Wednesdays have always been an important day for us at Port Brewing. When I launched this venture (with my three other partners) back in 2005, we met every Wednesday from 4 to 7 p.m. to recap the previous week’s operations and, more importantly, agree on the long-term goals necessary to grow a brewery business. In the beginning, Wednesdays always held so much promise.

This was the one day each week where I was able to sit down with my partners on-site at the brewery. All of them operated their own successful businesses, which meant they did not have daily duties here. So getting together each week was the best way we could communicate.

For me, Wednesdays were hectic and reassuring in many ways. The hectic part came in needing to prepare data for the meeting. But during these meetings, I also received financial data from one of my partners who acted as CFO for Port Brewing Co. This summarizing data affirmed that the decisions we agreed upon were providing the company with solid returns.

I always looked forward to Wednesdays for this reason. They were incredibly important to our company’s financial health, and the shared vision we fostered was paramount to our initial success. For the most part, our Wednesdays were about the four of us as partners working toward a common goal—operating a world-class brewery.

Of course, we didn’t always agree 100 percent on how things should go. That’s what having partners means. Still, Wednesdays were the most important tool we as owners shared in growing the brewery operations. But like other great things I have loved, Wednesdays came to an end.

Curiously, it was Wednesday on Dec. 18, 2013, when our partner and CFO was arrested. While the details are blurry, one moment framed the entire day. Just after lunch, I met with my other partners and our lawyer. It was then we signed a document removing one of our founding partners as acting CFO.

Thus, that day in December became the suckiest Wednesday ever for the company. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. I lost a key component of our strategic business team and instantly I became the one person even more responsible for the financial success of the company.

From the moment we first opened our doors, I have acted as the managing member for our LLC. This has meant that since 2005 my role in the company has been co-founder and chief operating owner. During those first eight years, I deferred many of the tax-based financial duties to our chief financial officer. He provided our company with a prescient growth strategy, thereby conferring on me the freedom to focus my energy on other projects.

Everything changed when we signed that document. On that day, his financial duties shifted to my world. With one mighty signature, I became de facto the chief navigator of our financial waters as well.

For most of 2014, I struggled with this additional pressure of managing the finances. I didn’t love being on the hook for “all of it.” Most days, I wanted to bury my head in a bag of hops and inhale the familiar smells of things I knew and loved. But the reality is I signed up for any and “all” of these very things the day we started doing business. And more importantly, as the bridge between ownership and the day-to-day operational managers of our brewing company, I didn’t get to run away.

Because on that Wednesday I severed an eight-year relationship with the one person we brought into our ownership group to be a sounding board for ideas, growth trajectory and the fiscal direction for the company. Sadly, I know this affected my daily ability to focus on the business at hand, and we took a far more conservative path to market in 2014 over most other years since we opened our doors.

Losing that member of our team has meant that for the past 14 months, I haven’t truly been able to plot the course I have wanted to for our brewery. Thankfully, we employ some great people, and they have done the lion’s share of keeping us moving in a positive direction.

If, like me, you view my job as being the acting captain for the S.S. Port Brewing Co., you come to understand that a captain needs a plan. Most importantly, in order for the ship to set sail, the captain better be able to communicate it with great clarity. It also strikes me that the best captains always have a concise, executable plan. That is why they earned the title “captain” in the first place.

Imagine if you will how frustrating it would be if the ship’s leader always turned to the first mate and said, “It’s a great day to go sailing. … Let’s point the ship out of the harbor and see where it leads us. No, I don’t have a heading for you. Let’s just do what we did yesterday and see where it takes us!” Doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. But that’s pretty close to how I feel my 2014 went. I’m lucky my entire staff didn’t mutiny on me, though I wouldn’t have blamed them had they done so.

We’re not alone in this journey. Plenty of businesses have sailed this vast ocean of financial uncertainties and navigated their way through the straits of vagueness without damage. Today, I am a far better leader having survived the crash course in brewery financials.

Does this mean I want the title of CFO? Far from it! This year, I look forward to bringing another talented, financially minded individual into our brewery. Getting that stability back in our day-to-day operations will feel incredible.

Of course, now that I am more versed in the deeper financial operations of our company, I look forward to using this newly acquired wealth of knowledge to position the brewery for bigger and better things. Running this business for the last 18 months without a CFO sitting next to me in meetings, I have gained an appreciation for his role. So far, 2015 has started out incredibly well. Maybe, just maybe, this is the year we go back to weekly Wednesday meetings and the sting of Dec. 18, 2013, will be lessened.

The post Partners first appeared on All About Beer.

In my teens, the slogan became less prominent as the antics of Ken Allen became newsworthy. A crafty orangutan, he was famous for not only his numerous escapes from the zoo enclosures but also for what he did when he was on the loose.

Seemingly, Ken Allen was also part pig, as he loved to ham it up. While on the lam, he sought out patrons and their affection. Notably, during his greatest escape he was found yacking it up with the tourists who thought King Louie had escaped the pages of the Jungle Book and another lifelike Disney character was out for photo ops.

Ken Allen I am not. Recently, I was interviewed by a local university business student who wanted to know what my least favorite thing about owning a brewery was. I paused and then offered up flash photography. He seemed perplexed at the answer. Then I explained I can’t walk 10 feet these days in our brewery without someone taking a picture.

