>>male presenter: good afternoon, everybody.my name is paul carff. i'm on google's developer-relations team. i'm a homebrewer. i've been at google five years. today we have -- firstof all i want to thank everyone for joining us. we havea great crowd here enjoying the beer and the books. i wantto let you know we're going to be welcoming greg kochfrom stone brewing company today. greg is going to betalking about his book. he's ceo and co-founder of stonebrewing company in san diego, california. the stonebrewing
company was voted the -- i want to make surei get this right. all-time top brewery on planet earthin 2008 and 2009 by beer advocate magazine. so please,prepare yourself to receive the gospel according tostone and join me in welcoming greg. [applause] >>greg: thank you. thank you. everybody enjoyinga little afternoon beer here at google? [audience responds]i think so. that's good. because actually i notice -- i've noticedover the years
that the q and a section is always a littlebit better when people are enjoying some beer in the audience.so i'll look forward to it. i've got to talk around 40minutes or so. and then, i'd love to do some q and a withyou guys. go into any subjects that you would like. again,i'm the ceo, co-founder of stone. we've been aroundfor now just a little over 15 years. so, basically i decide-- or i describe the history of stone and our successkind of based upon this very simple phrase -- don'tbe different
to be different. be different to be better.and we've applied that in a number of ways -- whichi'll go into a few. but first, i actually want to give alittle bit of a foundation on beer here in the united statesfor some of you who may not be so familiar. this isgoing to be the quickie super-rush course. so it usedto be back in the late 1800s there were of course many thousandsof -- several thousand breweries in the united states.but they only went as far as a horse drawn carriagecould go out and
back in a single day. they were very limitedin distribution. fast forward to the industrial revolution. transportation changes and changesin refrigerations led to the big guys eater thesmaller guys and consolidation and a number of breweries inthe united states started to drop precipitously froma high of over 3500 breweries in the united states around1880. to around the turn of the century, about half that.and of course, this is the mother of organized crime in theunited states. for those of you who get that, thisis of course
carrie nation. carrie nation was behind thewomen's temperance movement which eventually led toprohibition, which led to organized crime [laughter] . it'strue. in the so-called noble experiment. now, onceprohibition ended, about 800 and something breweries openedback up, but then many, many years of consolidation continued. until, in 1979, we hit the ultimatelow point of beer in the united states where there werejust 42 breweries and only one, anchor, right herein san francisco was making something different. the rest ofthem --
their flag ship beers of all of the otherbreweries were interchangeable fizzy yellow stuff -- unfortunatelyso common today. but now today we know that beeris no longer equal to just this fizzy yellow industrialstuff. in fact, over the last several years, majordomestics have been declining. the imported stuff hasbeen flat at best. and it's been craft beers that havebeen on the rise and are really setting the tone for beerin the united states. we've gone from a country oflowly to a
country of elevated when it comes to beer.and the world is now looking at the united states and lookingto the united states for its inspiration. so thisagain gives you an idea. if you look -- i think this iskind of interesting. if you take out prohibition.this one very significant dip out here. you can see thatthe line probably would have been much the same. weprobably would have historically ended up in much thesame point. a lot of people misperceive prohibition asbeing the
killer. it wasn't. it was just a major pausebutton in the direction the beer industry was alreadygoing. this is me and my partner steve wagner when wewere starting to put the brewery together in 1996. and that'sus today. notice, i haven't changed much. stevehas kids. [laughter] i think that's the difference. and this isour brewery today. again, that's what we started within 1996 and this is where we're at today. we spent ourfirst nine and a half years in the former spot very inauspiciousgeneric industrial suite in a multi-tenant,
tilt-up concrete warehouse. andthen, six years ago, we built our purpose-built facilitywith our brewery and a restaurant attached. and i wantto show you this. this is where we started and this iswhat it looks like now with our restaurant . and i wantto paint a little bit of a picture of what we've done here. forthose of you who have visited, you know we're outof the way. we're 30 minutes from downtown san diego.we're 25 minutes from the coast. we have no sign on ourbuilding. we have a complete ban on high fructose
cornsyrup. we serve only organic produce and natural andfree range meats. our menu is decidedly eclectic. wedon't have any processed foods. we don't allow them intoour kitchen. and it's difficult to find. for the firstseveral years, google maps would send you to the wrongplace [laughter]. >>male #1: i can confirm that. >>greg: i got a confirmation here. but withall of that. and also, the three closest restaurants to usare an applebee's,
a chili's and an olive garden which wouldsuggest by traditional matrices of looking at how companiesmake decisions about where they have their possiblepopulace that would be interested, this is not a placeto do all of these really crazy left turns, if you will,that we did with our restaurant. and yet, over the lastfive years, we've grown to become the largest restaurantin our part of the county. and we have grown every yearusually 20 or 30 percent. this year we've grown 13 percentbecause
our kitchen is no longer large enough to handleany growth past that. so we're expanding it injanuary. so that is sort of our thinking different perspective. because i looked at it -- wehave our own phrase. you have your two-word phrase, i think.or three-word phrase -- do no evil. ours is justtwo words and it's not even official. which is -- what'sthat? >>male #2: it's a black slide>>greg: it's a black slide. we're okay right now. [laughter] techsupport right on top of it. and ours, informally, has been'be amazing'. so i thought what's more amazing?
