McGrath Karen McGrath - Brew your business: the ultimate craft beer playbook

Brew Your Business

Brew Your Business

The Ultimate Craft Beer Playbook

Karen McGrath, Regina Luttrell, M. Todd Luttrell, and Sean McGrath

Rowman & Littlefield

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

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Copyright 2018 by Rowman & Littlefield

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: McGrath, Karen, 1965 editor.

Title: Brew your business : the ultimate craft beer playbook / [edited by] Karen McGrath, Regina Luttrell, M. Todd Luttrell and Sean McGrath.

Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017030928 (print) | LCCN 2017032972 (ebook) | ISBN 9781442266834 (electronic) | ISBN 9781442266827 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: BeerUnited States. | Beer industryUnited StatesManagement. | Entrepreneurship. | BrewersUnited States.

Classification: LCC TP577 (ebook) | LCC TP577 .B739 2017 (print) | DDC 663/.30973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017030928

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Foreword

V irtually everyone that I speak with who is a homebrewer or a craft beer aficionado has at some point wondered what it would be like to go pro and be involved, in some capacity, with a brewery or brewpub. If you have been brewing beer at home for a long time (for me over twenty years before I took the plunge) or if you enjoy todays fine craft beers, the following thought has probably crossed your mind: Imagine if we had our own brewery? How great would it be having people drinking our beer and really enjoying it?

With Brew Your Business: The Ultimate Craft Beer Playboo k, almost every area of the business of brewing beer is addressed. Through various interviews with industry professionals, the people who are making their dream a successful reality on a daily basis, you can actually learn the dos and donts from experienced people who have gone through the entire process of a brewery from concept to opening day and on to present day.

When I decided to give it a shot and open my brewery, Helderberg Mountain Brewing Company in East Berne, New York, I didnt have a playbook to give me insight on such a variety of subjects that are part of running a professional brewery. Its a lot more than just brewing beer. A lot moretrust me!

The beer does outshine all else; dont get me wrong. If you dont brew good beer, you can forget about everything else. That is, after all, why people are at your door. For craft breweries, fresh beer crafted using locally sourced ingredients and brewed by local people is what excites beer drinkers nowadays. This has become something that more and more people are seeking out. When my friends and I started brewing beer at home, we quickly realized that we could produce a pretty good product with the flavors we desired. It was somewhat addicting, I must admit, when we were enhancing the flavors, aromas, or mouthfeel qualities of a beer that we liked or toning down things we didnt. Most of all, the addiction was rooted in the anticipation of tasting the beer when it was ready! Sometimes it worked out, and sometimes it didnt, but that was what kept us coming back for more. Of course, while sitting around and having a few of our handcrafted brews, the phrase imagine if we had our own brewery was spoken in many conversations. Winning Best of Show several times in local homebrew competitions only enhanced our thoughts and dreams. Today, brewing professionally, I still approach each brew day and beer with the same level of excitement! The goal is brewing quality beer which is full of flavor and using as many local ingredients as possible; and this sentiment is shared and executed on a daily basis by craft brewers. In my opinion, this is why the craft beer industry is so successful and growing exponentially.

It is the craft brewers and the craft beer industry that amaze me, especially the brotherhood among brewers in the professional community. I could pick up my phone and call almost all local brewers with a question or a request for an ingredient I may not have and they would go out of their way to assist me as best they could. We are all in the same business but all are working together to achieve the same goal: quality beer. I dont know of another industry in which this sort of camaraderie occurs.

Helderberg Mountain Brewing Company has been part of many collaboration beers with other breweries and we have many more planned. Having several breweries joining together to produce a beer is becoming very popular and provides insights not achieved by merely brewing alone. Each brewer has his or her unique set of ideas or brewing techniques and collaborating on beers from time to time helps to spread these ideas and brewing techniques, as well as additional knowledge between and among brewers. This knowledge sharing helps make everyone better at the craft. And, consumers are also winners, because a lot of these collaboration beers are unique offerings that the breweries themselves do not produce on a regular basis; they may be one-offs. I personally believe that the networking and collaboration between and among breweries is a major reason for the success of the craft brewing industry. There are so many incredible beers brewed by very talented people. Spreading this brewing knowledge and working together to achieve the common goal of producing flavorful, high-quality local beer makes everyone better, for sure!

So, about the authors, Karen and Sean McGrath and Regina (Gina) and M. Todd (Todd) Luttrell, and why I support their efforts. Karen and Gina are professors of communications at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, and Syracuse University respectively, and, together, they have authored professional articles, chapters, and one other book. I can honestly say that they are thorough and detailed when it comes to researching material for each project. In this case, a good portion of the research had to do with visiting many successful breweries and conducting interviews with industry experts. These informative interviews and subsequent morsels of knowledge from the pros are interspersed throughout this book. In addition, Karen and Gina did have able-bodied assistants who were more than willing to help out with the research required for the book, their husbands, Sean and Todd. Sean was adamant about dedicating as much time as was necessary to make the book extremely informative; it is a book about beer after all. Sean not only assists me at my brewery on many brew days but also attends brew festivals or local tastings with me, pouring samples, talking beer, and more. I believe this experience qualifies him as an able-bodied assistant. Todd has a background in business administration, science, and biochemistry and likes to try new beers, all of which enhanced the chapters through his expertise in each area. He too is an able-bodied assistant.