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BC: With all the recent changes in yeast and hops, do you think a brewer today can still have a favorite hop or yeast?
Mike: We are very consistent with our yeast. Niney-eight percent of all the beers at Founders come from one yeast strain. We do mess around with other yeasts but in reality we don’t dance around much there. As far as a favorite hop for me I think it just changes with time. We all might have started with Cascade, then shifted to Centennial, then moved on to Amarillo as time moved forward. It kind of goes around in a circle. For me I appreciate more the citrus and floral hop varieties with bright aromas.
Dave: As Mike said we pretty much use one yeast strain at Founders that we like. As far as hops go there are a lot of hop varieties we use however there are one or two that we like and tend to favor. We do so many things with barrels, fruits and adjuncts like coffee and chocolate that there are such a wide variety of beers we offer. We try to make sure the beer makes sense and the flavors complement each other. Adding things just to create novelty is not what we do. It hurts the industry when people don’t make good beer. Barrel-aged cherry custard wintery ale can be made but it doesn’t make any sense. At the end of the day we as brewers have to make great beer.
BC: For those readers who are contemplating taking that one giant step brewing beer commercially, what advice would you consider essential?
Mike: You can take this with a grain of salt and I don’t know if I mean this literally but I would advise you not to lead with an IPA. More to the point you need to be an individual and you need to do something different to stand out. It goes back to my lesson. What did I lead with? An amber ale and a pale ale like everybody else was brewing. Today IPAs are the hottest category. They aren’t going away but if you don’t brew something else that people will remember you by, you could end up where we did back then.
I would encourage you in the development of your business to try and take an angle that is going to put you on the shelf a little bit different than everybody else. It’s so much more competitive than it was 20 years ago. The other side of this is quality and consistency. The 1980s were in its rawest form and by the mid 1990s the industry was growing until it crashed then it picked up again. We were part of it with extreme beer. There were also crazy eclectic recipes and who can out do who kind of thing going on but now we’re kind of the old timers. I see it turning the other way and coming full circle. I’m not just saying this because of All Day but things come back to the fundamentals of beer making every so often. The industry is not going back to brewing shitty yellow fizzy beer but I think now what is in play for the consumer is they are looking for quality and consistency. Use the consumer but don’t over complicate things and confuse them. They will accept variation but they hate surprises. With so many options I explore with 20% of my beer purchases but 80% are the ones that have a demonstrated quality and that is the beer I am taking to the BBQ tonight. You don’t want to be in that 20% because if you stay there routinely that means you are either inconsistent or you are making crazy things too far out for the consumer.
Dave: I would have to say if you want to take that step from homebrewing to starting a brewery my first suggestion is start by working at a brewery. Understand what you are getting into and understand it will change every decision that you make in your life. When you own a business you go all in. You can’t half ass it. You have to be passionate about it and you can’t fake your way through it. Everything you do you have to think about how it affects your business.
When we started there weren’t that many breweries to gain experience at and the truth is neither Mike nor I ever worked at a brewery. We were both homebrewers. It took us 20 years to shake a lot of things out. I wish we both had worked at a brewery before we went all in. The other piece of advice is know why you are doing it. If you are getting into the beer business because you want to make a lot of money you are doing it for the wrong reason. You have to love making beer. You have to be passionate about it.
(Editor’s note: This is part one of a two-part series. The second post will cover the early years of Mike and Dave’s friendship, favorite beers and flavors and thoughts about homebrewing.)
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