from verysimple matrix, organic local produce or commodity produce?easy decision, i thought. what's more amazing? majorbrand high fructose corn syrup sodas or locally made sodasthat we create recipes ourselves and some of thespecialty stuff in the bottles. i thought that waspretty easy. generic deep fried stuff and chickensandwiches and french fries and things like that orbarbecue duck tacos and spicy beef and broccoli stir-fries, the more interesting menu thatwe
have. and so, that's what's led to our decisionhere. in fact, i'd like to actually read just alittle bit -- a small excerpt from the book to give you furtheridea into our thought process here. so, what makes ourtale different -- or more interesting than that-- are the stories of the mega-breweries. well, we'rea craft brewery and that unquestionably adds interest.we get to be creative and inventive and have fun and make tasty beerwithout being brought down by some marketing department's focus-driven ideasabout
focus group driven ideas about what some randomsampling of the populace thinks that perhaps othersmight think that they might want. what? hell, i barely understood whati just said there. so you can imagine my level of interest and anyconclusions that might come out of interpreting the keymatrices of the core objectives when overlaid withextrapolated bell curves and consumer acceptance coefficients. truth is i have no idea whati said there either. but i digress. i was heading towardtelling you why i thought a book about the stone brewingcompany story might be a
good idea. and the reason is i wanted to sharethe very simple idea that doing it our way is better.and by "our way" i really mean "your way." and what imean by that is that i believe things are almost universallybetter when people do something the way they think itshould be done. the way they truly think is the best way.if you don't care for what we do and how we do it, thenyou're not our customer. and, if you're not our customer,we don't need to fashion ourselves to your personal taste.in fact, i
think we shouldn't. if we did, it's questionablewhether we'd make a loyal customer out of you. andwe'd almost definitely alienate our customers who havebeen loyal. i'll turn it around the other way. if youdo something you're quite good at and you're doing it yourway, then it's simply up to me as your potential customerto decide for myself whether or not i like what youdo. if i do, then i've just discovered that finally someoneis doing whatever it is you do in a way that gets meexcited. i'm
thrilled that you've learned to do what youdo so well and you're doing it in a way that's uniqueand special. on the other hand, if i don't like what youdo, then i can simply move on. sure, i might decide thatthe best possible thing i can do for you is to explainhow much better it would be if you do what you do theway i think you should do it. but, if you're smart, you'llfile my invaluable advice in the round file. now,i'm not one to say that all advice or perspectives from othersare
bad. far from it. so how do you separate thebarley from the chaff. it's simple. does the advicesupport your vision or does it attempt to derail it?if the former, lean in. and that, in its own way,is what this book is about. think of our story as providinga supporting context for your vision whateverthat may be. as long as it's good or you're good at itor at least on your way to getting there. so that kind of thought process and philosophyhas led
us to this building now. and, you know, positioningstatement right there. [chuckles] this is what the americanpopulace has for so long thought of beer. of course,they haven't thought of it with the sticker on it. theythought of it with the contents of that glass. theythought of beer as being this rather simple, mostly justwet, cold, carbonated. and, for perspectives, there'ssomething called ibus. international bitterness units.and you can actually measure the bitterness in beer. thebitterness threshold -- low-end of the threshold
that the humanpalate can perceive is around 7. major industrial beerstend to be around eight to 12 ibus. for perspectives, this is where we start. we start at 45. sofour times more bitter than the typical industrial stuff.going all the way up the scale -- and this is just asmall selection of the beers we produce -- goingall the way up to over 100 when the human palate can onlyperceive up to around 85 to 90 ibus so we have several beers that aremore bitter than the human palate can perceive. and whenwe started
off, nobody was asking for this stuff. nobodyever said, "i want this kind of thing." people didn'tmostly know that beers of this sort even could exist.which leads me to another small excerpt that i'd like toread you from our early days when we were starting off. andthis is talking about our first year here. it says,"we were having a tough time. we had a number of accounts,but a few of them were turning big numbers and bythis time we were hemorrhaging about 30,000 dollars a monthand desperate to
reach a critical mass. we hadn't lost faithbut things were looking a little bleak at the time especiallyon paper. a lot of consumers were still findingstone pale ale challenging, which was the first beerthat we ever produced. it was much more bitter than mostpeople's palates were ready to appreciate at that time.i can remember sampling stone pale ale with bartendersand restaurant buyers and having them react withthis, "it's just so bitter." sure, we could have listenedand scaled
back on the hops, but we didn't want to. itwasn't our nature. we were brewing beers we liked todrink and, if they didn't like it, well, we'd find otherpeople who did -- hopefully, maybe. instead of easing up, wedecided to go bolder. in august of 1997, we released stoneipa to celebrate our first anniversary. ipas arealmost de rigueur now for most breweries, but at the time, they werequite unusual and drinking an ipa was a new experience fora lot of people's palates. bitter, yes, but the freshflavors and
aromas that came from the hops -- wow. andat the time, few people knew beer could even taste likethis. hop heads were being born and stone certainlywas one of the delivery rooms. this hunger for hops was agreat thing, because we were gearing up to release anotherbrew. it was and still is an aggressive beer. you probablywon't like it. it's quite doubtful that you havethe taste or sophistication to be able to appreciate anale of this quality and depth, [laughter] as i wrote onthe back of the
arrogant bastard ale label back in 1997. wefirst released this in november of 1997. it was-- it is considered to be the very first -- the progenitorof the american strong ale category. 7.2 percent.intensely bitter. intensely flavorful. i will fullyadmit that, when we released this beer -- as you'll findout in the book -- we actually had the recipe from beforewe actually opened the brewery. my partner steve and i developedthis -- by "steve and i" i mean him 99 percent and meone percent, to
be fair. we developed this recipe before,but we didn't release it for nearly a year and a half, becausewe were convinced -- weren't convinced that the publiccould handle it. and that's one of the only timesthat i've actually not trusted in the public -- thegood taste of the public -- and i was proven wrong. andi'm glad to say i was proven wrong. we produced about100 cases and it sold out. and we produced 100 more andit sold out. and we've been continuing to ramp it up. eversince.
