"[upbeat music playing]" "[Jeff] I'm Jeff, and I like beer." "Not this, or this." "I like that." "Ooh!" "And that!" "And, well, shit!" "That one, and that one, and that one, and that one, and that one." "Yup, yup." "Aha." "That's right." "Keep it going, keep it going..." "And there we go." "After a first attempt at making my own beer with..." "Results..." "I thought the best idea would be to leave my very pregnant wife and my old dog at home for 30 days, while I travel throughout California with another female visiting nearly 80 craft breweries." "Both big and small." "But this isn't about me." "This is... [popping a beer cap]" "[crew member] Okay?" "There we go." "Okay." "[upbeat music playing]" "Should we hold on?" "Who's over there?" "Hello?" "Just a minute, dude." "Just a minute." "Good clap." "Oh, that's how you roll?" "Take one." "Ready whenever you are." "We don't know any of the answers." "Is it multiple choice?" "We don't know the question." "Oh." "Cheers." "My name is Ken Grossman, president of Sierra Nevada Brewing Company." "I'm Steve Wagner, co-founder  president at Stone Brewing Company." "And I'm Greg Koch, Steve's partner in crime." "Enjoying some beer." "Vince Marsaglia." "Gina Marsaglia." "[Vince] We started a long time ago." "Together we're Ron Jeremy" "That's true." "I'm Ron Lindenbusch." "Jeremy Marshall's our brewmaster." "My name is Yuseff Cherney." "I'm the head brewer here at Ballast Point." "I am Paul Segura, the brewmaster at Karl Strauss Brewing Company." "This is Beach City Brewery." "We're in Huntington Beach, California." "Cambria, California." "Torrance, California." "Here we are in beautiful Mammoth Lakes, the highest elevation brewery on the West Coast." "Welcome to the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company." "We're in Camarillo, California." "This is the beer farm for Humboldt Regeneration." "Here are the soon-to-be Bagby Beer Company." "Here in Oceanside." "Fairfax." "Orange." "Vista, California." "I'm Vinnie Cilurzo from Russian River Brewing Company in Santa Rosa." "Brea." "Temecula." "Roseville." "Placentia, California." "We're located in San Marcos, California, most famous for being the original stone brewery." "We're here in San Francisco." "San Luis Obispo." "Kernville." "Los Angeles." "Cool, California." "Coolest brewery in the country." "Downtown Fresno." "We're out in Pescadero, California on Highway One." "Beautiful Paso Robles, directly in the center of the state." "We're just a few hundred yards away from I5 on the Golden State Freeway." "My name is Vaune Dillmann, owner of the Mount Shasta Brewing Company in Weed, California." "We're a small, family owned and operated production brewery." "Our facility used to be the old Green Flash Brewing Company before they expanded." "My company is Cismontane Brewing." "It means the downside of the mountains as opposed to the other side of the mountains which would be transmontane." "Science." "Save the whales." "We all waxed lyrical about the California brewing scene for a very long time." "The craft brewing industry was really born in California." "California is where the whole thing started." "This is where the idea was conceived" "Well, you know, it's a wonderful story." "You know craft brewing sorta got its genesis in Northern California." "I went to school at UC, Santa Cruz, in the late '70s early '80s, and so I was introduced to Anchor Steam." "I really love Anchor Steam." "Anchor Steam." "Anchor Steam." "Anchor..." "Love their story." "Talk about a genuine story." "My goodness." "I bought a brewery, and we are at the Anchor Brewing Company in San Fransisco, California." "I'm Mark Carpenter" "I've been with the brewery since 1971." "Anchor Brewing Company was actually founded in 1896." "They're responsible for" "California Common or what they called the "Steam beer."" "[Mark] Statistically it's an amber lager brewed with a unique fermentation style." "And the first craft beer of America." "Before the Gold Rush there were no breweries in California." "Along with the Gold Rush came a lot of breweries, and they wanted to make beer, and they wanted to make lager beer." "But they couldn't make lager beer because they didn't have refrigeration available, so they carbonated these beers, and because of the carbonation they took on this funny nickname "steam beer."" "You have to keep in mind steam was very modern, and so it was very hip." "Anchor was the only one to survive Prohibition." "Fritz Maytag wound up buying it in 1965." "It was only draft beer." "There was only one pump in the entire brewery still no refrigeration, and just going out of business." "Fritz thought it was cool so far before anybody else did." "He started things up by buying a failing brewery, and revitalizing the brand, and that sort of kicked things off." "[Mark] Love the idea." "The history of this brewery that was his fascination for buying it." "It was a real part of California history that was gonna be lost." "I started because I came for a tour of Anchor." "There were only three people working there." "I went and talked to Fritz, and we got along and he hired me." "So, I'm just too lazy to look for work." "I've been here ever since." "We had a 57-barrel brew size." "We were selling just under a 1000 barrels of beer, which meant we only had to brew once in a while." "If we brewed, we all brewed." "If we bottled, we all bottled." "So, it was an unbelievable learning environment." "I mean, it was almost like a brewing university." "Fritz started bottling in 1971." "Bottles enabled the brewery to ship all the way to the East Coast." "Then we went on to our Liberty Ale." "Liberty Ale came out in '75." "Yeah." "And then all of a sudden, here comes flavor, and people are like, "What the hell is that?"" "First dry-hopped ale in America." "Basically like, ten years ahead of anybody as far as making a hop-forward beer with a lot of cascade hops in it." "That was the beer that Tony and I clicked on when we met." "I thought it was one of the most awful beers I'd ever tasted, and he said, "Wait till you're done with that bottle."" "And by the end of the bottle, my palate was desensitized a little bit to the hoppiness, and I was like, "Wow!"" "I went to UC Davis, the Master Brewers Program, and ever since then I've been brewing." "My name is Charles Bamforth, and we are at the University of California, Davis." "I am Professor of Malting and Brewing Sciences." "I did my bachelor of Science and my Ph.D in Biochemistry, and I am an enzymologist." "And the first job in 1978 that interested me was as an enzymologist in the brewing industry." "That was down at a place called" "The Brewing Research Foundation just South of London, and this was an organization that was actually funded by the tax on beer." "So, the biggest paymasters of The Brewing Research Foundation were Bass because Bass was the biggest brewing company in the UK, so they paid more than anybody else." "And so in 1983, I went to Bass." "By which time Thatcher had screwed up the British brewing industry, and Bass decided they were gonna sell all their breweries and go into hotels." "They became the biggest Hotel company in the world." "If you ever stay at a Holiday Inn, please do because that's helping my shares." "Beer and brewing have been taught at Davis since 1958." "The first real professor of Brewing Science here was a guy called Michael Lewis." "He retired formally in the mid '90s, at which point the handlers of Busch corporation who had taken many of the brewers from Davis, they said, "Well, we want to make sure brewing continues to be taught here."" "So, they handed out the professorship." "And they were looking for somebody with industrial experience, somebody with academic experience, and somebody who had a long history of doing research in beer." "And so, I was pretty much the only guy on the planet who checked all the boxes, and I came in 1999." "I developed a class on campus which is a general education class called Introduction to Beer and Brewing, and pushed the class on sex into second place, in terms of popularity." "Our main product is people that are qualified for careers in the brewing industry, large companies, small companies the whole lot." "Sierra Nevada, to me, is the hallmark of this success story in a craft brewer." "[Tony] If you go there and you tour there, and I'd encourage you to do that if you make this documentary, it is astounding what they do there." "If you're going, take me I wanna go." "Have you guys been up there?" "[Frances  Jeff] Not yet." "It'll blow your mind." "I look around all the great breweries in San Diego, and I think they were inspired in some way by Sierra Nevada." "Just three words, "Impressive as hell,"" "would come to mind, really." "I love Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale, it's one of my favorites." "Definitely Sierra Nevada." "Sierra Nevada." "Sierra Nevada paved the way." "It's been virtually unchanged, for what?" "Thirty years." "They're doing all the things that everyone else wants to do, and it's hard to not look at them and say, "Wow."" "I got an opportunity early on when I was a budding home brewer to meet Ken Grossman, and I think if I hadn't had that meeting" "I probably wouldn't have pushed myself to get to where I'm at today." "[Charles] Ken Grossman is the most impressive guy" "I've ever met in the brewing industry." "When I first came over here," "I was talking to Ken about his beers, and I said, "Ken they're as hoppy as I can handle them."" "And he said, "Charlie, you know, 25 years ago," "I was brewing in a bucket, now I'm brewing hundreds of thousands of barrels every year." "Do you mind if I leave it alone?"" "I said," Go for it, Ken."" "I started home brewing in 1969." "I had a neighbor whose son and I were best buds." "His dad was a very accomplished home brewer, home wine maker." "And so, as I was growing up I was always around lots of tubs of things bubbling away." "That point when we opened up in 1980, it was about the low point in the US brewing industry's history." "As far as the number of breweries, somewhere in the mid 40's." "Before that time there really had only been the small surviving brewers from after Prohibition." "When we opened, it was with a home-built ten-barrel brew house." "Our brewery incorporates several archaic and vintage pieces of equipment, and our brew house has the original" "17 barrel system built by Ken Grossman in his masters thesis when he was in college and when he starts here in Nevada West." "We've been brewing on that since day one." "[Matt] From day one, when I was a home brewer," "I watched, read and studied anything and everything I could get my hands on about Ken Grossman." "To see what he has done, as far as building the Sierra Nevada empire with a beer that is robust." "I can only imagine what it was like when he started making" "Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and trying to sell it to people back in the day." "We're still struggling selling robust beers in these times of craft beer." "Yeah." "Thumbs up to Sierra Nevada." "[Charles] Ken is not only very very capable manually