Is this how the animals in the zoo feel? It’s not as if Jack Hanna or Steve Irwin was stalking our brewers, speaking in a hushed tone as they explored our native environment. Nope, in many ways, it’s worse. Daily we are bombarded by amateur naturalists who come to view our brewer primates in their native environment.

Given how Instagram provides a photographic outlet for personal storytelling, I suppose it’s not that surprising. People now travel long distances to see us, and when they do, they are very much active participants in our process of making beer. And more often than not they do so with a sample of beer in one hand and their cell phone in the other.

The very best zoo enclosures are elaborately designed to bring the tourist into the mix by removing as many barriers and creating as natural a habitat as possible. Whether it’s the great gorillas or Lost Abbey brewers, both enclosures offer a similar proximity showcasing primates at work or play.

It appears we’re not alone in creating these spaces. We have a sign near our kegging line that states: “No Flash Photography It startles our brewers.” Our friends at Societe Brewing, also here in San Diego, also have a sign on their walls warning patrons to “stand clear, our brewers are known to throw their own feces.” Of course, it’s all tongue-in-cheek, as we really don’t mind if people capture the essence of their visits to our brewery.

As I have previously discussed here in this magazine, my job has evolved since I was singularly “just a pub brewer” into many things, and one of them has me being principally available to our consumers as the “face of the brand.” No matter where I go in this business (a bar, restaurant or even my local grocery store), I have been recognized.

It’s kind of weird, this notion of brewer turned rock star or celebrity. I mean, I was a nerd in high school. The only reason the cheerleaders talked to me was because my sister was one. I was a nothing to the ladies and while not quite the token punching bag for the ogres and jocks, I pretty much did everything to not be recognized for anything.

Well damned if you do as fame and fortune are smiling on craft brewers everywhere, leaving us (me if you prefer) fewer places to hide. I can barely have a beer in our tasting room without getting gawked at (woe is me. I get it). But that’s not even the worst of it. My mom was even recognized (she might recall flattered) walking the aisles at a Costco some 30 miles away from our brewery. In that fan’s defense, she did have a Lost Abbey shirt on.

I think it’s awesome to see how far we’ve come. And in many ways, it continues to amaze me how the biggest and most recognizable names in the business remain inherently approachable. I’m always in awe of Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head when we hang out. The dude shakes more hands than a stumping politician. And I am confident Jim Koch of Samuel Adams has politely mugged for more cameras than Wilt Chamberlain had sexual partners. 

Clearly Sam and Jim are some of the best at engaging the public. But it’s never been my strong suit. Since that first photo I was asked to take, I have struggled to be more available to those fans and supporters of our brewery. Given that it’s never been in my nature to want to be that spokesman, I’m surprised I haven’t developed a Howie Mandel-like phobia of being touched by strangers. Because I’ve got to tell you, sometimes these people make me nervous. 

Yet from here it’s easy to see how blessed craft beer consumers are. There aren’t many industries where you can go watch your idols at work. Pearl Jam doesn’t open up rehearsal space to fans. And last I checked Tiger Woods doesn’t invite rabid hackers to join him on the practice range. But brewers from smallest to largest continue to embrace fans at every turn because we’re as passionate as they are about beer. 

Recently, I developed a list of the types of fans we’re most likely to run into as we go about our daily lives here in the land of Lost Abbey captivity. You see, like the naturalists who have come to see the brewers in their natural habitat, I, too, have come to appreciate the craft beer fans in their surroundings. I have a feeling the gorillas in our zoo have developed a similar coping mechanism. 

In no particular order, here are the aficionados who have most recently visited our brewery.

The Gawker: Completely unable to muster the courage to say hello until it’s time to go and equally afraid to summon the strength to ask for a picture usually until their significant other does so on their behalf.

The Starer: The consumer who sips a beer slowly in shock almost that an actual brewer is near them with a fixed gaze on their beer glass defined by a laser beam focus like a gazelle realizing they are being stalked by a cheetah.

The Stutterer: A patron often rendered speechless by the thought, nay act of talking to the man.

The I Love You Man: A combination of high on the sauce and euphoria from having reached the state of Nirvana that apparently comes from A: drinking our beers at the source, B: consuming too many of them and C: wanting to share how amazing we are at this thing called beer.

The I Love You Woman: Similar to the I Love You Man but typically less inhibited and shy in front of the camera.

Punch-Drunk Patron: Can be a man or a woman but always a combination of an I Love You Person who wants the photo and bestows amorous tendencies that border on illicit behavior. Because as we all know grabbing your favorite brewer below the belt always makes for a better picture.

The Pointer: The patrons who in an instant channel their inner pointer and like a proud dog strike a pose in my direction as if to show friends they have just found the fallen duck.

The Double-Take Doubter: That can’t be him. I mean he’s just over there at the bar having a beer like it’s no big deal.

These are but a handful of the most common consumers I come into contact as a brewery ambassador. But as a nerd, I’m sure if the roles were flipped and I was a drinker visiting my favorite brewery, I no doubt would probably exhibit more than one of these traits. So this is me apologizing for being uncomfortable if you see me out in public. I love beer. I love my job. There are parts of it I am better at than others. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s 4 p.m. and I am being ushered back out front to the cameras. 

The post The Brewer in His Natural Habitat first appeared on All About Beer.

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As a brewery that is ever expanding, our goal is to build a team of effective employees. The hope is that a great nucleus of substantive employees will always be on our payroll. And for the most part, we have been very lucky to operate this way. However, there have been times where it’s a bit more Darwinian. Seemingly every time we stabilize the team of brewers and support staff only to suddenly find a new weakest link. As part of being “the boss” at our respective operations, I find myself from time to time needing to utter the words, “You’re fired.”

