we started selling beer, this bar, Teddy's,
was one of our first customers.
On day one, we delivered to Teddy's.
It doesn't say Teddy's anywhere here,
but that's what everyone in the neighborhood
knows it by.
Actually, it was owned by a brewery
back in the 19th century,
(upbeat music)
You can imagine 30 years ago,
Brooklyn Lager was the only craft beer here.
It was basically Budweiser, Heineken, and Brooklyn Lager.
Today, you see there's a little bit of competition
among craft beers.
(soft music)
(speaking in foreign language)
Independence defines us.
It's the freedom to create with no limits.
It's the difference between real craft beer and the rest.
For more than 6,000 independent craft breweries,
there's a seal that represents that independence.
It marks a community that answers only to beer.
They see the seal, they know
that's independence you're tasting.
Hey, it's Julia Herz.
How are you?
I'm good.
Am I catching you at a good time?
The Brewers Association is the national trade group
in the United States that represents
the majority of breweries.
Frankly, 99% of the beer in the U.S.
is under our membership.
Okey-doke, bye bye.
What we launched this morning
is a new campaign on behalf of independent craft brewers
called That's Independent You're Tasting.
The way we launched it is through communications
in email that would drive breweries in the United States
to this webpage, which is a blog post.
And it talks about the campaign,
shows the two commercials that we have produced,
and then also links people to the social media channels
that we just launched this morning on Facebook,
Instagram, and Twitter.
The acquired breweries that are formerly
independent craft brewers that are now part of big beer,
they don't have their new parent company name
on their labels.
There's 10 breweries now under Anheuser-Busch's control
and ownership in the United States.
There's multiple breweries that Molson Coors
has now purchased.
Heineken has purchased several.
If I was a beer lover and not involved in the beer world,
I wouldn't maybe know that, you know,
a brewery was purchased.
Breckenridge was purchased by Anheuser-Busch,
or Devil's Backbone.
I just wouldn't know that because the name
of the parent company owner is not on those labels.
It's not transparent.
The most important thing about choice
is that you have one.
Independence depends on it.
Choice lets you take a stand against the status quo
by catching lightning in a bottle and in turn,
leave your mark on the world.
We're leaving our mark on beer with a seal that represents
more than 6,000 independent craft breweries.
Seek the seal and know that's independence you're tasting.
Don't you have a calculator that can just tell us?
We have 10 gallons of water and we want 9% alcohol.
It doesn't work that way?
I was just meshing and.
Go for it.
Yeah, so okay.
Yeah, bring it out.
I'm not adding any more water, that I agree with.
Gotta taste it.
Our morning cereal.
That's what I would love in homebrewing
because you just can really play around.
It doesn't matter if it ingredient costs,
like I don't know how much money
because you're doing a very small scale.
What is the temperature now?
I'm gonna call it
160.
Do you want to still have some more?
I don't want it to become stuffed dough.
(grains pouring)
It's mesmerizing.
This independent logo with the upside down bottle.
Yeah.
That's just available for American brewers.
Yeah, only American.
There's no chance as a European brewer just to use it?
We've been asked.
We've been asked a lot, but it's a certified mark.
You have to be small, independent, traditional
and U.S. craft brewer with TTB.
You have to be licensed to brew as a U.S. brewer.
Okay.
Chokecherries.
Dries out your mouth.
What do you think?
I think that could combine well.
Yeah.
(bright music)
It's a little cloudy.
But it's still--
It's actually more clear than I would've expected.
It's about flavor, not by style.
That's exactly right.
And we always have to taste it
every step in the brewing process.
Yes, that's true.
Cheers.
Ooh, it's good.
What I love about brewing with somebody
is you could completely not know them
and you always find common ground.
And it's not interesting so much that it's gonna be fun.
Cheers.
Nice brewing view.
I come over more often if we drink beers like this.
Yes.
(Chris laughing)
(upbeat music)
We moved to this neighborhood in 1990.
At the time, most of these buildings were abandoned.
It was an old industrial area.
Actually our first warehouse was in this building.
When we first opened to the public on Friday night,
we'd be lucky to get two dozen people.
And now we get three to 4,000 people in very limited hours
of tours on the weekends.
So the brewery has definitely been an economic development
engine for this neighborhood.
And I think that's true of craft breweries
all over the world.
(light music)
(water splashing)
My girlfriend, who's now my wife,
had an apartment right across the street
and I used to sit on her fire escape,
just staring at the building kind of like in a daze.
And she'd be like, what are you looking at?
And I'm like, I'm looking at the building.
Someday she's gonna be mine.
So this is the old part of the building.
This was built in the 1820s
and actually eventually became hat factories and such.