as an engineer, but also has got a tremendous intellect, so scientifically, he's got it all worked in terms of brewing." "Great businessman, and great human in terms of looking after his people." "And Sierra Nevada is the most beautiful brewery in the world." "My definition of craft beer?" "Wow, that's a good one." "Ooh!" "Oh!" "[laughs]" "No, I never thought about that." "It's a tough one to nail down." "Well, that's a moving target." "It's just beer brewed on a smaller scale, potentially." "It's a very political question right now, so I think that's as far as I'm gonna go with that." "There's a lot of numbers, and stats, and volumes, and categories being binged about out there." "Originally they called the small breweries, micro breweries." "Somewhere along the line we said," ""We're gonna call ourselves Craft breweries."" "[Bob] There is a trade organization, the Brewers Association." "They set the definition of a micro brewery an arbitrary level of, I think, it was around" "60, 000 barrels per year." "As several breweries, ourselves included, began eclipsing that mark, and said, "Hey wait." "We're still a micro brewery?"" "I get a little bit, sort of, surprised when they keep changing the volume definition of what "Craft" is just to keep one very large brewing company in the frame." "Now, you have breweries that call themselves craft breweries tha t are making a million barrels per year or more, so the definition keeps changing a little bit." "So, it's a little bit artificial." "Where the actual dividing line, in terms of who's a craft brewer and who's not is entirely irrelevant." "Is it how it's made?" "Is it who makes it?" "Is it how much you make?" "It's all of these things put together." "The fact that the Brewers Association keeps having to raise that limit, uh, really just shows how much success" "What a great problem to have?" "[airplane whooshing] [upbeat music playing]" "We're in South Park." "We're in my home where we brewed our first batch of beer on a Wednesday, 11/11/11." "I'm very proud of that." "I'm a former Marine." "I'm very proud of that as well." "1993, I got out of the Marine Corps." "After Desert Shield, Desert Storm," "I decided I was going to do three things." "Do a lot of drugs, go surfing up the coast, and play in a rock band." "So, I drove up the coast and was drinking Anchor Liberty." "Sierra Nevada Pale Ale." "Came back to San Diego had my first real craft beer experience downtown at Columbia Street at Karl Strauss." "Karl Strauss started at our downtown brewery back in 1989 with a brewpub." "And it was the first brewery in the city of San Diego since Prohibition." "Our founders, one of them was a fourth generation San Diegan, and he had an uncle who was a very famous German brewmaster, Karl Strauss." "Karl's father was the president of the Feldschlosschen Brewery in Minden, and if you're the president of a brewery in Minden, you live on the brewery premises." "So, Karl was literally born in that brewery, and grew up in and around the brewery kinda helping out." "He had to leave Germany in 1939, and he came to America, and he had some friends that had left prior to him." "He was originally supposed to go to San Fransisco, but he stopped at Milwaukee to see some of his friends." "Many of them were working at Pabst or Miller or whatever, and they said, "Hey you should fill out an application while you're here."" "He was hired on the spot." "Worked at Pabst for 44 years." "He was vice president, in charge of all the production." "He, at one point, was one of the best known brewmasters in the world." "Chris Cramer, his nephew, wanted to see his legacy carry on, and named it after his uncle, Karl." "So, he was my boss for the first six or seven years I worked here, and he really set in motion a lot of the protocols that we use today in here at the brewery." "That's kinda how, I think, a lot of brewers got off the ground here in San Diego." "They started out at Karl Strauss downtown drinking, you know, really fresh, really good clean beer." "[Bagby] Stone was just starting." "They were in the end of their first year of business, and I saw that they had a driving job." "You want me to go first?" "We have each of our own stories." "We were acquaintances in the music business, by coincidence we ran into each other at a sensory evaluation of the beer class at UC, Davis." "It was one of those, what-are-you-doing-here moments, and we realized we had a mutual interest in craft beer." "Things got outta hand from that point on." "It all went downhill from there." "That's when it clicked for the two of us." "We started home brewing together." "Then we started talking about those what-ifs." "We sold our first keg in the summer of 1996." "We went down this road of making more and more hoppy and extreme beers." "They were doing things that not a lot of people were doing at that time." "As we experimented with different and higher hopping rates, we sort of inspired ourselves and other friends of ours that had also gone down that path somewhat, and it built upon itself." "[Yussef] You know, back in the day making home brew..." "We're always looking for better ingredients, and that's kinda what led me to the Home Brew Mart, which was a shop that had just opened." "It was Home Brew Mart." "Home Brew Mart, it's what became Ballast Point Brewery." "I went there with the intension of buying a batch of ingredients, burned a hole and I was working there the next day [laughs]." "There was no online then either." "No." "It was before the Internet." "We had to grow our own yeast." "There was no White Labs or anything." "[Chris] I moved to San Diego in 1991, and I started home brewing with some people that ended up starting breweries." "My brewing partners back in the day," "Chris White from White Labs." "So, we started home brewing after I took a class from him at UCST in 1993." "We started brewing." "Started making yeast in the lab at UCST at night." "[Chris] Since the beginning, I've been super fascinated by the science of brewing, about the chemistry of brewing, and the microbiology of brewing, that always led me to the fermentation side." "Very soon I started selling yeast to Pizza Port," "Solana Beach was their first location." "And I used to trade him beer, and a pizza for yeast." "It wasn't even so much as selling." "It was trading for pizza and beer." "[Vince] It was frontier land is what it was." "Back in those days, you know, the people that we were hanging out with and brewing with are kind of the stars of today, you know." "Vinnie Cilurzo was trading our yeast for his yeast." "You know, we'd get wine yeast from him, from his parent's winery." "And we would give him Chris' yeast from the lab." "[Vinnie] I originally had a brewery down in Temecula in Southern California called Blind Pig." "We were just a street-- A little micro brewery with a real small brew system, a little tasting room." "Kinda the model that a lot of small breweries are going to now." "[Peter] I got into home brewing in the early '90s." "I'd like to this of AleSmith as, kind of, a home brewery on steroids." "[Shawn] I was not a home brewer, had no passion to brew beer, or become a craft brewer." "I was working at a cafe in Coronado for Rick Chapman, Ron's brother." "They asked me if I wanted to be a part of it, and I said, "What's gonna be my role."" "And they said, "Well, how about being the brewer?"" "[Brandon] When we opened our doors, October of 2010," "I had turned 21 in the May of 2010." "So, it was kind of a right down to the wire." "[Tom] The craft brewing revolution that started here in California has transformed the brewing industry worldwide." "Well, I'll start." "You always start." "When we do these things together," "you start." "I was waiting or you to start." "[Shaun] Well, I guess we could start with what got me in tho this." "I've been in the brewing industry for last 50 years." "I wasn't happy with the mass produced macro beer that was out there." "So, once I found out that you could make your own, full speed ahead." "[Ron] One of these places I was a partner in was a multi-tap house." "That was '91, and things were just popping." "With 30 taps and all these little breweries were coming in." "Met Tony Magee with his kegs in the back of his Ford Ranger, and I just kinda climbed on." "I was a amateur home brewer." "Is that a phrase?" "[Ted] I was in the military in Germany trying all the Vox and the exports, and the Pilsners." "When I got back to the States, there was none of that." "[Brendon] At the ripe young age of 16," "I started working at a liquor store in San Francisco." "We had a ten-door beer cooler, and I filled it up with just beer." "I kicked all the soft drinks, the wine, all that crap outta there." "I was a hop chemist for Kalamazoo Spice Extraction Company" "I saw his thing, it was a home brewery kit, and it was like this revelation." "You can make your own beer?" "I convinced my wife I can make craft beer cheaper than you can buy it on the shelf." "My first brewing job was with Goose Island Beer Company in Chicago." "I worked for five years and ultimately became the head brewer there." "When I was about 20 years old, I couldn't buy beer, but I could buy all the ingredients to make it, so I went that route." "[Victor] Dated a gal." "She got me a home brewery kit for Christmas in '92 that basically makes your Sierra Nevada Pale Ale." "Started just brewing beers on the stove in my friend's dorm room." "Read Michael Jackson's World Guide to Beer, the authority on beer and whisky and not the singer, of course." "[Yashpal] We established the first brewpub in California in 1983." "[Julian] Had the good fortune of becoming friends with some professional brewers, so I had a lot of good advice, a lot of good mentors as a home brewer." "She used to do a cable access show." "It was called, Brewing with Herb." "We were on weekly for 13 years." "[Patrick] First year of law school." "My wife was annoyed with me that I was implanted." "So she said, "You need to find a hobby."" "One day, I just quit my job and said," ""We're going to brewing school in England."" "I have a Ph.D in humanities." "I can read German, and French." "I could find three text books in German that were public demand." "So I started reading that." "[Joe] I started out at Anheuser-Busch." "So, one of the bigger breweries." "Really fell in love with Lagunitas , you know." "First things I saw decorating the office was one of Ron's posters which was very counter cultural." "It was high times." "It alleviated fears of drug testing." "You didn't pass the-- You did pass the drug test." "It was required." "Uh-huh." "Yeah." "People have already gotten a taste of what the industry looks like in San Diego, and they're wanting to come closer to their home, and we get to be kinda part of that wave." "[Jeremy] When we were starting up, there was not a well established community for beer in LA." "LA has an insufficient amount of breweries compared to the rest of the West Coast." "[Thomas] When I first came to California, all I heard about is, "The beer is amazing."" "I moved out to LA, and I was like, "where