Magee Tony - So you want to start a brewery? : the Lagunitas story

A Note to the Reader: This book was first published in a limited edition in 2012; it has here been revised and expanded.

Copyright 2012, 2014 by Tony Magee

All rights reserved

Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN 978-1-55652-562-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Magee, Tony.

So you want to start a brewery? : the Lagunitas story /Tony Magee.

pages cm

Includes index.

Summary: So You Want to Start a Brewery? is equal part memoir, narrative, and business story; an illuminating and hilarious account of a one-of-a-kind, made-in-America journey that culminates with the success of Lagunitas Brewing Company, one of the nations most popular and enduring craft beer brands Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-1-55652-562-9 (paperback)

1. Lagunitas Brewing Company. 2. BreweriesCaliforniaHistory. 3. MicrobreweriesCaliforniaHistory. 4. Beer industryCaliforniaHistory. I. Title.

HD9397.U54L34 2014

338.76634209794dc23

2014015326

Interior design: Jonathan Hahn

Cover design: Marc Whitaker / MTWdesign.net

Printed in the United States of America

5 4 3 2 1

I NDEX

I t was originally intended as a simple reconnaissance mission in the Quang Phree Highlands off the western trail, far from any sort of modern convenience. We werent working for either side this time; we were only trying to get back something that had been lost. I was squatting with my lunch in a fecund culvert and rooting through my sad rucksack, looking frantically for a pen that I had borrowed from the now-irate old villager, whose skeletal arms held a rusty Browning Automatic Rifle two inches from my right temple.

The day smelled of oermania and the sun was a fat orange cat in heat stuck in razor wire. When I first met this old man a few days earlier, Id noticed that he had a tremor in his sclerotic right hand, and now that tremor was far more unnerving than his temper. It was unavoidable that Id had to borrow his pen to scrawl out a warning note to my partner in this thing, and given the circumstances at that point, my loyalty had been somewhat mis-invested. In retrospect, I had no real reason to believe that my artful partner had any inclination to live up to his end.

For a moment I forgot all about the squinty, gangrenous old man with the rifle because I was distracted by some Moroccan drumming coming from the caf at the end of the block. I began to think about the Moroccan drumming, but this didnt last long, because I dont know much about Moroccan drumming. Then I thought about my missing partner and wondered if he had anything to do with the old mans quavering question to me: Phra da manu katche gua?! In all truth, I didnt know what to say, and not even a moment later it didnt matter, because I was suddenly lying facedown in my bowl of phra gui with little tofus of old-man brain and chunks of skull in my hair.

I heard the rifle being kicked away and up the alley as I wiped the phra gui from my one good eye and stared up at a towering figure holding a .50-caliber pistol. He was dark, lewd, sinewy, and, had I been anyone else, terrifying. This was how I first met T.M., and it is a little bit more than ordinarily grating to say that his behavior wasnt unexpected. There was an odor about him that was reminiscent of burning tractor tires, and I threw up a little bit into my mouth from it as I stood up and tried to catch my breath. He said something that sounded like, Come with me if you want some squid. To this day I think he meant to say want to live, but Ill never know for sure.

I raked a little more phra gui from my hair and scooped the old-man brain out of my left ear as I followed T.M. back to town. The perspective from behind him gave me a while to think about the bizarre gimp in his gait. It was a five-count gimp without the usual skitter-step on the third. Id known men with this particular quirk before, and I had tried to avoid knowing more of them, but it was too late in this instance.

I was asked to write the foreword to this book for two reasons. The first is not repeatable here, and the second is because the first reason was so heinous. I accepted for a third, less visible reason: I had known T.M. during the earliest phases of the start of his preparatory occupation dealing in Irish slaves for the German potato plantations, which devolved into a petty smuggling operation running designer scrunchies out of Lydllandick for the gray market Eastern European hair-extension trade.

It wasnt particularly dangerous work, but it was profitable, and in the course of it all, we were introduced to more than a few attractive and cooperative septuagenarian Polish bushas. For my part, it was all about the money and the bushas, but for T.M., there was more to it. Ill never know for sure, but something changed in him after working closely for so long in the same circles as the notorious Doctors Putchnik and Splam and their intensive underground work around the ideas of radical fermentation and extract-recovery research.

Up to this point, I had seen things in my own lifethings that keep meth-crazed housewives awake at night scratching and tearing at the skin of their pale underarm flesh, languid and bittersweet. Scenes that I would not repeat even in the darkest confessional to the most ribald Salvadorian priest. Scenarios and exchanges that are burned into my mind like gang brand tattoos and animal-cracker Velcro vest fasteners. I have heard sounds that make kittens purr and women give milk, and inhaled smells that inspire riches beyond the dreams of avarice. But I was not prepared for the visions that accompanied the fall from grace that led to the commencement of brewing on that dimly lit day in the ever-receding December 1993 in the back of the old Casa de Ricardo Building in the tortured hamlet of Forest Knolls, which borders on the equally cromulent village of Lagunitas, California, USA, NA, Earth, Sol, Local Group, Virgo Super Cluster, Space. But all of that would come later. Much later.

E MIL B. K ERPUTCHINIKINIKIPURAM N GORNQ -K ARABAKH , 1979

First Brewed in September, 1994

H ere, have a beer. It will make you right. Ernest said to Tarzan. Tarzan had never had the true beer before and Ernest knew this would not be his last. He drank the beer quickly. It was cold, and Tarzan knew this too. He looked at the beer coolly. Me Tarzan, you beer. Ernest looked at Tarzan and felt old. Vas iz schviss vit da old schtuff? Ernest and Tarzan turned to watch as Sigmund entered the room strangely. Sigmund, Ernest said, my old primitivo! Have a beer with us. Sigmund knew what Ernest meant and he could not bear it. They all had a beer, and it was good. Ernest said Do you remember how it was in Stinson with the running of the dogs and how we ate crullers and got drunk on the Lagunitas Pale and stole the grunion from the young girls at the Cafe de Sand Shekel? Sigmund thought of how Ernest could be cruel and he did not answer. He thought how only dogs were not cruel. And also how sometimes a cold beer was just a beer. Tarzan thought of nothing. They all ordered contuuzti del corratzo and spoke not of their big cigars.

EVERYTHING COMES FROM SOMEWHERE

T his is a memoir of starting a business. The business happens to be a brewery, which is good, because there is alcohol involved. Which can also be bad, but it makes things a lot more interesting. Ask anyone. I think its important to point out that this is not an autobiography; it is a memoir of the business and the things that were not so visible to the public but nonetheless went on. Small brewery goings-on are the subject of a lot of very cool conversations among beer lovers, but the sausage factory behind those goings-on is another story altogether.