First out of the chute is Southern Brewing Company of Athens, GA.
Founded by Brian Roth and Rick Goddard, after many years of dreaming and planning SBC is on the verge of production, and well on their way to opening their own facility in Athens. Below is a Q&A I had with Brian about where SBC came from, and where it is going...
-Tell us a little
about yourselves. Your website
says you have a good deal of experience in both industry and homebrewing. What are your backgrounds, and how has
that helped you make the jump to commercial brewing?
Rick Goddard and Brian Roth I have worked in beer distribution for 22 years and started homebrewing in 1993. The first craft beer that I had any experience with from a sales standpoint was RedHook back in 1997. They had signed a distribution agreement with A-B and had started expanding their territory. I also worked with Red Brick out of Atlanta around that time. In 2003 I started lobbying for the beer wholesaler side of the beer industry in Washington DC. The NBWA goes to DC once a year to talk to the house and senate about pertinent issues. This is where I met Rick Goddard. Rick was the lobbyist for the Beer Institute and lobbied on behalf of 95% of the brewers in America. He lived in DC and spent over 7 years working on issues for the production side of the industry. Rick is friends with a large number of craft brewers and at the time I was working on bringing more craft beer into distribution in the state of Georgia. That made us a great fit for hanging out and talking shop. Rick was an incredible resource and I enjoyed meeting everyone in his network.
- What got you started in homebrewing?
We had a gentleman working with us at the distributor named Kenny Havener. He was one of the greatest draft beer guys I have ever met. He was in charge of building, fixing, selling and working with all things related to draft beer for the distributor. I was twenty-four and my wife was pregnant with our son. At the time I was a sign painter for the distributor and I did banners and murals etc. Kenny had me design his labels and let me help him brew. I was the guy that helped sterilize bottles and clean. Kenny was like a wizard to me back then. I was amazed at the whole process and how effortless he made it look. He lived on Nantahala St in Athens, GA so he affectionately named his operation after that street. Oddly enough there is a commercial brewery by that name now up near Hickory, NC. Kenny let me help him out but eventually moved to North Carolina. That left me with a passion for brewing and zero equipment. It also made me realize that Kenny was the composer and director. I could do anything he told me to do but I couldn’t solo at that point. So I spent a few years drinking great craft beer and reading everything I could get my hands on. Kenny’s operation was a partial grain stovetop setup and I wanted to go all grain. Back then that felt like jumping out of an airplane without a chute. I didn’t own a single piece of equipment at the time and that added to the complexity.
- What has been your favorite style to brew?
Lambics. We've been doing lambics for a few years now and to do it properly takes a ridiculous amount of time and patience. You have to ferment for an entire year before you bottle and then you have to wait for another year for that to mature. The complexity will change in the bottle for up to four more years. It's frustratingly slow but to watch that beer change that slowly has taught us a lot. Mainly, it taught us that great beer takes patience. Conversely we love brewing everything. In the summer we love a Kolsch. That beer ferments quickly and is so clean and fresh. Kolsch doesn't age well so we never feel guilty about making that style disappear fast. We became famous for brewing in a giant pumpkin every year. We actually plumb a pumpkin and use it as a mash tun. This year we had two Giant Pumpkins running side by side. We turn it into an all day event and invite a ton of folks to come over to help. So from an entertainment perspective that's our favorite.
- Before you started the process, had you been dreaming of going
commercial for a while, or did you have an epiphany one day while stirring the
mash?
Rick came up with the idea. I was constantly picking his brain and using his network to convince people to distribute in Georgia. He asked me why I didn't just open a brewery. That was 7-8 years ago. I laughed at first and then he got serious. He said, "No really, why don't we open a brewery together?” Rick and I are both Air-Force Brats. His dad had retired in Warner Robins and my dad's last duty station my senior year had been Warner Robins. I had never lived anywhere longer than a few years and after I graduated in 1989 I followed my high school sweet heart to UGA and we planted roots. I love the south and Rick was looking to come back to Georgia. Brooklyn had just rolled out in the state and Rick is good friends with Steve Hindy the owner of Brooklyn. Rick suggested that Brooklyn would struggle in Georgia in the beginning because a New York brand wouldn't generate a lot of interest (he was right, they had a hard time those first few years). Southerners like the south. So Gary Fish, the owner of Deschutes suggested that if that were the case Rick should open a brewery and call it Southern Brewing. That was seven years ago and stemmed from a quick conversation that Rick had at a bar with those guys. I had started partial grain brewing solo about nine years ago and jumped into all-grain eight years ago with an igloo cooler. I had been saving up a chunk of money to restore a 1973 VW Bug for my son and took all of that and started building an all grain system at the house with a proper RIMS system and a yeast lab.