is all the beer?"" "LA County is growing really fast, but for a while, you know, you could count on your hands how many breweries there were." "It's nice to be in this emerging LA market." "I'd say once a month, we hear about a new brewery opening up." "[Alastair] It's just wonderful that finally Angelinos can actually have an opportunity to experience craft beer, right here locally." "From almost nothing to what it is now even in a few short years." "But being here in LA, and watching this market grow, and it's just been an awesome experience, and I can't wait to see what's gonna happen over the next five to ten years." "My special take on beer making?" "[Richard] We had a motto" "Years ago in 1996, we would say, "Bigger's better."" "Well now bigger is, normal." "[Tomme] I come from this premise for beer making that beer should be flavor driven and that craft brewing is a reaction to a lot of beer that was being produced that was stripped of flavor, and I believe that beer is an opportunity" "to be very flavor imaginative." "[Jay] We make sour beer here." "It's the only kind of beer we make." "We focus on America style Ale's." "[man] We're an aggressive Northern California brewer." "Lots of hops, lots of malt." "It's the way we've always brewed." "We only brew Belgium sour beers." "We make English style beers with a California twist." "We end up focusing on, what a lot of folks call, as kinda West Coast style which means a lot of hops." "Our main focus is brewing beers true to style like the helles, the dunkel, the Schwarzbier, your Imperial Stout, kolsch, Cream ale, Irish red." "And the of course IPA." "IPA's huge." "Huge, huge, huge." "There isn't a brewery in town that doesn't make an IPA that I can think of." "We didn't have an IPA at first, and we got our ass kicked every day for not having one." "People would walk in and say, "Do you have an IPA."" ""No." And they'd turn around and walkout." "[Vinnie] I really honed in on IPA early on, and really tried to dial in a recipe that would be very specific to what I wanted to drink myself and eventually brew at my own brewery." "Firestone Walker has, from day one, always focused on barrel fermented ale's." "We try to incorporate barrels one way or another in just about everything we do." "Belgians don't really follow the Reinheitsgebot, the German laws for brewing which is yeast, hops, barley and water." "So, they've always been more the bad boys of adding a lot of different ingredients that aren't traditional." "[Brandon] We do what is known as bottle conditioning." "Rather than filling the beer completely carbonated into the bottle, we fill it flat with a little bit of fermentable sugar and a little bit of champagne yeast, and it referments in the bottle to create its own carbonation." "[Jay] We're not the only ones doing sour beer, but to the only ones exclusively doing it." "It's a privilege." "[Ted] We're the country's first certified organic brewery." "We use a 100% organic hops, and organic malt." "To make a consistent organic beer, an award winning beer is at times very challenging." "[Jonathan] Our beers will always be hand crafted because of the brew system we work on." "It's very hands on." "The decision by the person running the brew house influences the character of the beer." "I feel that beer historically in the Unites States has been, kind of, underrepresented as far as what kind of beverage it is." "I want to elevate people's experience to think of beer as a beverage that can be at the finest restaurants on the finest tables." "[Paul] There's a small brewing system at each one of our locations where we use that opportunity to brew new creations, all the time." "[Gina] We've got access to amazing barrels within the wine countries here that allows us endless creativity." "[Kelly] We wanted to have the variety, so anybody could come in here, and doesn't have to be just a hop head, doesn't have to be just a beer a geek." "There's no holds on the brewers." "It's their full creative force." "Whatever they wanna make..." "Well, one time..." "No." "Our motto is, "Be Natural, Drink Naked,"" "and that came from one of our own customers because I don' want all the pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers." "I just want a plane old, naked beer like my grandfather used to drink." "And that intrigued me." "[Jeff] Before Wildcard launched in Redding, it was the largest city in the West Coast without a brewery." "[Jacob] I brew a couple of times a week." "A lot of our small organic farms have a program where you can sign up and do the CSA, where you get a box of fruits from a farmer every week." "A lot of folks that buy growler shares." "[Jenny] I've worked with a lot of small family owned farms, really getting to know the grower and know the produce." "Where it's grown?" "And all those things." "I was attracted to craft beer because of that." "[Jesse] We're based out of San Fransisco, and we're really inspired by the Farm-to-table movement." "We make what we call are Farm to Barrel beers." "We really try by collaborating with local farms to integrate local agriculture into our beers that are infused with a sense of California." "[Joyce] To be doing business in California in an industry that is so connected and so bonded." "We have a lot of love in the state capital." "[guitar music playing]" "I'm assemblyman, Wesley Chesbro." "I represent California's great North Coasts." "The last time I checked, about 15 craft brewers." "And I work in that building." "That's the state capital right behind me." "We've got The California Craft Brewers Association." "A lot of good resources there." "[Tom] We are the oldest state based trade association representing the craft brewing industry in the country." "Primarily prompted by Frtiz Maytag." "He realized that for the craft brewing industry to be a viable industry we had to have representation at the state capital." "We have worked to losen up the rules and the laws to make it easier for the consumer to meet brewer, and take that fresh beer home." "We do try to involve members of Congress, and we try to get them to visit our breweries, and know and understand our industry." "[Sean] We are so fortunate to have an organization like" "California Craft Brewers Association that does protect our rights as small producers." "[Tom] Our membership represents 99% of the craft brewer production in the state." "We are unique in that, we are a grassroots organization." "So, that's very unusual here in Sacramento." "Most trade associations that represent an industry have a PAC fund, a political action campaign." "We're a full on grassroots effort, and we're doing it, and are able to do it, and we're able to promote our business because there's so much love for craft beer in the state" "that it makes it really unique." "Most of out effort goes to protecting those privileges that we currently have." "We're always, kind of, in a defensive mode here in California." "It's the eighth largest economy in the world, so there's a lot of strong and powerful interests working here." "Our industry is growing tremendously now, so we, as the trade association, have to stay ahead of that curve." "Rather than to chase the issues, we have to be out in front of the issues." "[Tomme] I think the beer culture in California is first grade." "Up and down the coast, you know, all through California there's just amazing beer." "This is where it is." "This is where it's happening." "Trend-setting would definitely be a word for California." "Beer in California is on par with the best in the world." "They look at us kinda a little crazy, but with a lot of respect." "We're getting world recognition for our California beer." "Kinda like what happened with the wine scene." "There's so much good beer in the state that, I mean, we almost don't have to leave." "How could I not like California?" "My great great grandfather was a bounty hunter in Lancaster." "We got roots!" "If we are not here working, we're at someone else's tasting room." "It's a good state for that." "[Victor] If you look at California from San Diego to Eureka, we cover every single style of beer that's out there on the planet." "You know, the reason why I came to California initially is I felt West Coast was the big leagues of craft brewing." "Let's not forget where we came from." "Without Liberty, and without Sierra Nevada, and that Cascade Hop, we would've never motivated anybody to do any better." "The weather." "Can you beat it?" "Were you outside today?" "Sunshine, that's what brought me here." "I'm Canadian." "That's a big one for me." "[Jonathan] The beach is like, less than a mile that way, and that's awesome." "Pulling hot grain outta the mash, and all the guys in there are like sweating..." "So hot at a hundred degrees, and I get like the ocean breeze on my face, and I'm just loving life." "[Yuseff] Having tanks outside, it makes it a lot easier when it's not raining all the time." "You know, there's a lot of surfing that goes on here, a lot of outdoor sports in general, and I think those things are in tune with craft beer." "[Tom] California's also in many ways kinda the leader in innovative ideas." "Consumers are willing to try almost anything." "[Tom] The craft beer consumer, for the most part understands where their beer comes from." "They want to buy local and regional, and they want to buy from a small company that's independently owned." "We've always been a place where people have been willing to be on the cutting edge." "Maybe it goes back to the Gold Rush where there is this pioneering spirit here." "[Kevin] You have a lot more freedom here." "We can really, kind of, push the envelop and have people still be receptive to it." "[Wesley] We're a place that's always on the outer edge of things, and people are willing experiment to here." "I think we're not as boring." "Now you look at cheese." "Craft cheese right now is killing it." "Cheese goes with beer!" "It's like, have you ever tried stinky cheese." "Who would have thunk?" "Something that smells like that." "Tastes, okay!" "Being on the West Coast, we are dominated a lot by hops, which is great for hopheads like myself." "[upbeat music playing]" "We're are not afraid to throw a lotta hops in our beer." "We can bring out some really interesting flavors like cantaloupe, watermelons, strawberries, just using hops." "[Victor] We've always been hop focused" "I started visiting Yakima, Washington, when I had my homebrew shop in '76." "And I've gone up there just about every year since then." "You know, with us we'd be contracting into the futures for hops f or many years and maintain a pretty good control on our costs." "Although hops are one commodity that certainly has gone up a lot in price." "[Paul] I've got some French hops coming to me right now that have flavor's and aroma's" "I've never smelled and tasted before." "I don't know what beer we're even gonna make with those, yet." "It's pretty cool." "[Vinnie] When I made my first double IPA, it was in Temecula that was in 1994." "At the time there was only three or four IPAs being made, and they