While I’m sure that some relish uttering those words, I do not. Letting employees go is never easy.

This column has been about the numerous challenges that a brewery owner faces behind the scenes, when the taproom closes to guests, long removed from the merriment of drinking the finished product in the glass. The more I thought about the business side of things, the more employee retention and the process for termination kept staring me in the face. I suppose it would be easier if we actually employed someone in Human Resources to keep a steady stream of candidates moving through our operations. We don’t.

When I was tasked with managing this brewery, I envisioned a staff of veteran employees. In my heart, I wanted to be one of those brewery owners who attracted A+ talent. Loyalty between employee and ownership would be the two-way street attracting people who desired to work for a progressive and imaginative brewery. After all, it’s the only kind of employee I would want. But the reality is, not all employees are actually wired that way.

I believe without fail we possess some amazingly brilliant employees. What’s also curious is that some of our longest-tenured employees are managers and not actually brewers on the production floor. In reviewing our payroll notes, fewer than half of our current 30 full-time employees have celebrated more than four years of continuous service with us.

I’ve come to learn our strength is in the collective. It’s not found employing major all-star-caliber brewers. No, our success has been our core employees overreaching each and every day. Watching our crew of employees achieve their tasks in unison is something anyone can be proud of, especially the brewer in me.

Championship teams always speak of the importance chemistry plays in the clubhouse. It’s often the one defining thing that separates good teams from great. But how do you go about fostering that in a brewery, especially one in its infancy? I’d argue that “trust” is probably the first word I would put on the table.

Since that first (and obvious) dismissal, I’ve terminated roughly 15 employees from our operation. In many ways, I think that number is too high. Some really never should have been hired in the first place (that’s on me). Others just didn’t care enough (that’s on them). And many were just aimless buffaloes who never separated themselves from the back of the herd and thus were collateral damage. Those terminations were simple and as businesslike as can be. “Thank you for your time and in accordance with the laws that govern in the state of California, we hereby terminate your employment with Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey.”

But those aren’t the terminations that gnaw at me. It’s the good people who made bad decisions that tug at my very core long after I uttered those famous last words. I continue to maintain that firing good people who made bad decisions is the suckiest part of my job. Thankfully our company handbook exists to protect the employee and employer. But it never ends well when we have to open that handbook and explain the cause for the separation.

If we have reached that point, we are most assuredly acting in the best long-term interest of the company and the other 30-plus employees and families who rely on our operations to exist. Since the day we opened Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey, I have repeated this phrase numerous times to anyone who will listen. At Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey, we are in the business of staying in business. It’s as simple a mantra as I can offer our employees. How well we collectively work at this across all facets of our operations ultimately will determine our longevity. And without fail, my first obligation is to my partners in this operation as the managing member.

However, I am often conflicted when it comes time to utter those words, “You’re fired.” Because I am also an employee of the company serving in the role of director of brewery operations, my allegiances can run deep to the employees who allow us to be so successful. Some days, I am forced to toe a not-so-pleasing line. And while I am not naïve enough to think I have been 100 percent successful, there is a fine line between being someone’s friend and being business foolish.

I have to imagine my story is pretty similar to many of the new startup operations who are throwing their doors open as we speak. Before opening this brewery, I had never been directly involved in hiring a staff, let alone knowing when it was time to create a new position. I had never worked to manage a payroll or had to make decisions about when to discipline versus terminate an employee. But the day we signed those documents, I became in charge of all that and more.

In eight short years, I’ve had more than my fair share of successes and failures in this regard. I’m not perfect, far from it, actually. I have made some very bad decisions in terms of hiring. But in all reality, I didn’t possess this skill set when we opened.

Now I make decisions for a living. Mind you, barley and hop choices seem so blasé when you can spend hours debating the merits of respective health-care plans and deciding on which vacation packages best suit the fiduciary needs of the company. But we’re still in business, which means I get to take some responsibility for a job almost done well. Of course many of those great employees we brought on board are a huge part of this success as well.

Where once I was the only one who could say, “You’re fired,” there is now a group of us who collectively wield this enormous power. It’s no longer just me reserving the right to utter those words. That doesn’t mean, however, I enjoy letting anyone go, no matter what the circumstances are that led to our parting of ways. And I am certain I never will.

This column appears in the July issue of All About Beer Magazine. Click here for a free trial of our next issue.

The post Difficult But Necessary Words first appeared on All About Beer.

While Joe’s interest in opening a beer bar was not earth-shattering (lots of people are throwing open the doors to them these days), what caught me off guard was that they had originally settled on another idea for the space before deciding it was going to be too expensive and risky for their investment. Now that they had shifted gears and were focused on this new model, he was hoping to bounce some ideas my way.

He and his partners were looking to “use” craft beer as a draw. In this way, they were hoping to create a beer-centric place with a great tap list and set of beers. For many publicans, this has been the classic playbook for success in a “if you build it they will come” sort of way. This tavern ownership group seemed a bit out of left field to chase a project like this because—while they are currently successful tavern operators—this notion of opening a craft beer destination bar in a beer-savvy town like San Diego without a well-defined concept seemed fraught with peril.

Our initial face-to-face meeting started a bit slowly as Joe spoke at length about the notions and thoughts for the space. He and his partners didn’t have a concept for the area beyond serving great beer and small plates of food. Craft beer was going to be the hook. But as he spoke, I couldn’t help but wonder what they were going to use for bait.