- Your website also mentioned that you have done extensive research,
visiting well over 200 breweries. What
were the top questions that you “asked over and over again” during your visits.
I added it up the other day after you asked this again. My number now is 425 individual breweries. I feel very lucky to have been able to visit these breweries from a distribution standpoint. Craft beer guys love to share their knowledge and I had a lot to learn. I was fortunate enough to be friends with Owen Ogletree who is a huge beer enthusiast and writes for many beer publications. He runs Classic City Brewfest in Athens every April and that's one of the longest running festivals in the south. Owen taught me a lot and took me on a couple of trips over to Europe. We went all over Bavaria, Scotland and England. Those beer cultures blew my mind. I had lived in Europe as a kid but didn't pay attention as much to how beer was made back then. So after talking to Rick I made a list of everything I lacked from a knowledge standpoint and a network standpoint. If you're going to jump out of a plane and you have to pack your own chute you better do a lot of research. Obvious questions related to the size of systems or what a breweries SOPs were for various parts of the brewing process. Those taught me a lot. The one question that always started a two hour conversation that became a classroom for me is' "What was your biggest mistake. What would you have done differently?" I realized it's the one thing that nobody asks but everyone loves to talk about it. It's hard work getting a business going and I think we're all proudest of the moments that define us and shape us. Those stories are fascinating. I would love to write a book about those. It would save a lot of people a lot of headache and frustration. There were some very funny stories and usually ended hours later at a bar somewhere.
- What was some of the best advice that you got out of that
research? What was the most surprising?
One answer covers both. Quit trying to perfect a recipe or style, and to just brew everything and anything. I talked to a lot of really good brewers and I asked them how they scale recipes up. Sam Calagione gave me one of the greatest answers. He had been brewing on a Sabco system at his brewpub for a long while and that allowed him to do really small batches and to throw in a lot of crazy stuff. That's where he learned to be creative and throw caution to the wind. You learn the most from your mistakes. I love it when we have a life lesson on a batch. New home brewers that brew with us get torn out of frame when one of their assumptions get kicked in the guts. To me, great brewers know how to adjust. They're like fighter pilots. Something always goes wrong on a brewday. It might be a pump failure or a stuck mash or any number of things. It's experience that keeps that batch from failing and sometimes it takes guts to make a split second decision. It also takes knowing when a batch just didn't work and knowing why it didn't work. So many young brewers throw failures down the drain. I bottle them and make people drink them when they come to brewday. You have to know what off flavors are and why they happen. Having a living example of a bad batch helps educate. We bottle everything and we make sure every batch has a short fill and that one bottle is clear glass, etc. We want to know how time, heat, light and age affect our beers and their ingredients. I've known brewers that have great breweries and they've only brewed three beers. They brewed them a thousand times each but it's all they've done. They have great breweries but they struggle from a creative standpoint.
- Was there any one question that everyone answered the same way?
Great question! It made me snort-chuckle a little. I've never even gotten two people at the same brewery to answer a question the same. That's what I love about this process. It's the art side. Chef's all have their own tricks and even though we use the same ingredients it's amazing how many variables affect the outcome.
- In your leap from avid homebrewers to being fully committed craft
brewers, how difficult was it to “scale up” your recipes and processes?
This is a big difficulty and we have yet to do it for our system. You have to brew on a system to know it's efficiencies and the recipe needs to be built around that. We're going to contract brew at Jailhouse in Hampton and Glenn knows his system inside out. That will make it easier to dial us in. However, we'll have to re-do everything again when get our system up and going. That keeps it exciting. The other issue is that all brewing ingredients are agricultural. Each season is different from year to year. Great brewers are always adjusting their recipes. When I buy ingredients I taste them first, especially at local homebrew shops. Grains go stale, hops start oxidizing, and yeast becomes less viable. I only brew with ingredients that smell fresh and taste fresh. I don't use close dated yeast. I don't go to a homebrew shop with a recipe in hand. I go with an idea and build the recipe based on that. Brewers that are tweaking recipes tend to buy the same ingredients all the time. They have to. It's their recipe. The problem is that specialty grains sit for long periods at home brew shops and even get infected by weevils, mice, etc. The humidity in Georgia is ridiculous and that really affects efficiencies.
- Have you found that being in Athens and close to Atlanta/Decatur, both
areas with strong craft brewing cultures, a help or a hindrance to getting a
small brewery off the ground?
Yes. I am a lover of craft beer first and foremost. The fact that I can drive to some really awesome breweries within an hour of my house is a huge bonus. I love the Georgia brewing community. I could write a separate book on each of those guys and their struggles and triumphs. It’s really a great group of folks. Out of the 400+ breweries I have been to only two have been uncooperative. Those two are in the wrong business. Everyone else always helps. This is the only industry that I know of that works like that. If a brewery needs help other breweries are right there helping out, especially locally.