sold." "[Jonathan] We, as a region, have developed something really unique." "West Coast IPA, the term didn't exist until five or six years ago." "What's happening in California right now is kind of interesting because it's now people say they are brewing West Coast style IPA." "California is most of the West Coast, and where all those big hoppy flavors are coming from is right here." "I love to use unique ingredients." "The things that we celebrate the most here is total creative freedom." "[Jeff] It's limitless as far as the different flavors and combinations you can come up with." "Any ingredient that makes the beer better..." "Sure." "Thai basil, sweet potatoes..." "Blackstrap molasses." "We think of flavor combinations first and foremost." "Cumin, and kaffir lime, and cayenne, and habanero." "Our flagship beer Orange Wheat utilizes oranges that we carry hundreds of pounds per batch." "Grapes from Temecula, dates from Lake Chelan Valley." "[Jason] Making a Scottish type red ale" "I'm like, "What's that Scottish ingredient."" "It was either kale or turnips." "Kale tasted like..." "You could imagine." "Turnips actually turned out pretty good." "The ingredients are definitely more expensive, but they're way better." "Allspice, cinnamon." "The vanilla beans from Madagascar." "Bourbon Barrels from Kentucky." "[Todd] We hand toast oak flakes to get very much like an oatmeal cookie like character that gets built in to the beer." "Schezwan pepper corns, pink pepper corns, black pepper corns." "Our first home brewed batches, I was up peeling cacao nibs." "Thank god, we've moved on." "I own a few breweries that are fortunate to have a lot of farmers right around the brewery." "We'd get flats of big fat jalapenos" "They're having gloves." "They're having masks and they're sweating." "It's hot." "We have specialty beers." "They do all kinds of crazy experiments on them." "The ones that people get jazzed about happen to be ones that they take a traditional style and they tweak it." "[man] Take an American Style weak beer recipe, and we actually brew it with fresh watermelon juice." "[Kevin] If we take our IPA and soak tea bags, if you will, of citrus fruits, and make a Citrus IPA" "For the summer beer we actually add cucumber to it with beer." "We use almond milk in one of our beers to make an almond milk stout." "We brink in a lot of raw materials from New Zealand, from Australia, Japan." "Wanted to bring some of the flavors and experiences that we grew up with." "[man] Beer that we make here comes from seasonal ingredients from our orchards and surrounding farmlands." "We have 75 beehives in the back." "The first thing that came to mind was horchata." "Horchata Stout!" "We made a creme ale with fresh oranges from the orchard." "Pepper beer." "Mind you, that's packed with peppers and filled with our weak beer." "Now, we bottle it in 22's" "We were able to sell it." "Yes." "Over the course of the year, well over a hundred styles coming out of our brewery." "I'm not against using other fermentable things, other sugars." "[Alex] A lot of brewers use dextrose in their beer, it's corn sugar." "It's kinda the only way you can make a real double IPA." "So, if you wanna start drinking double IPA, then, I guess, you know." "I'm thrilled to use a sugar from Indonesia known as Guru java." "It's coconut palm sugar." "It's very difficult for the Indonesians to get it right into the United States." "I believe that custom service believes it's narcotics." "As long as it tastes good nothing is really off limits." "Flavor first." "[Charles] You know here in Sacramento, we're very blessed to have some great breweries, and some great brewing people." "You can't be in Sacramento as a brewery, and not recognize the history and legacy of hops here." "[country music playing]" "Sacramento's contribution to beer is different than most cities." "We used to be the largest hop growing region in the world." "Thousands of acres of hops." "We're the largest brewery west of the Mississippi River." "Larger brewing facility than anything Anheuser-Busch did prior Prohibition." "So, I learn all that and I said, "Wow!" "Sacramento, we are a great beer town, and this is what we were born to do."" "We don't have to try to do it." "We just were it." "[Jon] We have the best source of water around, the American river." "Naturally filters as it flows down the mountains." "It ran into the Sacramento river." "In every spring it would flood depositing fresh silt and soil on the river bank." "Good to grow hops and barley." "We were Germans, Austrians and Swiss." "So, we knew what to do with those three ingredients." "And then someone was nice enough to have the Transcontinental Railroad." "And in downtown Sacramento." "And with the advent of the refrigerator rail car, there was no other town in the West Coast that could harvest ice and snow all winter long, store it, and brew it into river-fresh beer all summer long." "And I like to say that we didn't just brew beer, we grew beer." "We have seven and a half acres of hops here, and what's happened is several other friends and other farmers around in Sacramento have begun to either grow hops or they found wild growing hops, and they've picked it asked us if it was any good," "of course it was." "Maybe four or five years ago, there were no acres of hops in Sacramento." "Now, there's probably 15 to 20 acres of hops." "Wish I had growers in Michigan." "Fact is there is 250 acres of hops in Michigan," "In my..." "I will say this." "Put it on my grave stone." "My goal is that California has more hops than Michigan." "We've gotta grow more hops than Michigan." "Here in Temecula specifically, we're kinda proud of the fact that" "Vinnie Cilurzo from Russian River Brewing is a Temecula guy." "I've been in the wine industry my whole life." "My parents planted the first vineyard in Temecula in 1968." "So, all I knew was fermentation." "In wine making it takes us a year, two years, to make a batch of wine." "But, yet in brewing, you can make an ale in 21 days or so." "It was almost instant gratification." "They've done a lot for the craft industry by pushing boundaries." "There's a real irony now that we're doing all these barrel-age beers that are taking a year-plus to make." "So, suddenly I've come a full circle." "[Ken] Vinnie created some of that beer that used to be really hoppy, double IPAs as well as sour beers." "You know, as far as brewers that are really dedicated to their craft," "Vinnie's right up there." "[Vinnie] Russian River Brewing Company started in 1997." "It was originally started by Korbel Champagne Cellars." "They hired me to run the brewery for them." "In 2003, Korbel decided to get out of the beer business, so I traded them the Russian River Brewing Company name for my severance." "So, Natalie and I raised money from friends and family, and then opened our brewpub up in 2004." "Within an hour, the place was just filled up completely, and I still remember Natalie and I standing in the corner, kinda gazing at all these people, and we're just shaking our heads wondering what the heck, we've gotten ourselves into." "Neither Natalie or I had any restaurant experience at the time." "So, we sure have a lot of it now." "In 1994, when I was at Blind Pig" "I made a beer called the Inaugural Ale." "It was a double IPA." "It hadn't really been done before." "Fast forward to when I was at Russian River Brewery, there was a bar down in Hayward." "The owners were gonna have what they were gonna call a double IPA festival." "I create the recipe around the hop edge just received as an experimental hop, and that hop eventually became Simcoe." "You heading out?" "All right." "Don't worry about locking the door." "We're good." "So, we looked at words that had meant something large, and then we started looking through a beer dictionary, and we looked up hops, and then in there referenced Pliny The Elder." "And it just seemed like a cool name, so we went with it." "It was just one of the beers for the first few years." "You know, we saw it internally growing." "At one point where we made one single batch, and then it became double batches and then we needed to commit two double batch tanks." "We, at the time, had no idea the beer would take on a life of its own." "But it happened so slow, and Natalie and I were just so wrapped up in the business." "We never saw what was going on externally." "We didn't know that it was being rated on RateBeer, BeerAdvocate." "Heck, I didn't even know what RateBeer and BeerAdvocate were at the time." "Then we found that Pliny The Elder had a nephew and adopted son in real life called the Pliny The Younger, and so, we said, "Well, gosh!" "We need to make another version of this beer."" "And so, we decided to do a triple IPA." "[drums beating]" "It wasn't until 2010 that it exploded." "The story goes like this." "I went down to the pub on the first Friday in February, and there outside was a line of people, and I called Natalie at 6:30-7:00 in the morning, and I said, "There's something weird going on." "There's a line of people out there."" "And I went out and started talking to the people, and they said, "Well yeah, it's one of the top rated beers, you know, in the world."" "Up until that point, you could get Younger till unusually in April." "So, it was around for quite a while at the pub." "It didn't have that cult following." "In that year, in 2010, for The Younger release, we ended up pouring 20 barrels, so that is 40 half barrel kegs in eight hours." "We had a lot of upset customers the next day who showed up, but we were out of Younger completely." "So, the next year we revamped the whole system." "That's still how we do it now, and we feel it's quite a successful way to do a release." "For one, Younger is not bottled, and we don't do growlers anymore." "With that in mind, we took the total allocation of Younger, and we spread it out over two weeks." "The lines are eight to 12 hours long often on our first weekend." "While this was going on," "Elder just got more and more popular." "We started bottling it." "It started getting boot-legged by beer traders and home brewers all over the country." "We ran out of Elder on a day to day basis at the pub as well." "So, although it doesn't make a lot of consumers happy, that's the way Natalie and I like to keep our business." "And it's not that we're a really small brewery." "Fourteen thousand barrels is nothing to sneeze at." "Our industry is fueled by the passion for the art and science of brewing." "Ah!" "That's a very good question." "[man] The age-old question of whether brewing is more art or science is certainly one that can be debated on either side." "Yes." "Yes. [laughs]" "Brewing is this perfect fusion of art and science." "You can't have one without the other." "The science is the necessary part, but the art is the driving part of it." "The art is the design, the science is control." "Brewing allows us to create these recipes, to constantly tweak them and then use science to perfect them and to monitor them." "You have to be artistic with your brewing." "[brewer] You wanna make sure your beer's