I thought back to my earliest memories of fishing with my dad, who instilled in me that no matter how great the fishing is, hooks without bait attract fewer fish. And that’s when it hit me. Craft beer on its own is not a concept. Maybe it can be in some incredibly small and freakish ways (places where the owner has made it his life’s mission to eat, sleep and drink nothing but these beers). Given how many successfully operate and build amazing establishments in this way, I know this to be possible.

I’ve also been in the business long enough to see craft beer has come a tremendous distance. Many of us trace our formative industry roots to those times with little to no craft. Outliers, all of us: the brewers, publicans and distributors who embraced a decision to make, pour or sell something different. That was our hook, and our craft was the bait of choice.

I suppose, had we been fishermen, one could argue that we were the purists casting dry flies.We practiced catch and release in so much as we knew there was a limited amount of fish in that river, and it was our job to ensure their livelihood. Everything we did went against the mainstream, Suddenly craft beer is everywhere, and these new anglers are finding great fishing in our once-isolated tributaries.

To many outsiders (and even long-time proprietors), craft now sits squarely as a concept on entrepreneurial drawing boards. It’s how they plan to overcome this sluggish economy and jump-start their restaurant sales. They use terms like “Point of Differentiation.” And every time they do, I struggle to think of craft beer being a concept.  I don’t think concept, I think community.

At some point, our craftsmen became a community. Craft beer found a core and a collective idealism. In that way, it resisted ever being a concept—a fad relegated to revolving-door status like Asian fusion. The collectivity of craft re-established the tidal line at the watered-down edge of our domestic beer shoreline and moved it many feet from the lowest line it had reached. In 30 short years, craft beer resolutely moved a receding baseline from blasé to bold and in doing so baited the very hook of consumption needed to catch drinkers who may never have turned to beer.

Right now, the fishing is so great the fish are proverbially jumping into boats. Skippers everywhere are turning to craft and trolling the waters with new concepts aimed squarely at the very water we have protected all these years. We appreciate their enthusiasm, and we cautiously embrace our new captains as long as they too navigate the waters with the same overreaching ubiquity of expression rather than a lack of it.

But here we are in a place where suddenly craft beer has evolved. And I’m feeling like it’s our duty to ensure they don’t Gilligan the crap out of this “concept.” We have to ensure that everyone is still working together in a catch-and-release sort of way. I left my meeting with Joe with thoughts of how to help steer their ship and project. In an email, I played the history card, retelling the stories associated with the mighty kings and queens of the sea who helped chart the very fertile grounds we continue to fish.

In its infancy, craft beer was a choice. They needed to know how crazy it was when Fritz Maytag made a seemingly idiotic choice to buy an ailing Anchor Brewing. Of course, there was Ken Grossman eschewing convention by adding “zesty” Cascade hops to an ale-based beer before anyone knew how great those hops tasted (let alone what a pale ale was).

It was Dave Keene opening his now-legendary Toronado beer bar in the Lower Haight of San Francisco and offering Chimay Red when few had a clue about the monks of Abbey de Notre Dame. I asked Joe to imagine how different our craft beer community would look if Larry Bell and Sam Calagione had decided to be less eccentric and more on center. Growing their respective breweries from 1-barrel systems to nearly 200,000 barrels per year is an amazing pair of success stories. Each charted his own course, and each continues to be an exceptional captain.

I hoped Joe and his partners would understand that none of these people who went first and found success treated beer as a concept. It’s true they found craft beer as an incredibly opportunistic way to explore brewing in methods and expressions of flavors others were not. And while it wasn’t solely a noble pursuit of flavor they sought, many of them have become the kings and queens of craft beer royalty that we celebrate and have feted for their collective success in angling when the seas and streams of craft beer were far less plentiful.

Fishing is not a concept. Hunting and gathering fish for survival, now that’s a concept. Without food, one becomes hungry. But fishing? It’s a pursuit. It’s a lot like craft beer. There are many rivers, streams and oceans teeming with fish. It remains up to us to practice sustainability if we’re going to ensure the legacy these kings and queens have created.

Ultimately, my advice to Joe was simple. Welcome to the amazing community of craft beer.  Join us at the river’s edge where many craft beer lovers continue to cast their lines. Be appreciative and respectful of the grounds you’re on. And if nothing else, remember, the fishing is WAY better if you refrain from calling craft beer a concept. Doing so just causes the other fishermen to become upset.

The post Craft Beer is Not a Concept first appeared on All About Beer.

Essentially his advice was to get over it. Every business should do whatever it takes to hire the best talent, even if it means we actively pursue our next brewer in Chico, Santa Rosa or Paso Robles. For him, we should be vigilant and always in the business of being in it to win it.

I understood his position, but given the number of newly opened breweries or breweries in planning, there is an enormous (almost unhealthy) number of employees leaving their current jobs. It has me wondering, What is the responsibility of the employer to provide for its employee ,and what in return is required of the employee in exchange for this security?

Like many owners, I zealously point out the amount of training and specialized information that is acquired working at our operation. We’re not solely in the business of making widgets here. As a whole, craft brewers operate incredibly diverse facilities, and getting new employees up to speed is not the simplest of tasks. I’m sure I am not alone in this sentiment.