So this is all part of the old factory complex
that was here on this property,
mostly because of the creek and the water
and the hydro power.
There was a lot of other buildings that we were looking at
and each building kind of like fell through
kind of like buying a house where it's like,
it just doesn't work out, doesn't work out.
And I was really interested
in the factory building next door,
but they wanted to turn that into high end condos
and they weren't taking me serious at all.
And I came down here angry one day, kind of upset,
almost in a way to say goodbye.
I was walking around down here and there was other buildings
and big trees on this property.
And I looked up and I saw this building from the side.
I saw the brick character in the old building on one side.
And then I saw this huge factory,
kind of modern industrial building on the side.
And it was just like the drawings that I had sketched
in the beginning.
And in that moment, I romantically fell in love
with this property where it makes your heart
skip a little bit.
And I literally had that moment of this is it.
And I knew right away, I just knew it.
My ex was brewing at a small brewery
with our now partner, Jason.
And they were creating new styles
and being really expressive in their brewing
and kind of pushing some boundaries.
We all had these ideas of like what we want to do
for a real brewery.
Like build this big thing and make it, you know,
something that represents what we love about the area,
what we love about like our hometown.
And it really also comes down to
is this is not a one person thing or operation.
You need a team
and you need a bunch of different personalities
and skillsets to make this happen.
When you started releasing beers,
you always had this like, okay, we have a release,
let's say Saturday, and there people have to come.
Was it that idea from the beginning?
We never really tried to have a line outside.
But we made beer we liked and we made it the best we could
and people came.
And maybe there was a hundred people the first time.
And I remember coming to work that day,
what are all these people doing here?
But that beer was really well-received.
And the next one after that, a couple more people came.
And I think by like the third release,
we had enough people following us
and knowing what we were doing and kind of raving about it,
that there were, you know, close to 500 people
wrapping around the building one morning.
It's not like you're just standing in a line waiting.
You're surrounded by all these like-minded individuals.
Like you might not have anything in common with them
at the beginning of the day, but by the end of the day,
you all share the same things.
So they'll come the night before,
they'll meet up with their friends,
they'll have beers at our bar, maybe stay in a hotel,
maybe sleep in the car,
come out the next morning
to have some food at the diner down the street
and have a couple of beers throughout the day.
And here you can tell it's super fresh
and the conditions you want,
like it's always cold and people take it home
and they're like, we want more.
And then you can communicate directly to the people.
They know your face, they know who's producing it.
It's awesome.
And it's cool for us if we bartend on a Friday night,
we can go outside and like, hey guys, what's up?
There's a few people sitting in chairs
and invite 'em in for a beer and hang.
it's like direct person to person kind of interactions
rather than like a bigger thing trickling out.
The way we think about beer is in like two fold,
one, we try to create a product
that is like nostalgic in a way.
So a lot of our fruit forward beers,
a lot of our flavors come from childhood memories.
So we want our beers to be like experienced as fun and novel
and creative in a sense of flavor combinations.
On the other side, like some of our more complex beers
we approach the same way, we want flavors that are,
they might be in this shroud of like a really complicated
maybe year old barrel aged sour farmhouse beer.
But when you unfold them a little bit, they're familiar.
So we try to strike this balance.
And I think this is what good beer is,
is a balance of like a familiarity to it,
but also some kind of like edge,
some sort of novel creative component here.
So even our pilsner, you know,
on a day when it's sunny out at you're at the beach,
it drinks just like a Bud Light would, you know.
But if you really want to sit down
and think about the pilsner,
there's layers of flavor there
that are like a bigger component of the overall thing.
(bright music)
(speaking in foreign language)
It needs to have like a year
to remain hot for a little while,
and then almost like lager for a little while
and get that again.
So yeah, all of these have a very slow
and different course of fermentation.
It's all wine barrel here?
These are all red zinfandel barrels.
A couple white wines.
Zinfandel?
Zinfandel, yeah,
from the Napa Valley.
(speaking in foreign language)
(forklift whirring)
(light music)
(horn honking)
Watermelon mix sounds nice.
It's lighter.
It's fresh watermelon.
Enjoy.
We've seen styles
we talked about it recently,
we saw an entire Douglas fir tree put into the brew kettle
to make a--
Like a Christmas tree.
Like a Christmas tree.
Actual Christmas tree.
We've seen Chipotle ants from Mexico used in brewing.
The one rule we do have
is that things have to be flavor positive.
If it doesn't enhance the flavor of that beer,
whatever that means in the context of that beer,
if it doesn't enhance the flavor,
you probably shouldn't do it.
If I got a piece of the moon
and threw in a tiny bit of the moon, if you can't taste it,
then what are we really?
We're just marketing at that point.
We're saying it's there.