- What ware the top 3 (or more) things you need to start a small craft
brewery?
1st - You need to really love what you're doing. Running a business is hard work. Brewing raises that to a ridiculous level. As a brewery owner you're doing everything and getting paid after your employees and usually less than them for a long time. You're going to be cleaning toilets, learning to weld, running tours, brewing, running promotions, selling in the market, cutting the grass, the accountant, the HR person, The counselor, training everyone, developing recipes, and the list goes on forever.
2nd - Make sure you own your brewery. Funding is really tough. It took us over two years to put together our team. Don't give up controlling ownership and make sure there's room to give up more share later without giving up control. I have seen a lot of people lose ownership of their dream by being impatient. We had to knock on doors and have heated discussions with a lot of friends and family. Don't over promise anything and let everyone know that you're not going to generate revenue, much less profit, for a long time. You need a group of investors that are happy with little or no return. If you don't have that I wouldn't do it. Use all your resources and ask a million questions. Use banks to help learn. Local agencies are awesome Small Business Development Group, Small Business Administration, etc. Don't over capitalize but don't under capitalize either. Right now it takes about two million dollars to set up a proper brewery. You can do it for less but the work to grow becomes exponential.
3rd- Know the industry. Beer is a regulated industry that is controlled at the federal, state and local level. Each of those levels is complex and confusing. The three-tiered system mandated by the 21st amendment places control of the system with State and Local agencies. Georgia has a lot of strict enforcement and laws that, at times, make it unfriendly. When you sign with a GA distributor it's a permanent relationship. PERMANENT. Make sure you choose the best system and do your research. Make sure they have resources and passion for the industry. Make sure they don't have too many breweries or too few people. Think about growth and 10 years from now. Make sure that it firs with your business plan.
4th- Write a business plan. I spent 5 years researching ours and it took close to another 900 hours to finish it. We worked with the SBDG at UGA to polish ours up before we submitted it to banks. Learn how to take criticism. Realize that you don't have all the information and research all your choices. Where are you getting your equipment? Draft, Cans, Bottles? Where are you going to get your supplies? Yeast lab? Yeast supplier? Employees? Growth model? You better meet all the other brewers in the state and start making relationships with retailers and distributors.
- Someday in the future when an avid homebrewer comes to Southern
Brewery’s shiny brewing facility, what is the one piece of advice you would
give them?
Know what you want in life and figure out how to get it. Make sure that it doesn't conflict with other plans. For me, family is my number one priority. I wasn't going to open a brewery until my son graduated from high school. I have many friends that own and run breweries with kids still at the house. They do a great job balancing both. I knew that I would put too much time in at the brewery to be the dad that I wanted to be. I wanted to coach my son's soccer team and attend all his events. Travel soccer requires a huge commitment and you can't coach from a bar on Saturday via phone. He graduated last May. I can now devote my time to running my brewery the same way. Be committed.
- Tell us about the first recipes you are looking to produce when you start
production. And what time frame are
you shooting for?
A lot of short run local stuff. We are going to focus on finishing the brewery out and making that a cool space. We will have a farmers market and we'll be brewing with local farmers. I do a lot of growing around the house, Hops and fruit. We use that to make some really nice short run stuff. We'll also be working on beers that will work well in the South. Kolsch, Berliner-Weiss, Pale Ales, Lambics, IPAs and some unique barrel aging. All in due time. It's hard to be too creative when you're contract brewing. We'll be in a holding pattern early on and that will depend on seasonality. Our timeline is always flexible. Don't get your heart set on definitive times. So much depends on a myriad of uncontrollables (i.e. the weather). We're slated to brew on our own system in mid July. We should start contract brewing in late January or early February. We're waiting on a handful of uncontrollables to get pinned down.
-
I see from the proposed brewery plans, that you will have a phased rollout. What will be the size of your initial
system (in bbl) and facility? And what do you envision as the size of a
full (4-phase) operation?Initial system will be 30 BBLS and we will be able to reach 2,450 barrels before we need to buy more tanks. It would be hard to imagine what the final build out would be. The next brewhouse size would logically be a 50 or 100-barrel system. We will have enough room for either. The market will dictate the growth and help us decide which system is necessary. We hope it's 100, but only time will tell.
-
Lastly, and most importantly, will you have a tasting room?
We will definitely have a tasting room! That's one of the most important pieces. From marketing stand point you can't beat it. We'll run tour hours similar to everyone else.
Many thanks to Brian for being my first real foray into beer journalism. For anyone in the Augusta area who dream of opening their own craft brewery (And I know a few of you!), keep your eye on SBC as an example of what it takes.
I hope to get to Athens and watch them work, and perhaps inaugurate their new brewery when it opens.
Cheers!
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