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BC: Does All Day IPA follow a similar “Brewed For Us” development?
Mike: I look at the way we still go through product development today. I think All Day (IPA) is a perfect example. Throughout the U.S. it is the number one selling session ale by volume and there are some big players. Bigger breweries than us and we are outpacing their volume. Everyone is saying ‘Oh the session ale category is so hot and you’re on top of that’ but the reality is we didn’t make All Day IPA because the session ale category was the next hottest thing. We made All Day before the session ale category even existed. It was a beer we wanted in our portfolio.
We started the brewery in our twenties and now we are in our forties going to all these promos. We grew up drinking all these eight, 10 and 13 percent ABV beers. We can’t do that anymore at our age. Can we make something that is “Founders-esque” in style, flavor and aroma but yet be under 5 percent? Our whole goal was not to get into a category because as I said it didn’t exist.
Our idea was to make a beer for us. We never look to the marketplace to dictate our product development. We always look within. It took us four years to develop All Day until we were satisfied with the aroma, being well balanced on the malt side. We felt really good about it. It wasn’t too sweet, it had nice crispness to it and there were a lot of things we did to that recipe to make it suitable for our desires. By the time we came out with it and the name All Day the session ale category was suddenly becoming a big thing.
BC: When you approach brewing a new beer, are you more of a grounded brewer, where you start from a known place and process making changes from there or do you like to just start with a clean sheet of paper and let your imagination run wild?
Mike: There are some fundamentals I believe in and that are inherently found throughout Founders. I think you will certainly find it with Dave and also Jeremy our head brewer. We strongly believe in balance between hops and malts. I respect East Coast and West Coast. But certain regions accept more of what I would think of as out of balance than we do. If we are going to pack a lot of hops in there, we are going to pack a lot of malt to help it balance itself out. So I think balance in that regard is big for me and it lives here.
Once you get beyond that we do enter into let’s throw out all the rules and let’s start messing around. We don’t worry things beyond that. We like going to the extreme.
Dave: Our brewing team is dialed in. We made our mark with the higher gravity, bolder beers. We don’t really have a rule book here. When it comes to recipe development it is a very collaborative effort. Mike and I really talk to our team. It’s not a huge group and now we probably play devil’s advocate more. We give our brewer’s as much runway as they need. We talk about what will set that beer apart.
One thing I can say is we don’t look at trends. We don’t brew this because so and so brewed that.
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