and we're now distributing in 36 states. andarrogant bastard ale, interestingly enough, is thenumber 1 selling single serve -- because it's in a 22-ouncebottle format. you buy it one at a time. number 1 sellingsingle serve craft beer in the united states in chain stores.it's quite interesting. this gives you an ideaof our growth over the years. this year we're going to doprobably right around 150,000 barrels. so, this isa picture of steve and i when we were bottling our veryfirst bottles
of stone pale ale. and that's us today. wehave about 430 people that work with us at stone. andwe have a restaurant. we have a distribution division.and sales and merchandise. we're having a lot of fun.and i think that, you know, it's been a privilege to bea part of this renaissance that is craft beer. and youknow, the great thing about craft brewers is, we definitelyget to have more fun. one more excerpt they'd liketo read to you about some of the -- just the philosophyof
collaboration in brewing. working togetherwith other brewers to craft interesting new beers hasbeen one of the most rewarding endeavors -- excuse me-- working together with other breweries to craft interestingnew beers has been one of the most rewarding endeavorswe've undertaken. it's an interesting phenomenonthat we enjoy in this industry being able to call up somebodywho technically i suppose is a competitor andask if they want to come over and brew some beer withus. it's
almost like a grown up version of invitingsomeone to a tree fort. [laughter] we have a ton of funwith it and the experience is quite different every time asare the beers. and that's one of the huge benefits.we always push ourselves to make something we've nevermade before and something none of us would have been likelyto have come up with on our own. sometimes we work with anold friend we don't get to see that often. other times wemight invite one of the rising stars in the industry oran international underdog
we've become friends with. and whose workwe admire. and sometimes we invite passionate home brewersand give them a chance to play on the big boy equipment.whatever the case, we always come away with a feelingof accomplishment and a newfound respect foreach other. the exchange of knowledge and ideas neverceases to amaze me and neither do the beers that we collectivelyproduce. which leads to talking a moment about thesaison du buff. sam calagione from dogfish head on the left.me in the
middle and bill covaleski of victory brewingcompany on the right. got a short video that we made to celebrate thiscollaboration beer i'd like to show you. when sam and billand i got together for "buff" brewers united forfreedom of flavor in 2003, we put together this little pressconference and one person showed up. jamie magee, from yankee brew news, awesome jamie.we really thought when we did this that we mighthave some real, you know, mainstream press people showup. no. no. when sam started out, bill started out,i started out,
we didn't know what we could become. we didn'tknow the things that we could do. we just knew thatwe wanted to try. video announcer's voice: [electronic music]in a world fraught with aggressive pushes towards generic sameness at the hands of megainternational conglomerate brewers, three men have set out to createtheir own path, to go their own directions, to brew boldlywith great passion, to rebuke commonly held ideas ofwhat can and cannot be accomplished in brewing. to makebeers
bursting with sheer awesomeness. [music crescendos]>>greg: with these three brewers, the expectations are going to beastronomical. >>sam: we wanted to do a beer that we've neverdone before. >>bill: bringing something new to the styleis a challenge. i think we're up to the challenge. i think werose to it. [music continues; glasses clink]>>sam: we're hoping it has a lot of those estery spicy notesof a traditional saison but that the herbs that we'readding are going to bring it to a place that saison hasnever been before.
>>bill: conversation going on amongst thethree of us and something came up about sage how much we lovedthe flavor of sage. from there, there was a whole cascadeof herbs we just pulled into it. >>sam: i think we've cornered that parsleybeer niche. >>greg: because there's such a collaborativeprocess, you want to be very hands on with it. you want to toucheverything. you want to understand. >>bill: it's an herb fight. the individualpersonalities of the three breweries definitely have to shinethrew. so
talking greg off the hop mountain -- not aneasy thing. >>greg: saison is such a cool style becauseit's really herbaceous. it's got peppery character andyou got this natural citrusy character as well. add inthe herbs that we're using and it just making this thingto a completely new level. >>sam: i think it's going to be an extremelycomplex but drinkable sessiony saison that hopefully somethingthat the world's has never seen before. >>sam: tough work.