Take the ornaments off the Christmas tree.
If they taste good, throw them in. (Chris laughing)
There's just not really a rule
Into the catacombs.
That idea of like really people going to the source of beer,
but driving five states to get it.
That's a weird new thing for us.
I keep waiting for this generation of 22 year olds,
that as soon as they have kids and get married,
the amount of time you have to wait in line
and drink and have downtime,
they're gonna come back to the other beers.
Pils is gonna come back big. As soon as they have kids,
they're like I just want a beer please.
My kid's sleeping.
(upbeat music)
(voices clamoring)
(speaking in foreign language)
(hammer banging)
(audience applauding)
(somber music)
There is a gulf in the way that the companies think,
on that global level,
they can hide malpractice in another continent
and pretend that that being awesome and upright in Europe
whilst they're being destructive in Africa, for example.
This is not something that a traditional brewery
would aspire to replicate,
nor is it something that a craft brewer
aspire to replicate.
(machinery whirring)
Being rated second best brewer in the world
was absurd and really took us by surprise.
We don't make beer.
That's not what people are coming to us to consume.
If we were just thinking about making beer alone,
we would be running a very different type of business
for a very different set of people.
I think people come here
because they want to drink our values
and they want to drink the values that they hold dear to,
so that those values of independence, of community focus,
you know, ethical business,
these things and more at what people are really consuming.
(funky music)
(birds chirping)
ABI and MillerCoors have lost 30 million barrels
of production in the United States in the last 10 years.
And a lot of that of course,
has been taken up by craft brewers.
In the United States,
independent craft is like 13% of the U.S. market now
in volume.
By dollars, it's like 24%.
If you add in the mega craft brands,
it's probably close to 30% dollars of the U.S. market.
Imports are probably about 24%
of dollars in the U.S. market.
So better beer, beer with flavor,
is more than 50% of the U.S. market.
There are three brewers, big brewers,
and basically they consolidate 50% of the beer volume,
the beer production on Earth, planet Earth,
70% of profits, just three brewers.
And then there are almost 19,000 other brewers.
And I think this phenomenon
is not a beer-related phenomenon.
I think it's basically a humanity.
I mean a 21st century phenomenon.
If you allow me, there's also an non-economic impact
of that phenomenon, which has to do with the human nature
and who we are.
Are we the creative human beings?
Especially this is a very relevant discussion
with the artificial intelligence coming.
So are we or are we homo creativus
or are we becoming consumers?
We all grew up basically getting taught
you need to finish your school,
you need to finish your university,
you need to finish your master's.
You need to get in the best position in the best company
to get a nice salary to one day get married
and to have kids and a car and a family and so and so.
Which is basically the comfort zone for every human being.
Everyone likes to be in the comfort zone.
So I followed this whole thing, finished my school, my uni,
so, so, so,
started joining really the companies.
Then I went from a junior position
to a really nice big position
that I was earning actually good amount of money.
But during this whole 13 years of working for a corporation,
I lost a lot of my manners.
I lost a lot of my personality
because in the corporate life, there's no mercy.
Well, it doesn't exist.
So that's why I was always hating to be in a corporate life
because it kills your creativity.
It kills what you actually want to do.
It kills your morals that you grew up.
It change your personality.
It change how you actually should be.
(hammer banging)
In your bedroom, I had a lot of opportunities,
but in the end it gets pretty large
and I've always felt like a small brewer.
I got stuck in meetings and other people had the fun for me.
I'm like, maybe I should have the fun again.
I talked with a lot of other brewery owners
and it was really beautiful to discover
what was happening in American craft
and what niche could I fill in now?
I chose really to go very, very small.
Currently we're the smallest one
from the 22 breweries in our town.
We are complete rotators.
Our beers are always new every weekend.
We're only on the weekend open.
We only have four new beers.
So slight sour bit.
Every weekend.
Sun-dried tomato.
Exclamation mark.
Whoa.
(machinery whirring)
(speaking in foreign language)
(funky music)
(audience applauding)
(bright music)
⪠When I was younger, I knew where I wanted to go âª
⪠I set my dreams, set my path, and set my goals âª
⪠And those goals ruined my way âª
⪠I should have stuck it out, gave up anyway âª
⪠'Cause all my life all I knew âª
⪠Is that's my destiny âª
⪠You see âª
⪠Party people never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠In all the years that have passed âª
⪠I'll now think back âª
⪠I've got no worry for his soul âª
⪠Just after when âª
⪠And those things really in my way âª
⪠I just knew that I would give up anyway âª
⪠'Cause all my life all I knew âª
⪠Is that's my destiny âª
⪠You see âª
⪠Party people never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠Never gave up âª
⪠No âª