gonna turn out the way you want it to be." "But if you're not scientific about your processes, you're going to have a hard time being consistent and being clean." "And stable." "[Alex] To make a flawless beer, you have to know the science." "But to make a world class beer you also have to be an artist." "[brewer] The art is developing flavors." "You know, brewing beer is not unlike cooking at all." "I really love the art of the recipe design, and really getting you face in a bag of hops, and tasting some grain." "[Ken] Knowing how to use herbs and spices." "Knowing how to use hops and different malts." "The possibilities are pretty much endless." "In San Diego we have 80 breweries, and everybody makes an IPA, but they are all different." "And that's because of the artistic aspect of it." "If you go at it strictly from an artist point of view, you can make some damn great beer, but the reproducibility of that beer might be lacking." "You can get very very scientific on it." "Oh yeah!" "You can take it to the millionth-billionth degree." "There's all sorts of little numbers that you can crunch." "You can't ignore the biology and the chemistry." "They're changing sugar's into alcohol." "It is rare and special." "There's very few industries like this." "It just started out that way." "I don't know why it happened, but it did." "It's very unusual and you're probably gonna hear this from everybody." "A rising tide." "Rising tide." "A rising tide does lift all boats." "The camaraderie that exists between breweries is unusual." "Yeah, that camaraderie is really strong, and I think it's one of the most important parts of our industry." "[brewer] You know, if we were a construction company our competitors, we would wanna shoot them, or knife 'em, or fight them, right?" "We don't use the competitor word." "It's not so much competitive, it's more like fellowship." "We call each other compatriots." "[brewer] It's more of a family." "These other brewers are my brothers and sisters." "We've been doing this for so long, we all remember where we started." "We did receive a lot of assistance early on." "[Vinnie] Ken went to Fritz, and I go to Ken for help sometimes, and the stories could be told on and on, and on." "You know, I've been in this business almost 18 years." "Back in the day, I mean, everyone kinda knew each other." "There was a collectiveness when there were less than a 1000 operating breweries in this country." "We were more of an anomaly than anything else." "As we were starting, there were a couple of people ahead of us, and they were very open to us asking questions." "[Chris] The collaborative nature goes back a long, long ways." "You know, the center of brewing was Europe in the middle ages, breweries helped each other out." "They shared things." "For me, there's no trade secrets." "I want them to be able to make better beer." "They make a better beer, I'm gonna want to make a better beer that elevates the palate for the public." "[Yuseff] In this industry everyone started small." "You just didn't open up a 100,000 barrel a year brewery." "[Joyce] I can't tell you how many times I've been able to reach out to other craft breweries and say, "Hey we're looking at a model for self distribution, or I need to know something about waste water."" "[Mike] I can't think of another industry where you would say, "Here's my business plan." "What do you think about it,"" "to especially other people outside the industry would look as competitors." "And just having them say, "Sure, here's all my data." "Here's everything you need."" "[Vince] If our pizza mixer broke," "I'd be pretty hard to go to the pizza place down the street, and say, "Can we borrow your mixer,"" "and, "What do you put in your sauce?"" "The reality is that craft beer is still such a small segment of the whole picture that we do really need each other." "I think the brewers here understand that nobody knows everything, and everybody has something to contribute." "The other day I saw a post on the brewers forum, local brewery needing a specific hop." "I've never turned down a favor asked by another brewer." "I'm gonna need that favor one day." "That stuff goes on all the time." "I like to hope that, that theme continues forever in craft beer." "Maybe once we get to 50% we'll start fighting with each other, but not now." "In general it's pretty, darn great." "And it feels good." "You know, you feel good about having that kinda relationship with people." "It's a good thing." "Yeah." "Uh, we love environmental issues." "[Bob] The one thing we do use a lot of, is water." "All breweries use a lot of water." "California is being, really taxed right now for lack of water." "Water." "Water." "Water's the new liquid gold in California." "That is truly one of the most important ingredients that goes in to this product that we make." "Beer's 95% water." "Water used to be something that was not of large expense." "It's affecting business." "It's affecting farmers." "It's affecting a lot of things." "In Southern California, we've been sort of in a perpetual and perennial state of drought for as long as we can remember" "We get our water from snow runoff, and at some point this summer it's going to become an issue." "[Jesse] It affects grain prices, it affects hop prices." "We're seeing the cost of goods go up across the board." "Who knows how bad it's going to get." "We've gone through droughts before, multi year droughts, and we've had to cut our water use, way back." "[Henry] Water is already hard." "It is actually becoming more hard and more minerally." "Probably because it's tapped into a lot of wells that we haven't used before." "I have to treat and wash our tanks more often with acid and other chemicals than we did before." "[Aaron] We have a creek that runs right behind our brewery that goes right out to the Pacific Ocean." "We have to be careful what goes down our drain." "A lot of our systems are designed to take water from one waste process and kinda reuse it again." "[Steve] One of the biggest wastes of water in a brewery, especially a small brewery is the cooling process." "We actually catch that water that now has all the energy in another tank and that gets used for cleaning, for brewing the next batch, for whatever we happen to use." "You know, if you compare a gallon of beer to a gallon of water, we're trying to get that number down." "We're well under four to one ratio." "[Vinne] Generally, we're around three to one." "[Greg] Steve's being a bit modest with accomplishments." "We are one of the lowest ratios of water to beer produce in the industry." "But what we can do with our cleaned up waste water is extraordinarily limited." "We can actually put it back into the system and pass it off as a cleaner product than what came in from the city." "[Greg] I can drink a glass of the water but I can't legally give it to you to drink." "I cannot legally pour it on the ground." "So, it can't be used for irrigation." "You have to out-fall it to a local waste water plant." "It gets remixed with affluent from other businesses and homes, cleaned up and then sent to the ocean." "Few more years of drought, though," "and it will change the legislation." "Yes." "[Ron] The bottom line is beer has a carbon footprint." "That can't be denied." "[brewer] We're a very small brewery that doesn't produce a lot of beer, but at the same time, we do produce waste." "We have donated all of our spent grains to pit farmers, so, we're not just dumping hundreds and thousands of grain into landfills." "60-70% of its food value is still in that grain, so, why shouldn't it be consumed by an animal and put back into our future?" "We don't sell it to them, we give it to them, and we're just glad to see it go for a good cause." "[Meredith] And then we buy pork back from them." "So, there's sort of a nice circle of life." "We actually use it out here in the fields to help condition the soil." "It just goes from the soil and we bring it back." "[Ken] Early on, when we didn't have any money, it was very important that we conserved whatever we could." "[Bob] We recycled just about everything." "It cost a lot of money to dispose the trash, so, in a city like San Fransisco it pays you to recycle them." "[Ken] As we were building the initial brewery, it was awful cast off equipments." "So, it was a recycled brewery to start." "We still own a lot of dairy equipment and soft drink equipment." "For a facility this size, and what we produce here, the amount of actual, often the landfill trash we produce, gets really, really small." "Breweries, it's really easy to go solar." "We usually have large roofs." "[Ken] We've got one of the largest solar arrays in the country albeit it's a privately owned one." "Over 10,000 solar panels on the facility here in Chico." "I think they said they bought a $500,000 composter." "You know, so again, they can pretty much recycle and reuse all of their ingredients for the most part." "The return on investment, they'll never see it, but they don't care because it's the right thing to do." "Recapturing of CO2 and composting methane digestors..." "We've got our own waste water treatment plant that generates biogas as a byproduct and that's used in our boilers and or our fuel cells." "We try to close the loop as much as we can." "In about 2005," "John went out to Colorado and visited a little brewery called Oskar Blues." "And I remember, I was standing at the bar and he came up and he said," ""We're gonna take the beer that we make here at the pub, and we're gonna put it in cans."" "And I looked at him and I was shocked." "That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard." "Canning is far better for beer than bottling." "We do see cans as a growth potential for us and I think in the whole industry people are seeing that." "It's environmentally far more friendly." "Canned beer can go places that bottles, you know, can't make it to." "We're in cans because in Sacramento, in summer time, we're outdoors." "You can backpack 'em, crush 'em, take them out." "You don't cut yourself off unless you're stupid and rip 'em out by the end of it." "Cans protect the beer 100% from light, there's no air." "They happen to preserve the beer better than bottles." "They happen to be infinitely recyclable." "They are lighter than bottles." "They cost way less to transport, they are much more often recyclable than glass." "Cans are no longer the cheap beer." "To me, there's no reason to not to can beer." "You know, we just think that it's the way of the future." "What I like about doing business in California?" "Wow!" "You want us to say something good?" "Yeah, I don't want to get into that stuff too much." "I don't want to be too negative." "Ah, we're getting political." "Well, I've got to welding mode." "I plead the fifth on any questions concerning business operations within the state of California." "State of California, there's some positives and negatives associated with it." "[BOB] It's a competitive market." "It's also a very good market." "They don't make it easy on you." "That's for sure." "Honestly, California is not pleasant