>>bill: yeah. >>greg: because i'm going to want to takea nap after lunch. i'm just laying up against that rock. boy,those are life like garden gnomes you've got. >>greg: yeah, so we had a blast with that.and we're going to actually brew it again this coming springin each of our three breweries. the first time that we'veredone a collaboration; we liked it so much. and it'sa great fun to do stuff -- have a wide variety of collaborations.of
course, collaborations can take many formssuch as this collaboration with garrett oliver the brewmaster from brooklyn brewery. at least i think he thoughtit was collaboration. [laughter] all right, if youknow garrett, that was a lot funnier. so, you know, in looking atphilosophy in business and how to approach things, i kindof came up with this little axiom. i'd like to presentit to you. it has two major matrices. they have thisintersection. it depends on your goal. if your goal is toeither do
the same old same old. which i think you guysdon't do a lot around here. that's not the nature ofyour company. or is it your goal to be creative. and thenon the other side, it's your ability. and either you suck[laughter] or hopefully you don't suck. right? so let'slook at each one of these equations. same old sameold and you suck. what do you get? doomed. [laughter]you're doomed. yes, i'm not going to repeat that, but. or, sameold same old approach but you don't suck. well, maybe doomedto
mediocrity. how about creative and you suck.well, doomed, [laughter] but you're likely happierand just maybe you learn how not to suck at what you're doing.so you could be creative and not suck. and of course, thatis -- that's the ultimate success. and you know,i think that the takeaway that i'd like to share with people.and i get to talk to college students from timeto time. so many people think that they need to do the-- they need to focus on not sucking at the same old sameold and
that's the path they feel they need to take.i realize i'm preaching to the converted here at google. you knowsame old same old just ain't gonna fly. if you do it andyou're really creative and you don't suck at whatyou do, you can be pretty amazing. i think we're in aroom with that. so i want to share this. that's me backin the music days. i used to be in the music industrybefore i got into beer. and i think you can probablysee some rock and roll filtering through to the stonebrewing
company. it was actually up here in the bayarea. there was this -- actually, so the analogy i wantto make is, some of the best bands -- it doesn't matterwhether it's u2 or metallica or fugazi--, are great because they did what they wantedto do and they were great at it, right? if theyweren't trying to be flavor of the month, they're nottrying to please people other than to please themselves andthen, that of course has, pleases their fans. and so, itdoesn't matter whether rolling stones or grateful dead ormetallica. when metallica came out with the
blackalbum -- i remember there was a magazine called bay areamusic or band magazine and they put metallica on the coverwhen the black album came out with this caption and ilove this caption and i've always carried it with me tothis day. and the caption went. "metallica didn't go tonumber 1. number 1 came to them." and that's what i've triedto do in my professional life in beer is to create thingsthat are worth coming to. because we decided -- steveand i decided at stone, we weren't going to
try and crossthat line and go to the public. figure out what thepublic thinks that they want. we've never done any focusgroups. in fact, i believe in not listening to thepublic if you want to do something great. you've got tolisten to yourself and then people who support yourvision will follow you if you're good. and this isanother small story. i was playing blackjack in vegasmany years ago and sitting by some grizzled old guy. and iwas playing sort of frivolously. it was probably
3 inthe morning. and you know, this guy -- we fell into thisconversation. it was probably a few words here. everyfew hands. we weren't really chatty or anything. hejust shared a little piece of advice that i've alsocarried with me. he said, "you know, if i was going tolose, i'd mail it in. if i was going to break even, i'dstay home." he said, "son, i came here to win." and thatactually spoke to me and i've always remembered that thevery simple words. it's like, you know, i
thought when iwas going to get into beer, i got into it because i'm abeer geek. i fell down that rabbit hole. i became a madpassionate enthusiast for craft beers. and i felteventually i just had to be a part of it. and i justsaid to myself, "i'm not going to do this, you know? ifi was going to lose, i'd mail it in. if i was just goingto be mediocre, i'd just stay home. but i came to dowhat i thought was a great job." hopefully other peoplewould eventually agree with me. so what's
the futurehold for stone. i thought i'd share with you some of thethings we're doing now as well as working on. this is stone farms. i'm a believer in organics.i'm a believer in local and sustainable. so weactually revived a small local organic farm that hadfailed last year. and we took over the farm in march ofthis year. and we've now revived it. we supply a lotof the veggies for our restaurant from this farm. to ourrestaurant
there. so, up there in the right, you cansee our existing brewery, restaurant and gardens.this year, at the end of the year -- or excuse me, one yearfrom now we hope to be up and running with the secondproduction facility right next door. and then, acrossthe street, as you can see we'll be putting in additional outdoorarea and a hotel. we're actually building a 50-room boutiquehotel. [chuckles from audience] thought it would be fun. it's going to be really cool,too. we won't have a check-in counter, but you willbe able to
get your room key at the bar. [laughter] thisis a picture of what's called liberty station. it's an oldnaval training center close to downtown san diego.it's a historic grouping of buildings. and we'vedecided to put in a second stone brewing bistro and gardens.it's just a hop, skip, and a jump from the airport in san diego.and this is a little of an idea what it will look like.it will be 22,000 square feet. so if anybody's been toour restaurant now. it's going to be more thandouble the
size. we'll have a 10-barrel brewing systemthere. this is my other book -- brewer's apprentice--which i wrote with the help of 20 of my friends from samfrom dogfish, and vinnie from russian river brewing company.nick floyd from three floyds all contributed. and i interviewed for particular chaptersgoing deep dives into chapters on hops, on brewing water,on malt and mashing and so on. it's a really fun book.chapter with ken grossman. much respect to ken and everythingthat he's built with sierra nevada brewing company.a
true leader. and then, of course, i thinkmany of you have heard we're working on our project to be thefirst american craft brewer to own and operate orown brewery in europe. taking it to the mother land. [laughter]you may not be aware. common perception both ineurope and united states around beer is i would say about30 years old. common perception in the united statesamongst the average american, they think american beersucks. amongst the average european, they definitelythink
american beer sucks. [laughter] american beermost definitely does not suck. in fact, we are world leaders. andso, we have completely transformed beer in this country,but still, you know, there's a lagging learningcurve. you guys are on the front end -- front edge ofthe curve. in europe, and i'm going to say this and i knowthis is going to be posted online. in europe, mostof the beers suck. just like most of the beers in the unitedstates used to suck. and there are -- for clarity-- there are
many, many, many amazing small breweries eithertraditional or new startups that are doing great thingsin europe. so i -- you know, i believe in the movementof the craft brewers and the traditional -- the artisanalbrewers. and we hope to just be a part of that. andi know that we'll be able to put a little bit of a uniqueface on to that to help get some attention. plus, welike to showcase other beers. have you been to ourrestaurant? you know we have 32 beers on draft and 130on the bottle.