Losing key employees is inevitable no matter what business you’re in. And I’m sure it will always be a part of our industry as well. But there’s a dirty little secret facing those of us running medium- and larger-sized breweries. There’s a real lack of available talent for all of us to grow at the pace that the industry is trending.

As such, there’s a premium being placed on acquiring trained and proven brewery personnel as larger startup operations and rapidly expanding smaller breweries continue to expand at breakneck speeds. Employee retention has become a challenge, to say the least. Perhaps there is a code associated with this acquiring of talent, but if there is one, no one seems to be talking about it.

Recently we lost an employee to another new brewery in town and had a near-miss with another. Nothing shocking there; the number of breweries in San Diego has doubled in the past three years. Seemingly, there are opportunities for brewers young and old to examine their current positions and jump ship if a more interesting opportunity arises.

We’ve lost more than our fair share of brewers over the years. But it wasn’t losing this employee to another brewery that chapped my hide. Rather, it was the manner in which the job was solely offered to one of our employees without a posting for it being created. In that way, Brewery X went fishing in our pond without asking permission. That’s called poaching. And I promise you it won’t be the last time it happens.

To my knowledge, neither of these jobs was ever posted on Probrewer.com or any number of other sites where postings of this kind would be found. I’m familiar with this style of hiring, because we were guilty of behaving this way one time in our youth as well.

Stone Brewing Co. employs many great people who fulfill a wide range of duties. And many of them have quietly inquired about working for us. We have only hired two employees from this company since opening our doors, and while there has been ample opportunity to hire others, we have ultimately stayed away from doing so. Why? Mostly because Stone found them, hired them and trained them to be exceptional employees, and they deserve to reap what they have sown.

But there are many days when I think about how easy it would be to just point out the personnel we need and whip out my company checkbook to pay for them. Is this doable? Sure thing. Would it be in our best interest to hire some of them? Without fail, because they have been a part of a very successful operation and would immediately add value.

It makes sense. When a smaller brewery hires an employee from a larger, more established facility, it lends instant credibility. But at what cost has to be asked. Should the larger breweries in town need to look over their shoulders each time someone else needs a well-trained brewer?

Perhaps we as larger brewers are expected to have attrition rates and lower returns on our investments? I suppose one could argue that if we were exceptional businesses focused solely on our employees, we would never lose any of them. But that’s a hollow argument at best.

This past summer I read a couple of great books on business management. They each affirmed similar notions. It is paramount for growing companies to be diligent in your hiring practices, and most importantly when scaling a business, it’s often easiest to look to your neighbor for the person you need to assist you in your growth. But that is not always in your best interest.

So what are our policies at Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey as it relates to H.O.P.E? First and foremost, our policy is that all job openings must be posted. This way, there cannot be a whisper or notion of poaching. Have we always had this policy? No, and when we hired that employee from another brewery, it was made abundantly clear to me that professional courtesy dictated minimally a posting as a way of announcing our needs.

Beyond creating a posting and not specifically targeting one single individual, we also have developed a policy that states we will not have more than two employees on our payroll who previously worked at the same brewery. Is two an arbitrary number? Perhaps it is, unless you happen to own the brewery where those two brewers came from. Currently we have two brewers on staff who interviewed with us while being employed at North Coast Brewing in Fort Bragg.

When we post our next job opening, I can assure you we will not entertain a brewer from this facility, as we don’t believe it should be a proving ground for our entire staff. What does this rule accomplish? Two things mostly. Chiefly it reassures the owner of that brewery that the next time we post for an opening, they won’t be losing another brewer. Secondly, it keeps us from having too many employees on site from a particular region or operation.

These two rules are realistically the only two guiding us right now in terms of our growth. Have we ever published this information? No, but it is something we use to frame our decisions. I’m certain we’re not alone in having standards for hiring and talent acquisition, but understanding what basis everyone is using might clear up some of the confusion.

Beyond these two principal rules, we don’t have a whole bunch of other rules when it comes to H.O.P.E. Like many breweries, we have needs as well. If we announce our needs and have a process for not shopping for new brewers in one proven place, then the rest should take care of itself. If a currently employed brewer makes it through our open interview process and is the best fit for our position, we will hire that person provided he or she gives the current employer enough notice before leaving.

None of this is unique to our industry. However, not many industries have thrived as long as ours on a deeply rooted spirit of collaborative courtesy. I believe there should be rules. Simple ones that are truly in line with collaborative courtesy and not slash-and-burn, do-what-you-have-to-do methodologies.

The post Poaching Brewers first appeared on All About Beer.

It was 9:45-ish and I had committed to meeting some friends for beers at Brasserie Cantillon “around” 10 a.m. I was hoping they would share my affinity for being nearly on time. I don’t believe in watches, and when it comes to drinking with friends, there are two things that I believe in wholeheartedly. First and foremost, no one is ever late as long as he shows up. Second, when being led like the proverbial horse to water (OK, beer) there is only one option: Drink up! (See Friday night and one last Duvel.)

Drinking with all manner of friends has instilled in me these simple beliefs—life is an approximation, and therefore when traveling (especially abroad) we should all expect less timely precision and embrace ambiguous opportunity. These beliefs are the result of many a morning spent patiently waiting for a drinking partner to show up. In support of a harrowed morning like that Saturday, I have come to also understand there may be no better way to get back on that horse than to drink a beer that smells like one.

I had arrived solo into Brussels on Wednesday and found the brewing community was buzzing more than usual. Tons of American distributors, sales reps and consumers were in town for the Festival of Belgian Beers, held each September in the Grand Place, the central square of Brussels. I, too, was there to see the festival up close and personal.