to do business in." "[Cathy] We've had huge support from the local community, but, you know, it's chock-full of challenges still." "[Dan] By the time we got license here, it took a pound of flesh, you know, it was brutal." "There's taxes you don't even know exist." "Cost of living is higher." "Real estate is more expensive." "As you've probably heard a thousand times, the regulations are rather interesting around alcohol-related companies." "The alcohol-beverage industry is a regulated industry at all levels." "On a state-wide level, I read a report last month that says California is one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult state in the entire union in which to operate and do business." "Doing business in California is very difficult from a legislative perspective." "We're little behind the curve on some of our legislation." "The T  A bar, it's shooting Jell-O shots down your throat." "Are they the same as craft beer bar Beachwood Barbeque?" "[Gabe] Technically, we're not allowed to deliver beer on Sunday to the beer festivals." "We have to deliver it before, like, Saturday." "Except that the festival is in the middle of a field, no one's there." "You can't really do that." "They just look at all the same." "You know." "TA Bar, brew pub in a community boutique." "Same thing." "You know, we must smash." "[Tomme] For us, we're constantly being visited by a lot of agencies and there's a lot to be said for how many different agencies can visit us and sort of impact our business." "[Ted] We just got inspected by the State Health Department, which in their wisdom decided that an organic brewery was a food production facility." "And I asked them, "Why not winery?"" "And they said, "Their lobby is bigger than yours."" "[brewer] And as we grow, it's something we're very conscious of." "The bigger you get, the more on the radar you are." "We're the first brewery to ever be in Pomona." "So they didn't know what to do with us." "We were the first brewery in Roseville, to them, we were a chemical plant." "I went to the city and said, "I'd like to build a brewery and have a tasting room attached."" "They said, "Well, you can't do that." "But you can have a tasting room with a brewery attached."" "You know it did make it easier for other breweries to open because they didn't have to go through those same set of guidelines that we did." "So it's lost a war, but maybe winning the battle." "[Greg] When you grow up in this, as our company did, you don't know any different, so you think, "This is the way the world works."" "It's not the way the rest of the world works." "But it's the way California works." "[Wayne] With the name of Weed, it was named after California state's senator, Abner Weed." "And I've always spelled it with a capital "W,"" "but the Feds came along and said that I was confusing the public as to the contents of the bottle, because our bottle cap said, "A friend in Weed is a friend indeed." "Try legal Weed."" "And the federal government didn't like that." "They offered me a fine." "They offered me a suspension." "I had to take the bottle cap off." "The local paper got it." "The county got it." "And then it went AP." "And then it went around the world." "The song was..." "I fought the law." "I fought the law." "And the law won, so I changed the roots." "So we fought the law and we won." "[punk rock playing]" "[Tom] There's beer manufacturers here in California." "Craft Brewers really enjoy a lot of privileges, probably more so than most of any other state." "There's a lot of regulations here, but at the same time there is a bit of freedom." "[Scot] Now we're on to the side effects of tasting rooms and all of that." "So, that's an interesting topic, we" "I would like to talk about that." "[AJ] California's got really proactive laws for breweries." "The ability to open a retail tasting space like this." "I will promise you, we'll talk in four years from now, and there won't be any tasting rooms." "It won't be the same way." "[AJ] Here at our brewery, we have a tap room." "Say, if this was in Oregon, we'd have to offer five hot menu items and have food." "First of all, I want to tell you what I think a tasting room is." "A tasting room is a place that you can go in and get a five ounce taste of beer." "A growler or a keg to go." "Maybe some merchandise." "Because of the way that it's set up, a bar and a restaurant, we have to go through massive amounts of bureaucracy and licensing." "So, they become our competition." "The restaurants." "Now, remember, I own a brewery." "So, I am telling you from two different sides of the story." "[Wesley] You know, fresh beer is always better." "And being able to take fresh beer to go in a reusable container, is a fantastic thing." "[Greg] I use the tasting room for research and development." "So, we wanna brew something we're unsure about and don't wanna brew 30 barrels of it, we can use the tasting room to get feedback from our customers and see if it's something we actually wanna consider putting into production or not." "[Ryan] It provides a more intimate environment to be able to speak to your customers, and to really get to know them and build a face to go with your brand." "That is what you're supposed to be doing." "Not brew your own bar." "California is actually a state where small brewers have some advantages from a distribution standpoint." "[Steve] You know, we can do a lot more things that you know, self distribute." "You can't do that in a lot of states." "We self distribute." "It's important." "We self distribute." "Like a lot of small breweries." "We self distribute everything and that's virtually within a ten mile radius of this building." "California is an open state, so, you aren't required to go with a distributor to get your beer to market." "[Greg] if it wasn't legal to self-distribute, Stone wouldn't exist." "Because no wholesaler was interested in picking up our brand when we started." "We would have been dead from day one." "For a small brewery that can be really, really crucial in just getting off the ground." "Fill up black pick-up truck outside and we'd just roll around town in that." "We can control that supply right down to the consumer." "Whereas in a lot of states you're forced to hand it over and hope the distributer represents your beer as well as you would like to." "It's expensive." "It's one more thing to do." "But, it truly allows us to control the quality right to the end consumer." "California, for all it isn't, is a good place to sell beer." "[upbeat music playing]" "[Charles] Beer is a low cost material." "We may set you up." "You know, spend a lot of money on malt and spend a lot of money on hops and so on." "But at the end of the day, when you manufacture that, particularly on a larger scale, the most expensive component of the beer is the bottle." "Money starts being piled on when you're talking about sales and marketing." "You know we're trying to take on the big boys." "We're doing it one percent at a time." "The consumers have an appetite for craft beer." "People are understanding that they want quality." "They're willing to pay for the quality." "[brewer] Look at the national grocery store purchasing habits." "They used to have a wall of Budweiser, and Miller and Coors" "And now it's a wall of craft." "It's definitely more artisanal than your light domestic lager." "Big brewers are in a difficult situation." "We're not competing against each other." "We're taking market-share from Bud, Miller, Coors." "You know, the American lager is not the end-all." "Their core brands are declining in sales significantly." "And craft beer is growing significantly." "Most people in the world love light American-style lagers." "It wasn't that long ago that most people drank a single style of beer." "[Ryan] Beer was as sterile and as bland as you can get because that was the logical conclusion of industrialization of lager." "I think we all know in our hearts, you know when a large brewer is trying to capitalize on a market trend, that's not craft, that's manipulation." "Plain and simple." "[rock n' roll playing]" "[buzzing]" "They're in it for money." "Well, of course they are." "They're a public company." "That's their job." "They have no other choice, but to maximize the shareholder value." "Our job isn't to do that." "Our job is to make what we think is the great beer." "Put it out there for everybody to enjoy." "[buzzing]" "Once you taste that beer, you know, it's hard to go back to drinking one that's flavorless, you know, it's same as food." "I don't eat at certain places anymore that I ate as a kid, you know." "Are those big brewers gonna start to put offerings out there that are more appealing to the people that are looking for more flavors?" "Well, hell, yeah." "[Tom] My biggest concern is the large breweries continue to introduce craft brands that don't have their name on it." "You see, what's happening right now, what are the number one selling craft beers?" "Shock Top and Blue Moon." "[Charles] I have no problem with extremely larger incomes." "I mean, as long as everybody knows who brews what beer." "And I don't personally care." "Blue Moon did two million barrels last year, and Shock Top did million and a half or something, that's a lot of beer." "It's as if somebody's trying to confuse people by portraying themselves as a small brewing company when, in fact, they are extremely large ones." "The authenticity of what a craft beer is becomes eroded." "You have the big brewers using craft in all of their advertising." "You know, Blue Moon, "artfully crafted."" "There's no passion behind Shock Top." "Zero." "They are essentially introducing their core consumer, in many cases, to a flavorful product and that consumer then goes on to try and sample other craft brewers." "All that's doing is bringing a whole lot of people to the game of better beer." "And here we are." "The craft category is going to be a significant part of the overall beer industry and they need to be a part of that category in some shape or form." "We're waiting for them." "Just bring it." "They just haven't really figured out the best way to do that." "And I don't know if there really is a good way to do that." "[Gabe] You know, those giant, crazy corporations have paid for so much research, so much of what we know our body of knowledge comes a lot from" "Bud, Miller and Coors." "Bud, Coors, Miller." "People bag on them in terms of their beer not having a lot of flavor." "But, technically, they are a marvel." "Something with zero IBU and nothing to be able to hide behind." "The consistency that they get from millions and millions millions of kegs is impressive." "Brewed in multiple countries." "Multiple breweries." "Year after year make consistent beer." "That's hard to do." "It tastes the same as last time, and last time and last time, in food and beer and making a product." "That's so hard to do." "[brewer] They've taken science to the, you know, the next level." "Big breweries, scientifically speaking, they're the best brewers you're gonna find in the US." "You know we're better off for having those