on draft, two-thirds are guest beers and inthe bottle about 128 of the 130 are guest beers. really specialtybeers we don't have any commodity beers. and we lovesharing the culture of the craft in specialty brewingacross its many wide and varied spectrums. in europe, we hopeto have a restaurant as part of our facility there aswell. and although we haven't figured out exactly where.we've been looking. we've visited 100 locations,100 potential sites in nine countries. just as an example, if we openup a brewery
in germany, which is possible, but i'm notmaking any announcement here. it's possible. i'll betyou within one year we have the best selection of germancraft and traditional artisanal beer in all of germany.and it's almost sad that we could even have a chanceat claiming that title that instead -- because you can'tgo to germany and find amazing selections of germanbeer all over in bars or even stores. they're so smallyou can count them on two hands in the entire countrythat have
amazing cross-sectional selections of greatgerman specialty and artisanal beer. so you know,the traditional european culture has been, it'svery insular. they drink that beer in that town and that other town that's 20 minutesaway. it's like you know what i'm saying from downhere to san jose. no, we don't drink anchor. they drinkthat in san francisco. [laughter] we do not drink thathere. here we drink gordon biersch and that's it. or tied house. and of course, asan american craft beer enthusiast, you're like you'rekidding me?
yeah, i love anchor, but i love all theseother ones as well. so that's the tone of beer in europeright now. so, as i said, our goal is to not just tobe different to be different, but to be different to be better.and with that, like to have a conversation. take yourquestions. >>male #3: so first off i'd like to thankyou for coming here. i started brewing beer like two years ago incollege. it was a huge fiasco. most of the times withthe two plastic buckets and everything like that.haven't gotten
back into it since i got out here. my roommateand i -- we tried to experiment. and it seemedlike every time with using your words, it sucked. whatprocess -- like, what point in the process did you findout that you know this beer is going to be good. after you'veboiled everything. do you have to wait till the veryend when you taste the final product that you knowyou have a quality beer. because we always had to wait till thevery end when we're like, all right, we found out thiswhole recipe
sucks. we have to start from scratch now. >>greg: fair enough. and that's the challengein home brewing or brewing in general. so, as you get moreexperience, you look to see these indicators all alongthe way. as you steward the beer through the initial brewingprocess and then through the fermentation process.you're checking it and you kind of know what to lookfor so you can see if it's going left or right or south-- hopefully not. the main piece of advice that i wouldalways give
for home brewing -- second to of course buyingmy book the brewer's apprentice -- [laughter] is tohome brew with friends. make friends with a local -- with people inlocal home brew club or somebody who's an experiencedhome brewer. because doing it by the book is great. thereare some fantastic books out there such as the joyof homebrewing by charlie pappazian. and many, many othersi couldn't even mention. but when you're doing it with somebodyelse who's experienced, your learning curve isjust like this.
any other home brewers out here? >>male #3: i'm not surprised. i figured i'dfind some other homebrewers here. >>greg: join a home brewing club. and justwatch your curve go exponential. >>male #3: thank you. >>male #4: thanks for coming. interestingfactoid, my four-year-old son has called your restaurant his favoriterestaurant in the world. he loves the beer garden. you mentionedcollaborations. are there any collaborations that are upcoming that you can tell us about or ones
that you;re really hopingto arrange? >>greg: we are -- where's my, coauthor randyclemens is here by the way. where is he? there he is. he's thecoauthor of this book. everybody give randy a hand. randy works inpr with us too. so, it turns out i can so i will mentionit. there's the up coming the alchemist whichis a great brewery in vermont. they sustained a lot of damagefrom hurricane irene. and they contacted us about-- if we could do something the to do some fund raisingfor some
of the community out that way. and we decidedbecause the guy who runs the alchemist is used towork with greg noonan at the vermont pub and brewery. soi'm getting beer geek on you guys. greg noonan's consideredto be the person who first created the black ipa stylein 1990. all the way back in 1990. so we'll work with them.and jamie floyd from ninkasi up in eugene, oregon which isup in the people's republic of cascadia. some folksup there have called the black ipa style the the black cascadian ale. so wethought we'd do this little solidarity thing.
so, longstory short, we created the together the more brown thanblack ipa and it'll be out. randy, when is it going tobe out? couple of weeks? >>randy: december nineteenth. december nineteenth. >>greg: december 19th. there you go.i think this is our first formal announcement of that.so i hope that's good answer. cool. if you want toshout from the audience, i can repeat the question foreverybody if you don't want to get up to the mic.