Though I was traveling alone, I knew there would be a cadre of familiar faces to bump into near and around the Grand Place. Less than an hour into my meandering, I ran into a stateside crew including my friend Terry Cekola, who runs Elite Brands, our Denver-based Colorado distributor. Moving from cheery beer tent to cheery beer tent in the September shadows of the Grand Place, we hatched a plan to spend Saturday doing the only thing that brewers and distributors are really good at—planting our collective asses at breweries and drinking.

I relayed to her that my personal goal for Saturday was to have no plan save starting the day at Brasserie Cantillon. I’ve wet my whistle enough in Brussels to know that letting the oceans of Belgian beer carry me whichever direction the winds of drinking blow is often the damn finest Saturday plan.

I was scheduled to meet them “around” 10 a.m. Apparently, they were a more punctual Breakfast Club than I, leaving me to play the role of the roguish Judd Nelson in my tardiness. I arrived at Cantillon to find that Terry and friends had secured a table and with numerous empties littering the table. Things were progressing well.

I collected a bottle of Saint Lamvinus and approached their table, then sat and chatted about the beer, knowing fully well their day was about to become much more dark and stormy. Suddenly, it started raining. And no, I’m not talking about the 3 degrees Celsius rain Brussels is famous for. Jean Van Roy, the brewer, had noted my arrival and began showering our table with untold treasures and bounty from the depths of the brewery. First to hit the table was the yet unreleased batch of Fou’ Foune (Cantillon’s lambic with apricots added).

Hours passed and beers not available to the patrons around us kept landing on our table as “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” played over and over in my head. My newfound drinking compatriots could not believe the generosity on display from our host.

Cell phone cameras captured each new arrival at the table as each snapshot and Instagram teased social media channels, taunting our friends back at home. With each passing shower (new bottle), jealousy with a chance of pure envy accompanied our hashtags and photos sent to the Internet. And that, my friends, is one of the best parts of being a brewer.

With nearly 20 years of personal brewery visits and impromptu arrivals at our brewery, I have been the recipient as well as giver of overreaching hospitality hundreds of times. It’s part of the brewers’ code that we treat each other with the highest hospitality and accord. With every new bottle of Cantillon to hit our table, my Breakfast Club friends agreed, being held hostage by a gracious host was a great plan. And somewhere after bottle No. 8 arrived, my drinking buddies knew this was not going to be an average Saturday in Brussels.

We strolled from Cantillon to our next agreed-upon destination. We would spend some time at a local watering hole known simply as Moeder Lambic, relaxing and drinking other fantastic beers made in Brussels (namely those of Brasserie de la Senne).

As our second beers arrived, my friend Jean Hummler, one of the owners of Moeder Lambic, raced to the table, ensuring our visit would be met with the highest level of reciprocity. He had been contacted by Jean Van Roy at Cantillon seemingly on a Belgian Hospitality Bat Phone and had scurried to his location to guarantee we would not leave lacking.

He summoned for a plate of meat and cheeses to make our acquaintance and ostensibly to prepare our bellies for the degustation that was being arranged in his head. What followed next was a dervish whirl of amazing libations landing in repetitive succession like jets hitting their mark on an aircraft carrier deck. It seemed like every 30 seconds another epic beer was presented, corks would fly, and a chorus of “oohs and ahhs” would ring out. Jean was on fire and my friends continued to marvel.

As we noshed on meat and cheese, Jean disappeared then reappeared from the cellar. He was toting two unlabeled cork-finished bottles that clearly held a level of specialness, as our attentive waiter was holding two decanters.

He proceeded to uncork both bottles and place them in separate decanters. He wanted to share two rare vintages of Cantillon with us. Our collective faces reflected the horse being led to water sensibility: “Twist our arms harder. …” Finding the aromatics of neither beer to his liking, he half panicked. Until now, his pace and delivery, while frenetic, showcased his skills serving as part maître d’ and part overly enthusiastic host. Yet horrifically at that moment the next beers weren’t ready and our glasses were emptying.

That’s when I came to learn of something new to me: the Patience Beer. I saw the trepidation and concern in his eye. His hand quivered, knowing his presentation had stalled and he needed to act quickly. He couldn’t serve the beer from the decanters, as they weren’t to his liking. He dared not allow us to sit there with our thirsts unslaked, and so it came to be that a round of Patience Beers was ordered up.

In a flash, he disappeared again. I half-jokingly announced to Terry that he was off to procure a round of “Patience Beers,” though I had never once uttered that term to describe a round of beers before. Thirty seconds later a tray of more Cantillon Gueuze landed on our table. And therefore we would excuse our incredibly gracious host for wanting just a bit more time for the beer in the decanters to open up and meet his standards.

I nearly yelled, “Hummler, you keep bringing rounds of Cantillon to the table and we’ll patiently wait all night for that decanter to speak to you!” (And for the record, yes, I understand how ridiculous it is to have a host serving more Cantillon as our Patience Beers, given it takes at least three years to make that beer as well.)

That Saturday, I acquired some new jargon for my beer-drinking lexicon. While I have never turned down a beer from a gracious host, this was the first time I can recall ever watching a round of beers being delivered by said host with the express purpose in mind of forcing an already captive audience of drinkers to remain engaged, all the while knowing the decanted beers needed just a wee bit more time.