breweries." "Should I stop?" "Somebody is stealing your car." "I'm convinced somebody is." "[Mark] When we first made our Porter, I said to Fritz one day," ""So why do we wanna make this porter, you know, when steam beer is going real good." He said," ""Down the road you're gonna see hundreds of small breweries around the United States."" "Now, this was 1973." "There was nothing on the horizon." "From the point that I got started," "I've seen the expansion and collapse within the craft segment." "[Ken] The growth rate was fairly rapid through the late '80s and into the '90s." "There was a little bit of contraction in the craft brewing in the '90s." "The year that we opened is the year the first bubble burst and the breaks went on." "[Jeff] I do remember large number of closings and a lot of breweries that were there and all of a sudden were gone." "People point to, you know, a lot of potential reasons why the growth rate came to..." "It almost came to zero." "There wasn't really the consumer population that exists today." "That treats beer as a very high quality food product." "That contraction was only within craft because we were making crappy beer." "And the imports grabbed it and they ran with it." "You know, a lot of people entering the beer business just, you know, trying to make money because of this you know, the growth was so rapid." "And not realizing that that is not really the case in the world of beer." "Frankly, in hindsight, this was actually a very good thing for us as a company." "When the bubble burst, you had to actually be really good and a lot of the really good brewers continued to do just fine." "[Ken] We were out of capacity in '87 when we moved to this facility." "We ran out of capacity again in '97 when we pretty much maxed out our brew house." "As a company, we had to learn from day one to be extraordinarily lean." "Nobody bought our beer just because it was something new on the shelf." "That wasn't of interest anymore." "So when I built a new larger brew house in '98, we had a lot of pent up demand, so, we were able to continue to grow at double digits pretty much through that whole period of time." "We are the children of the depression, if you will." "I don't want to get over melodramatic, but we grew up in a time of not having." "[Brendan] What are we?" "Near 10% yet, or over 10%." "I can't remember." "They talk about 10% so much" "I forgot if they're over or under." "Do other people think that craft brewing is a bubble?" "It's a big topic of conversation." "Am I worried about that?" "It's gonna be interesting if you'd have asked me this question a few years ago," "I probably would have had a different answer." "Here in California, we're still continuing to see a velocity of startups at a pretty amazing rate." "[Ken] When I started there were roughly 20 breweries in the country." "Today, that many open every month." "New breweries start appearing in California at about two every week." "[Vince] We're the only ones in the industry that are experiencing double-digit growth." "We're riding high here." "We've been in our twelfth or thirteenth year on an upward trend." "Definitely the next five years of the craft beer is gonna be an interesting show to watch." "You know, I'm a brewer." "I'm not a fortune teller, but" "I definitely think there is still a lot of room to grow." "Back in 1880, we had over 4,100 brewery concerns here in United States." "It wasn't until Jimmy Carter brought home brewing back in the '70s that got this wave going." "We still only have less than 4,000 microbreweries here in United States." "We have a lot more room." "We have a lot more people than we did in 1880." "[Alex] I think we probably stay pretty local." "I don't expect us to be the next biggest international breweries everywhere on every tap." "[Shane] It's great, we're trying to get local nowadays." "They want us to put a local brewery." "They want us to put local Blucher." "Cheese is growing." "Good coffee is growing." "Good wine is growing." "[Wesley] By being small, and being in every kind of community, there's been a real economic boost to our state by giving our people to support local jobs, local tax base." "I do feel like every town, small area needs a local brewery." "I think there's an incredibly large amount of room for small-scale, kinda neighborhood-scale breweries." "[Shaun] That's really how we adjusted in the beginning of our history as a country." "Every place had their own brewery in town." "All the quality consumables that are out there, there is a consumer trend that isn't gonna stop for a long time." "We know that there's over 7,000 operating wineries in this country, so clearly, there is a lot of room for small alcoholic producers to co-exist in many different ways." "[Joe] It's kind of cool to see how those neighborhood breweries actually cater to the like, local flavors." "You know in any city there could be several Italian restaurants." "There are gonna be several Americano restaurants, and they're supported by the people locally." "Just the rumor that a small brewery is opening, there'd be a line out the block." "[Aaron] There's room to grow, would I like to see another brewery in our little town of 6,000?" "No." "[Shawn] All of these new breweries opening are the banana-style." "One-barrel, three-barrel, five-barrel systems." "[Ryan] They still have other jobs to supplement their income and they're just doing what they wanna do for passion." "And you know, God bless those people." "These small nano breweries are opening up which, a lot of the new breweries, are very, very small in nature." "I think a lot of these will go out of business in time because it is so much more work in relation to what the return is." "You know, it's fun for a year or two to be making your own beer and selling it to the consumer through the casing room but that business model really doesn't have a lot of return financially," "so, it's a lot of work for very little return." "[Scot] I see San Diego and California in general going through a little bit of a bump" "We're peaking." "And we're gonna hit a valley." "There are so many breweries coming out so quickly right now." "There's two lines on this graph, right, there's a line of saturation, there's the line of the number of available craft beer and craft breweries." "Where will these lines then cross?" "It's like, you know, "Don't let the streams cross, Ray."" "They can't continue at that pace." "That's not feasible." "Economics is not any different just because we're making beer." "There are a lot of breweries starting out." "I'm just gonna..." "Through my own personal experience will say that's not sustainable." "You can't run the car that fast for that long." "In a lot of cases, what's being missed is attention to quality." "Quality." "Quality." "Quality, quality, quality." "I can't think of pretty much any other product that you can buy where you can't that well trust it." "Although there's a lot of great, high quality beer out there, there's a lot of new beer that's being made from the new breweries that is mediocre." "And you're seeing, you know, a number of them, I'd say a good portion, aren't good." "The frontier we're all working on right now is converting people that've been drinking very consistent light lagers, and they aren't going to stand for poor quality or poor consistency." "The over arching theme of this year's Craftbrewers' Conference make better beer." "So there's also that." "There's a lot of beer out there, and this comes from the head guys from the industry that's not up to snuff." "This is my personal hypothesis." "Cooking channel and popularity of a lot of food shows out there, it's definitely peaked a lot of people's interest in artissimo food, artissimo products." "But it has also made people think that they're experts by watching a T.V. show or doing something a couple of times and getting decent enough results and then they think they're experts." "Well, it takes a lot more than that." "There's a ton of shitty beer made here, right now." "Period." "Fact." "Don't like it?" "I don't care." "And the ones that don't make good beer, just quit, get out." "You know, there are 87 breweries in San Diego as of today." "You know, we're probably going to get into a couple of hundred." "Enough." "There's enough breweries now." "Not everybody can make good beer." "And that's evident." "It's scary for us because we're not funded by banks." "It's our money." "It's not like, "Oh, well, I gotta find a new job."" "You know, "My kid doesn't go to college."" "You know that kind of thing." "These are novices that think everybody can open a brewery and anybody can make good beer." "And I'm here to tell you that's incorrect." "[western music playing]" "There's a lot of people that are entering the marketplace now for the wrong reasons." "There's hotel owners that now own beer bars." "There's real estate moguls, that own breweries." "What the fuck is that about?" "You gotta be dedicated to it." "There's a lot of people diving into this industry now that really want to make money." "There definitely is gonna be a point where bad breweries are rooted out." "And necessarily too." "Forgive, my fellow brewers, for saying this, it's not a bad thing." "Some of these people would be selling widgets." "They don't care what it is." "Beer, tires, chalkboard erasers, they don't give a shit." "They just want money." "[Jeremy] In the beginning of our business money was tight." "And it wasn't this kind of gold-rush that you find right now where everyone and their grandmothers seemingly opening up their own brewery." "Scary that people are going into it just feeling like, "Oh, no, it's fine." "Craft beer's expanding." "So we'll make money, no matter what."" "You know it wouldn't always be like this." "It can't always." "What happens if the bubble bursts?" "You think the hotel owner, is he gonna stick with it?" "No." "Okay, wrong." "You know, I hope to buy your equipment soon." "Our main distribution is in California with 40 million people there's a lot of beer drinkers there." "[Tony] Our beer never leaves California." "I am sure some people have taken it out." "I've taken it out when it goes to my mom." "We sell more than 70% of our beer between Paso Robles and San Diego" "We distribute in 25 states." "New York, Florida, Georgia." "Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts." "I can't forget Hawaii." "Japan, Australia, New Zealand." "In all 50 states and the District of Columbia." "And the last time I checked, I think seven foreign countries." "Our plan is always to make world-class beer right here in L.A." "and make it available in the grocery stores." "To do that, you can't just get into your local neighborhood Ralphs or Whole Foods, which means you need to distribute." "Lot of distributors are closing their books there's so many new breweries opening up" "I talked to a lot of distributors last year and they basically said that if you are not with a distributor now, it's gonna be tough to crack that nut." "It wasn't too long ago that there were a lot more beer distributors that gave a better