>>male #5: what's the worst beer you've everhad and [inaudible]. >>greg: the worst beer that we've ever produced? >>male #5: no, no, no. >>greg: that i've ever tasted. [laughter]the worst beer that i've ever tasted. unfortunately, i have to say thatthat's near countless. but fortunately, not as countlessas all these incredible beers that i have also gottento taste. i am not on the side of the fence that saysthere's no such thing as a bad beer. i cantell you, i'm in the industry, there's lots
of really bad beer out there. butfortunately, today -- this is what's so wonderful aboutall this, there's more great beer than bad beer out thereby a wide margin. and the great beer out there is reallygreat. so, i'm not going to name a particular brand name.but here's a challenge. so much of the bad beer neverintended to be great. they intended to fill a market --what they consider to be a market need or market niche ormarket opportunity. essentially selling lowest commondenominator stuff to the masses. so there
was -- it'snot fair to point at it and say, "this is a bad beerbecause the brew master or somebody, an insider, would tell youunder their breath, it was never intended to be good. itwas never intended to be great. yeah. >>male #6: so there's black ipas and belgianipas. it seems like there's new styles appearing especially with the longspectrum of beer. what new styles are you excited about,are you thinking about. >>greg: so with black ipas and belgian ipasand all these new
hybrid styles being created. what am i excitedabout? i definitely got excited about black ipas whenwe first came out with the stone 11th anniversary alethat is later become brought to our full-time line up asstone sublimely self-righteous which is a black ipa has become one of thebetter known black ipas and the stone cali-belgique ipawhich is our belgian ipa. one of the earlier versions available of thatstyle. god, what is coming up? you know, i just likethat -- 15 years ago i had spent ten years learning aboutbeer.
nearly ten years. and i would have told youat that the time we were starting stone i felt that i knewthe complete spectrum what was available and possible.what could be done. i was so ignorant. and i am constantlydelighted and surprised to learn these crazy thingsthat brewers are doing. i recently had a coffee ipa, youknow? a coffee stout makes all kinds of sense. theflavors just meld naturally. the coffee ipa took itin a different direction. it was delicious andi got to
contemplate that at 3 o'clock in the morningas i was still awake. so, you know, i have a very smallbatch of crime and punishment coming out. punishmentis double bastard ale with a ton of chili peppers fromstone farm. so it's 11 percent really intense, 11 percentreally strong double bastard ale that we come outwith once a year in november and we have a barrel aged versionwith peppers from stone farms. and it is punishingly hot. and it's-- so intense in its flavor profile. it's not like the fizzyyellow
beers with a chili dropped in which are kindof one dimensional. learning. i used to pooh poohchili beers. it's gimmicky. and now, i know, you know alot of people are going to consider it gimmicky, that's fine,but the flavors are really intense and deep and good. yes? >>male #7: so i just returned from a tripto belgium. i've had the good luck to attend an annual softwareconference there. and i made my annual pilgrimage tocantillon and i want to defend the europeans for a moment.the brew
master there does not think american craftbrews suck. and in fact, he borrows ideas from them. theydid a collaboration beer this year with a grapefarmer in the rennes valley . so you know, there are enlightened folksthere too. >>greg: yeah, i'm sorry if i didn't suggest-- if i suggested otherwise., you know,, john stayed at my house.i've been to cantillon many times. my first timewas 1995; i'm a die hard fan of everything they do. so just to set the recordstraight.
there are many, many, many small artisanal,creative, craft- -brewing. you know with cantillon , they wouldqualify as being traditional because they are ultra traditionalincredible breweries going on. but most europeans drinkindustrial stuff and he'll tell you that. i have posteda video. there's a youtube video of a conversationthat i had at moeder lambic which is a place, a home if you will, thetap house that has the most cantillon on tap in the world. and justa short walk from cantillon and i spent some timetalking. you
want to hear people saying bad things aboutthe european beer industry and about the belgian industry? listento those guys and what they say and they're in brussels. >>male #7: yeah, he told me lots of storiestoo about how the amounts of sugars in the beer increase year by year to appeal to thepepsi generation. same deal. >>greg: yeah, we're kindred spirits, definitely.i agree with you. >>male #8: can you tell us a little bit moreabout that decision process of going from a beer enthusiast todeciding you
actually wanted to go into the business ofbrewing beer, not just brewing beer. >>greg: it was a very challenging decisionfor me, because i first discovered -- when i had my first anchorsteam that was my first epiphany moment, enlightenmentmoment in 1987. and we opened up stone in 1996. so there was a fair gap of time there.there was a -- i would say at least three years to evenfour years where i climbed the cliff -- the mountainof beer knowledge. not to the top. i'm still climbingthat one.