A funny thing happened as we sipped on the Patience Beers. A Macy’s Thanksgiving Day-style balloon parade broke out on the main street right outside Moeder Lambic (I maintain Jean dialed 911 on the Balloon Parade Bat Phone in a “release the hounds” stalling moment of clarity.) As we sat there and sipped our Patience Beers, reveling in a fantastically unplanned Saturday, a fantastically planned thing happened. It stopped raining.

The ceremoniously decanted beers suddenly opened up, and both were deemed ready by our more-than-gracious host. I learned that Saturday that Patience Beers have a magical quality about them. And everyone who practices skilled beer hospitality ought to know when to embrace them. As quickly as it had started, the balloon parade ended, allowing our attention to be diverted back to the beer at hand that Jean had waited to pour for us.

And that, my friends, is how I came to spend a Saturday afternoon doing what brewers do, all the while acquiring a new device in my hospitality repertoire that I look forward to using for many years to come. The Patience Beer is here to stay. I can’t wait to spring it on some of my most favored brewer friends when they visit us. I guess it’s time for our brewery to go ahead and invest in our own decanters. It would be a shame to not present Patience Beers with the proper Belgian decorum they deserve.

The post Patience Beers first appeared on All About Beer.

But he thinks my personal trigger may have come three years ago at a chance meeting with a Captain Jack Sparrow look-alike and his busty beer wench who attempted to hijack our Great American Beer Festival (GABF) booth (as costumed volunteer pourers). What? They have pirates at a beer festival? I guess I’m the only brewer who didn’t get the memo that pirates love their craft beer.

This couple arrived at our Lost Abbey booth for their Thursday night shift as our volunteer beer pourers. I was at once equally stunned and appalled. Mind you, their outfits were incredible. But I swore as they grabbed pitchers and started to pour beer in our booth that I was being “Punked.” Clearly, someone had put them up to this and I was being videotaped.

They were a nice enough couple in many ways, but in others they were just so very wrong. Call me a beer purist (I prefer the term brewer), but I reserve costumes for Halloween and an occasional thematic party to celebrate someone “going over the hill.” But as a brewer, I have little patience for costumes and beer. Makes me old I guess, but that’s the nature of this old-school beast. Back in 1994 when I attended my first GABF, it had a far less Hollywood feel to it, with the exception of writer Michael Jackson sipping beers on the festival floor.

Since that day, my understanding of beer festivals came to be that at each event I would meet another bearded fat guy rocking vintage Jerry Garcia-inspired tie-dye comparing notes on a beer with his buddy in white socks and Birkenstocks. Their friend notebook guy was never far behind, scouring the pages of his three-ring binder to determine if he had ever encountered said beverage. (Now there’s an app on our smartphones for that.) Lastly, someone in their party would inevitably be dropping crumbs from his pretzel necklace like Hansel and Gretel seemingly trying to find their way back to their favorite brewery booth.

Fast-forward to just about any beer event today and these old timers are still there, but they are heavily outnumbered by new consumers who better understand that convenience-store offerings also include Slim Jims and cheddar cheese sticks, thereby diversifying their arms-length food options. In doing so, they have ushered in a new era of beer festival necklaces.

Thankfully these newer and more culinarily diverse beer festivals now also include attractive millennial females, albeit many act like nervous pet owners tethered to their ever-present douche bag boyfriends, who were overserved by the bar they left before getting in line for the beer festival. Still, many of them travel in packs of friends who are incredibly passionate about great beer. Their knowledge of beer even outshines three-ring binder guy because they grew up with these beers in their refrigerators and attended beer festivals with their parents. We love these people. At least we love their consumerism.

But I am also aware there is an underbelly of brewers out there pining for the days of old. This past June, brewer’s registration for the GABF opened on a sleepy Tuesday morning. Within two hours, all the slots for the festival floor as well as judge-only beers had been filled. Last year, it took six days for these slots to be gobbled up. Many stalwarts of the festival and some of the most previously decorated brewers were left holding nothing but air and a decidedly bitter inability to participate in this year’s festival. I will miss seeing them and cheering their amazing beers earning medals.

Since its humble beginnings in Boulder some 31 years ago, this now-Denver-based festival has grown into a giant three-day spectacle capturing the imagination of over 50,000 attendees. There is nothing simple about an event of this scale. It requires tons of beer, ice and volunteer labor to make it happen. And that’s where our man Jack Sparrow and his lovely beer wench come into play. Was it wrong for them to show up and support craft beer in a costume? Maybe if like me you claim old school?

The post Diagnosing the Grumpy Brewer first appeared on All About Beer.

During the nine months that the brewery survived, I came to meet new people and develop relationships that remain with me today. It’s those friendships that make the industry of craft beer as strong as it is. Collectively, we share a passion for making amazing liquid, and oftentimes this enthusiasm manifests itself in collaborative efforts between like-minded brewers.

This notion of brewers getting together and sharing ideas on recipe development would actually appear to be a recent phenomenon. Last time I checked, the guys making Budweiser and Coors Banquet Beer haven’t convened annually in the hopes of creating the ultimate lawn mower lager. In their defense, they may be waiting for hell to freeze over. That would appear to be the ultimate reason for the mountains to turn from blue to red.

Each brewer has his or her reasons for working on a collaborative project. When I approach these opportunities, I’m drawn to them like musicians sharing a love for sitting in and riffing through a part of someone else’s jam session. I rarely look to be the lead on the project and prefer to be a traveling artist collaborating at someone else’s facility so I can see how things are done outside our environment.