variety and better choice for small brewers." "But there's been tremendous consolidation in the industry." "[funk music playing]" "[Mark] Ourselves and Ken Grossman in Sierra Nevada was in the same boat." "You had to get out and sell your beer around." "Convincing a distributer to take the your was next to impossible." "[Tom] I was talked into starting a small distributorship in 1984, which was the first beer distributorship in the country to sell just craft beer." "Selling a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was remarkably difficult." "So we ended up with not always the best distribution partners." "Distribution for small beers is very, very difficult." "I don't know how many of the other breweries are gonna talk about how their beer is distributed." "It was a shock to me." "[Greg] Mostly in the early days, they ignored us." "They thought we were just gonna fail and go away." "Before 1918, you had beer manufacturer and you had beer retailer." "That was it." "The brewery made it, sold it to the retailer." "[Greg] A year and half into it we started to grow." "We went back around because we were bleeding money like crazy." "Again, every wholesaler said, "No thanks, no thanks."" "When prohibition came out and making beer and selling beer was illegal, all of sudden someone in the middle was born." "It became law that a brewery and a retailer couldn't do business together." "[Greg] We had grown extraordinarily successful craft beer only distributing company, here in Southern California." "It now represents about 35 brands." "And there was a real need for it at that time because we weren't the only brand that couldn't get the attention of some of the major distributors." "Those big houses are beholden to their" "Bud and Miller and Coors and Pabst." "Their shenanigans in the marketplace..." "They're pulled sometimes by wholesalers, they are less than legal or ethical." "They have generally about a hundred different brews in their portfolio." "90% of the beer they sell though, is one brand." "I don't think they're really focused on" "Stone Brewing or Stone Distributing." "Having any impact in the market place." "I think we proved them wrong." "[whispering]" "What ends up happening is, we the little guys, end up battling each other for the distributor's attention, which means we waste a lot of energy kind of nudging each other out instead of focusing on the person" "that's the most important person, the beer drinker." "I don't know how much of that you're gonna show, but it won't probably be liked by a lot of people." "Oh, gosh." "This is one of those things" "I'm gonna look back at your interview in ten years and go, "Wow." "I was wildly wrong."" "The future of The Rare Barrel is very uncertain." "I think we've been surprised at the reaction so far." "I think we'll be one of the number of breweries in Sacramento, stick around for the long haul." "I'd like to, eventually, afford a larger brew system, just to get some local distribution would be very nice." "I definitely see a limit to how much we wanna grow." "Beer's always gonna be best closest to you at the source." "We're not going to be the largest brewery in the world, we're not gonna be even close to that." "But I'd like to make twice as much" "Three times as much beer we're making." "We just wanna serve our community, whether it be L.A. city, L.A. county, you know, Southern California or all of California." "It's important to be innovative in this industry." "If we're stagnant and keep the same beer, people will like it, it's delicious." "They might get bored." "We wanna prove ourselves first o the local market, so establish ourselves here, start distributing and do as much as we can and can't on our own." "We don't see ourselves trying to take over the world." "We just really want to be a local and a regional brewery." "I want growth, you know." "I don't wanna be on the 15-barrel system forever." "I wanna get bigger." "There's some expenses that come on with it that people don't necessarily recognize at the beginning so, we're gonna go through controlled growth." "Our goal is grow within 500 miles of where we make our beer." "And do as much as we can to source vendors, ingredients, everything that goes into the business within the same 500 miles." "You know, have the brewery on the side of large beer garden where you can walk through the fields and actually see the production from seed to glass." "Like in a state winery kinda." "We'd like to get some bottles going, we'd love just to be not a regional brewery, but kind of a county brewery." "We keep trying to be at the forefront of fermentation so that the classes that we offer in the instruction video, both for home brewers and professional," "I think we'd just try to maintain that innovation in fermentation." "Brewers are craftsmen and craftswomen." "Craftspersons like a" "It doesn't matter whether they're employed by a very, very big brewing companies or very small ones, they take a pride in their craft." "What we do here is very much a by-hand process." "The number one thing that I think in terms of craft is flavor." "More flavor than just beer." "Something better." "Small, artisan-made, hand-made." "Artisanal, independent." "Unique, characterized." "Hand-crafted, small batch." "That spirit of creativeness." "More of an artistic form of brewing beer." "Flavor." "Okay, next." "Quality." "Period." "It's quality before profit." "Not to compromise on the quality at all." "Put the beer in front of me." "Tell me about the ingredients, tell me about the process, tell me about the care that went into the recipe design." "What is craft to me?" "Simple, it is quality." "It is quality." "Beer brewed with purpose." "Craft beer is you know, some guy waking up with at" "5:00 in the morning, making beer that people hold up to the light and taste and tell their friends about." "That's not picking up a 12-pack or 18-pack for beer pong." "You can meet the guy that made it, I think it's craft." "Craft beer, I think, it really sort of encapsulates the modern American beer movement." "It's beer that's much like chef-driven restaurants." "They're brewer-driven." "Beers that tell a story." "And you know, focus on the quality of the beer above all else." "It's the anti-macro beer, it's the anti-Budweiser, it's the anti-Coors light." "Beer produced by passionate people with only the glass of beer in focus." "Haven't had a paycheck in two and half years and never been happier." "Woo-hoo!" "We're happy." "Really comes down to being proud of what you do, and making something more than just a swill." "No offense to you know..." "Beer represents more than just a commodity to be bought and traded." "Innovation is the American way." "If the beer tastes good, it's probably crafted." "If the beer comes from your heart," "then it's a craft beer." "Oh, there we go." "That's a perfect definition." "You know, I go around the United States and see all these people drinking beer straight out of the bottle, and I think..." "And that's okay." "That doesn't make them bad people." "Pour a beer into a glass is a thing of great beauty." "Why would you deny yourself this this glorious sight." "Who's gonna make the next Sculpin?" "Who's gonna make the next Green Flash Palate Wrecker?" "Who's gonna make that?" "Well, they're probably in a garage somewhere." "And they probably have a dream, and their wife is probably yelling at them." "Or the wife is doing the brewing and he's watching football." "And they're doing it because they love it." "Hopefully, I'll be there to serve their beer." "I felt personally compelled to join this revolution of the craft brewer that tore our shoulder against that collective pushing the boulder up the hill." "Craft will grow as a share of total beer sales." "And industrial beer is going to decline." "That much I can guarantee you." "Craft beer represents approximately 10% of the market." "And 10% is..." "Now that's just the start." "Beer is..." "Number analysis... 20% by 2020, which is a fairly lofty and ambitious goal." "It's great to think that people know what an IPA is, and what those initials might even stand for." "It's starting to come around." "For a state that actually doesn't have a solitary malt house in it, and doesn't grow much in the way of the hops anymore, it's remarkable that we have this craft sector." "It's exciting to be a part of and really warming up, you know, with making beer for last couple of years." "I'm ready to get going in there." "Marketplace and the demand for craft beer has grown so much more than I ever imagined." "We're now opening our second brewery in North Carolina and producing significantly more than I ever envisioned." "I really just think that part of, you know, one of the reasons why I'm on this planet is to make beer." "I connect with that so much." "I enjoy it as a craft." "There's kids that are coming on right now." "They're kids." "They are kids that are becoming of age right now and" "21-year-olds." "There are kids right now" "Kids." "There are kids right now that have never known a world without craft beer." "And I think that's exciting." "[Greg] I just got done traveling around the world." "I can tell you that there are California-style beers that are being brewed and copied all over the world." "These days when I go back to England, and I taste the ales over there, and I'm thinking, "They need a few more hops around here."" "You know the best thing about working with your family is that you get to work with your family." "Worst thing about working with your family is you get to work with your family." "We're an overnight success that just took us 20 years." "There's so many great breweries out there, it's just fun to be in this business and to be right here and enjoy what we do." "I just wanna keep making good beer." "I mean, great beer." "["Outsourced Blues" playing]" "* High on the hog Sawing a log *" "* Dreaming of that Sweet Mary J *" "* The feds on the hill Made 'em late on their bills *" "* When they tore up those crops again *" "* What do they expect folks to do *" "* When they sent All their jobs away *" "* Ain't much of a life For the kids and the wife *" "* Working for minimum wage" "* Outsourced blues Outsourced blues *" "* Heard all about it On the evening news *" "* When you go out to do your shopping Whatcha gonna choose *" "* Your neighbor's job Or the outsourced blues *" "* Up around four Shot out the door *" "* New batch of hope in hand" "* The load in his pack May be rough on the back *" "* But it's sure nice Working the land *" "* Guess when you strip it all away *" "* It runs so much deeper than the pay *" "* It's tough to feel free When you've lost your dignity *" "* While the rich get rich every day *" "* Outsourced blues Outsourced blues *" "* Heard all about it On the evening news *" "* When you go out to do your shopping Whatcha gonna choose *" "* Your neighbor's job Or the outsourced blues *" "* Outsourced blues Outsourced blues *" "* Heard all about it On the evening news *" "* When you go out to do your shopping Whatcha gonna choose *" "* Your neighbor's job Or the outsourced blues *"