but i got high enough where it came time andi was looking over the edge of actually doing itand i walked along that edge of 'do i dare take that leap.do i dare take that entrepreneurial business risk',everything else. for several years i walked along that edge.both steve and i did. finally we just said we have todo this. we felt compelled. so it's hard to say therewas that one moment or one trigger point. we just continuedto do it. and when i opened -- when we opened stone in 1996,i thought
we were opening too late to make any levelof a splash in the beer industry at all, because the craftbeer was so dense at that time. in fact, i love the bayarea. and at that time, i really wanted to continueliving in the bay area. but we did it in san diego. i lovesan diego of course, but i thought it was too densein the bay area. it would be no chance to have successas a small brewer in the bay area because there are toomany. now today, i believe, if you follow that othermodel that i
showed of not sucking following your passion.if you do a great job, you can be successful. >>male #7: thank you. >>male #8: yeah. all right. i just moved outhere not too long ago from the east coast. so i've been followingsam and all his delicious beers for some time and victoryas well and some of the others out there. i came out here.i was concerned i wasn't going to find these good beers. then i discovered there's a lot.as you were just saying, there's a lot of really good beers out here. there doesn'tseem to be a lot of crossover between the
east coast and west coast beers. a lot ofthe beers i find here, i didn't find there on the shelves out there. and i do find dogfishhead here a little bit but only a couple of their varieties. are we still just fairlyregional or is it just difficult to distribute? is there some difference in taste from eastto west coast? >>greg: yes, yes, yes and plus many otherpoints on the laundry list of the challenges of the beer industryand beer distribution. but it does seem to be thatwest to east for craft beers flows easier. you'll findmore west coast beers on the east coast or in the midwestand the
east coast. and you'll find a little smallerflow this direction. traditionally -- traditionallyis 15 years ago, 20 years ago, even today. east coastbreweries have tended to often make what i will define asmore polite beer versus the beers -- i will be the firstto admit at stone we make many beers that are considerablynot polite. and and so, the polite beers don'ttend to gravitate as much. if you're in californiaand you know san diego, you become this superhop head likemany of us
have become. we can appreciate and enjoy thosebeers, but we really gravitate back to somethingthat's "ooh yeah". are you finding yourself that way as you've developedyour knowledge curve of west coast beers and breweriesand have you made a trip back and said "wow thisbeer just doesn't taste the same as it used to to me". >>male #8: i actually haven't been out herelong enough to properly say that i suppose. i haven't been back to theeast coast yet, since i've come here. there are just so manyout
here. i haven't tried everything yet. buti have noticed there is sort of a difference in flavor.some of the east coast beers are maybe a little smootherperhaps. >>greg: smoother -- polite. >>male #8: even dogfish head which is fairlyaggressive. it's i just had some of your ipa and it's a crispersort of flavor. >>greg: a little more hop forward. i willoften joke with sam. when sam's over brewing at our place.we brewed
together before. and he'll be out this comingapril brewing with us. and i know i'll still makethe same crack when we're putting in the hops. i'llremind him -- sam, these are hops. [laughter] he'll be,"yeah, greg i know". >>male #8: this is the guy who says continuallyhop. just throwing it, and throwing it, and throwingit. >>greg: yeah, it's good natured ribbing, ofcourse, amongst friends. thank you. >>male #8: all right. thanks.
>>male #9: hi. thanks for coming. i just wantto say your russian imperial stout is what dreams aremade of. it's one of the best ones out there. but quickquestion for you about kind of the limited release beersthat we've seen a trend of. cigar city has their hunahpu'sday. russian river has their pliny the younger. stuff like that. and then, outside of thatyou're seeing like some of those beers people get them andthen hork them on ebay for 70 dollars. what's your takeon, you know, people starting to do that in limitedallocation
for limited and rare beers. >>greg: limited and rare beers. it's a double-edgedsword. on the great side of the equation, it's reallyspecial stuff, brewed and available to ã¼ber enthusiastswho really love all the nuances and differences and enjoybeing part of the culture of limited releases. and then,on the other side -- the negative side -- is whenpeople, against the wishes of the brewer, maybe will rebottleit, put it in a growler, put it on ebay, ship it off and then whenthe person gets it,
they're getting a distant shadow of what thequality, because the quality was damaged along theway. it violates sort of the honor amongst -- honor to thebrewer and that's the negative side. and so, hey, namethings in life that don't have a positive side and anegative side to them. so this is no different. so i would-- i support it. i support this idea of being ableto go in all these great directions. sometimes i'llsee a beer enthusiast forum posts and somebody saythere's just
too many hoppy beers out there. well, if craftbeers are five percent. really ã¼ber hoppy beers ofthat five percent are, i'm going to take a wild staband say, "two percent?" so now we're talking two percentof five percent and so on. so they're complainingabout the 0.1 percent of stuff. hey, don't complain. ifthere's 0.1 percent of this great wide variety but itonly makes up this tiny little slice of the market, celebratethe fact that we've been able to diversify and get that geekedout. that's
how i see it. >>male #9: cool, thank you. >>male #10: hey, thanks for coming out hereagain. just have a discussion about what the market dynamicsi guess of gear. i really like your philosophy of notlistening to focus groups and really making what you believeis best. do you think that there's an opportunity forcraft beer to, like, take away some of the larger macromarket even more so than it has by, you know, just kindof like