I’ve collaborated on over 15 different beers now with friends, acquaintances and even people I’d never met before. Each of those productions has given me a chance to explore other breweries, foster new friendships and create awareness for our brands. Traveling to other corners of the globe to brew a new recipe continues to be one of my favorite parts of my job (especially if that travel takes me to Maui, as it did last winter).

There isn’t a published set of rules for collaborating on beers, but there are a few things I consider before agreeing to make bedfellows with another brewery. First and foremost, I believe with conviction there needs to be a legitimate reason for collaborating. Without this, you have no story, and interest in the project will be tepid at best.

During a judging session at the 2007 Great American Beer Festival, while seated next to Hildegard van Ostaden of Brouwerij Leyerth (Urthel), she and I hatched a plan to collaborate on a low-alcohol saison under The Lost Abbey brand. We knew in nine months San Diego would play host to the Craft Brewers Conference. As such, many of the best brewers in the world would be visiting (including Hildegard) and looking to experience our brewing culture. She came to our brewery armed with a wealth of brewing knowledge I have never possessed. Spending eight hours working on a brew together allowed us to converse in depth on some ideas I wished to inquire about.

The recipe was quite simple to work out. Hildegard hoped to brew a saison with no spices in a straightforward manner. Given that The Lost Abbey produces Red Barn Ale (a spiced saison) year-round, this was a great side project for the brewery. Her husband, Bas, created the artwork that adorned the label. We call it the Dom DeLuise label here at the brewery, as Bas really played up my strongest features …

Ten years ago, collaborative beers were less commonplace than they are today. The landscape has changed, and the shelves are now littered with these kinds of releases, I’m left wondering if we have hit a proverbial wall in an almost Grammy-fication of collaborative beers.

Each year, we know that the Grammy Awards show will feature a night of artistry and even some unconventional unions of musicians. Some will seem incredibly natural, like Santana and Rob Thomas, and others more fraught with peril (Milli Vanilli anyone)? While not my first Grammy Awards show memory, I clearly remember that February night in 2001 when Marshall Mathers (Eminem) took to a thundering and rainy stage to perform a version of his hit “Stan.”

He was joined that night by Sir Elton John, who accompanied Eminem in a show of unity. As an openly gay male, John sat in to debunk the rumors of hate swirling around The Marshall Mathers LP release. Their duo still rings as one of the best collaborative musical performances I have ever seen. But most importantly, their performance mattered. It resonated and it found legacy. To me, the essence of a great collaboration should also cause a group of people to work together, hopefully finding meaning in a shared experience, all the while creating an exceptional opportunity for the audience.

And while I’ve been around the collaborative brewing block once or twice even in Belgium, I’m no brewing moped. Rather, I prefer to believe I’ve become a seasoned and selective partner who knows what he is looking for. Of course, we all have to start somewhere. For me, the year was 2002, and like many I was a young ambitious brewer when I collaborated on my first beer. Some local brewer friends and I got together to brew a German-style stein beer. This method of using super-hot rocks to heat the wort was a first in San Diego and certainly told a great story.

Some seven years later, I built on that same process and improved it when I invited Tonya Cornett (then of Bend Brewing Co.) to collaborate with Port Brewing Co. on a new spring release named Hot Rocks Lager. In launching Hot Rocks Lager, we were able to bring back the super-heating of black granite rock addition to a batch of beer and retell the story of how the process came to be. Our brewers love this beer, and the process of super-heating rocks and caramelizing wort continues to be one of the most interesting things we do here at the brewery.

Tonya and I divided the recipe in half. She was tasked with creating the grain bill as I worked on the hops and tweaked the fermentation to take advantage of my understanding of our brewery processes. In doing so, we brought together a shared idealism, and the resulting beer has become one of our most award-winning recipes (a lager no less). If you’re keeping score at home, that’s one for Collaborations and zero for the Duds.

The role of collaboration is complicated. Sometimes it’s educational. Often, it can be technical if a smaller brewery works with a larger, more sophisticated brewery. It can be celebratory or even improvisational. There are few rules for collaborative brewing, but singularly the one that guides me is that too many cooks in the kitchen can yield less than ideal results. This happened to me and some of my best brewing friends once in Chico, CA.

A group of us worked to produce a heritage lager in a sort of “Esprit de Saint Louis” sort of way. It featured wild rice, purple potatoes and even some “beachwood” collected from both the shores of Delaware and San Diego. All told, the beer turned out fantastic. Yet it really didn’t “do” anything.

So we were ushered to a super-secret lab where we played around with all kinds of concentrates and natural additives. Ultimately some carrot juice and cucumber essence jumped in to support the lager. As we set out to improve the beer, the cooks in the kitchen crossed our fruit and vegetable streams in a disastrous those-ingredients-are-better-left-for-salad kind of way. With apologies to Stevie Wonder, I learned that unlike ebony and ivory, cucumbers and carrots do not always go together forever in perfect harmony …

Thankfully, there are more successes than misses, and collaborative beers are here to stay. They present the consumer with amazing opportunities at every turn. What remains to be seen is how many duds the shelves can support before there is a rejection of the artistry. I know that we’re not done with our collaborations here at the brewery, and we’ll continue to be selective about whom we partner with and hope the rest of our craft brewer brothers and sisters follow an equally rooted example.

The post The Perfect Harmony of Collaboration first appeared on All About Beer.