educating people on this is what beer canactually be. or do you think it's more of an enthusiastthis is what i believe in my customer base. do youthink there's any way through sponsoring sports events orthings like that to where people could just improve their perception of whatbeer is. >>greg: so i use this old joke. how many psychiatristsdoes it take to change a light bulb? the answeris one but the light bulb has to want to change. so if youtry the to go out to the masses and say change, change,change, and
they're like huh? whatever. leave me alone,kid. i'm just paying attention to the ball game and i justwant to do what i've always done with my buddies theni'm not here to think about it. they're not interestedin it. so what we do -- i think what craft beer doesreally well at is, we make ourselves readily available tothose who are interested in change. you know what? a friendof mine introduced me. i went to a bar. i decidedon a lark to actually pick something different off of theshelf one
time and something clicked just a little bitand now i'd like to know more. and now, there's a lotof avenues to learn more. you can only go out to publicso much and actually get them to pay attention. of course,we have a very noisy world out there. so i think that,you know, it's -- craft beer is growing so much becausewe -- collective we -- that includes you guys -- greatbeer bars. great beer shops. great online resources.beer advocate and rate beer. twitter feeds. andgoogle plus
what you're doing with some of your initiativesand existing initiatives. all of these thingsallow people to communicate and it's spreading like wildfire. so i see this exponential curve coming. and also,to close this -- my response to you -- is that todaya lot of the decision makers at bars and restaurants, atmarkets and grocery stores are now digital natives incraft beer. they grew up in craft beer. and so, the oldguard as it changes over who didn't know about didn'tcare about is
being replaced by buyers and decision makersin our lives that affect the behind the scenes equationthat you guys don't see and they're craft beer enthusiastsand it's being reflected. so that's a great thing.that exponential shift is coming. we're growingand i think we're going to be like hold on. we're goingto start feeling some g force. >>male #10: okay, thank you. >>male #11: yeah, this is kind of a segueto your previous
question. craft beer is growing so much. you'vebeen in the industry for a while. you showed thegraph earlier about the macro group. market share goingdown. what are budweiser and anbev and those type of people.what's their reaction to the growth of craft beer. doyou ever think that they would actually change their beerto be better or would they just more diversify by doing. >>greg: there are certain things i won't sayonline or in public. so, let me -- i'm going to try mybest to answer
that. i cannot speak for the big industrialbrewers. but here's -- there's a fundamental dividingline and it doesn't matter whether it's beer, cheese,restaurants, coffee, etcetera. there's commodity side andthere's artisanal side. they behave very, very differently.so, artisinal side, sometimes will make a mistake and try andbehave commodity. you see a great craft beer yourespect and all of a sudden you go to a promo night ata bar and they've got hired models giving out blinkykey chains.
that would be an example. and you're likegoing what's going on? where did you go wrong? and/or,a really big brewer coming out with something ã¼ber hoppy,which i don't think they would. you know their customerbase doesn't understand it. and the core customerbase are like don't worry, i'll drink my local oneinstead or the guys that i believe in. in the case of the bigbrewers, big brewers in this country are focusing moreon emerging markets. if you look at it from the stockprices, the
global portfolio and the global direction,their growth is not in the united states. their growthis in the emerging markets of china, india, and otherplaces. and russia. and so, they speak -- you know, ispeak in ibus and they speak in billions of dollars. andso, we use a different language -- commodity language andartisanal language. their -- anheuser busch anbev, . i'mnot speaking for that company. i believe thisis what i've read that they are down in their numbers andthey're up
in their profits. so they're spending lessmoney trying to generate or grow the u.s. market and they'rekind of taking money out and putting it into emergingmarkets where the real growth is. that's what i'veunderstood as i've read. again, i'm not speaking for anyof those companies. can't do that.>>male #10: oh cool, thanks >>male #11: so you talked a little bit aboutbringing back some of your collaboration. or one specifically. buti'm wondering if you had any thoughts of bringingback the
other ones that you've done over the yearssince i didn't manage to get enough bottles of some of themin would really like a way to replenish my supply especiallythe scotch ale from earlier this year. >>greg: well, that one -- okay, so you'retalking about the. >>male #11: highway 78. >>greg: so that was a collaboration we didwith firestone walker and, randy, help. my brain just went away.where is he? he can't help. he left. that's what i'mtrying to come up with. yeah, the highway
78 scotch ale. greenflash. pizza port carlsbad. stone. highway 78 scotch ale. so we intended to originallywith the original recipe age it in scotch whiskey barrelsthat didn't arrive in time. so, when they did arrive,we decided to rebrew it and it's been sittingin the barrels since this past spring. >>male #11: where exactly? do you have latitudeand longitude? >>greg: [laughter] at stone try your best.so, we will be re-releasing a barrel aged version of thatthis coming
spring. >>male #12: google maps will help you[laughter] >>male #11: what about some of the other ones. >>greg: i would say that, you know, 99 percentof our collaboration beers are vertical epic seriesbeers. none of the vertical epic series do we ever planto brew. that's kind of what that was all about. one timethings. our anniversary beers or special one ups. mostwill never be rebrewed so we can go brew a new favorite. every once in awhile,like the stone 11th anniversary ale became
the stone sublimely self-righteous ale. everyonce in awhile we redo it or the saison du buff. but the book has a lotof home brew recipes for that stuff so you can do it yourself. >>male #11: thanks. >>male presenter: we've got to stop there,but thanks again for coming. >>greg: yeah, thank you guys.
Post a Comment for "crossover suvs hybrid"