Brewbound Podcast: Whale Watching with Finback Brewery’s Basil Lee

[00:00:00] Justin Kendall: Heading to CBC? Kick things off the day before The Brewbound's meetup at Love City Brewing in Philly, Sunday, April 19th from 5 to 7 p.m. Connect with beer industry leaders, grab a drink, and catch up with The Brewbound team. It's free to attend and walking distance from the convention center. Head The Brewbound.com slash lovecity.rsvp. And don't forget to catch The Brewbound team at booth 956 during CBC. Next on The Brewbound podcast, we talk Whale Watching, the festival with Finback Brewery's Basil Lee. Hello and welcome to The Brewbound podcast. My name is Justin Kendall and I am the editor The Brewbound and this is the Justin and Zoe show. Let's welcome in Zoe Licata. What's up, Brewbound reporter extraordinaire?

[00:01:00] Zoe Licata: Hello. It is very odd recording without Jess.

[00:01:04] Justin Kendall: I know there's a whole intro part that we can't do. So Jess is off this week, although you'll hear her on the featured interview this week. And that interview is with Ben Finback Brewery's Basil Lee. We're going to talk the Whale Watching Festival. A lot of plans that they have coming up, including a farm brewery and a new tap room in Long Island City. So stay tuned for that. But yeah, and this is the Zoe and Justin show until that point. With that, we should get into the plugs for what's coming up for you and I, which is also another Justin and Zoe show, which is BrewTalks in Nashville.

[00:01:44] Zoe Licata: Yes, we are heading over to Nashville for CBC and doing another BrewTalks session. So we have two main panels happening for that. It's going to be May 7th at Nashville Underground. We're going to kick off the event with a panel talking about the dichotomy between the trends of low and no alcohol and high ABV beverages. We're going to have Bill Shufelt from Athletic Brewing, Colleen Quinn from Greater Good Imperial Brewing, and Sam Calagione from Dogfish Head on that panel, which I get the pleasure of moderating. Then our second panel of the day, we're going to be talking about multi-state tap rooms, so expanding your brewery presence with different tap rooms. For that, we have Marcus Baskerville from Weathered Souls, Jeff Heck from Monday Night Brewing and Adam Charnak from High Wire Brewing.

[00:02:39] Justin Kendall: We also have a conversation with the National Finback Brewers Association that we're going to talk about their goals and vision for that new trade organization. And you're also going to be talking to the executive director of the Tennessee Craft Brewers Guild.

[00:02:52] Zoe Licata: Yeah, Sharon Creek and I will have a brief little chat at the beginning of the session just to get to know what's happening in Tennessee with craft breweries and latest like legislative challenges they're facing. So a nice little perk we've started with our brew talks is kind of checking in with local guilds and some of the proceeds from the event also go to the guild. So it's a nice little tying a bow on it, helping them out and hearing what that money is going to actually go to.

[00:03:19] Justin Kendall: Right. Tickets are available now, so you can go get those The Brewbound.com. With that, we'll get into this week's news. And this week's news sort of dovetails with what we're talking about at BrewTalks, because Athletic Brewing is the number 13 craft brewery by volume in the U.S. now, according to the Brewers Association.

[00:03:40] Zoe Licata: Yeah, we got today finally like our I don't know if you'd call this like Christmas Eve. This is like the the teaser before we get the actual production numbers. But Bart Watson shared the rankings today. And yeah, athletic really jumped up there. I mean, it was last year, was it when they were first in the top 50?

[00:04:01] Justin Kendall: Last year, they were number 27.

[00:04:04] Zoe Licata: So quite a big jump in just that one year. And that's helped by they just opened that brand new facility in Connecticut. So they've been able to do a bunch more production and increase their volume. So not surprising. And we chatted to Bill Shufelt a couple of weeks ago, just getting an update on them. And he kind of gave us a heads up that, yeah, be ready for our numbers from this past year. Cause they, they did really well.

[00:04:29] Justin Kendall: Yeah, there's a lot to take away from these rankings. And one of them is also Fiddlehead Brewing, our Craft Brewery of the Year last year, rocketed up, I believe, 13 spots as well or so to number 36 this year. Once you get out of that top 10, there's a lot of jockeying for position that goes on. And this year, Bells Brewery fell out of the top 10 because they were acquired a year ago by Kieran-owned Lion Little World Beverages, New Belgium's parrot and company. All the modifiers that we need to throw on there are caveats, but they're no longer on the list there. But yeah, they opened that up.

[00:05:11] Zoe Licata: Yeah, and we'll probably see a little bit of that again next year, too, because this is the last year that Stone is going to be on this list as they were acquired by Sapporo, the Japanese beer maker, this past year. And so this is the last time they'll qualify as a BA-defined craft brewery.

[00:05:30] Justin Kendall: Yeah. What jumped out at you from what you saw on this list so far, other than what we've already talked about?

[00:05:39] Zoe Licata: The thing that stood out to me the most was how many, and Bart Watson talked about this a little bit on, we had a press briefing today about how many of these breweries now are kind of a collection of multiple breweries. And we've talked about this on the last podcast too, there's the trend of breweries kind of joining forces to just share resources and sustain life. But I mean, there's a list that's included with this ranking that just shows you all the different companies that are a part of each of these larger parent companies. And it just it's getting bigger and bigger each year.

[00:06:15] Justin Kendall: Yeah, the footnotes are getting longer. as you try and suss this out. And to your point, the combination of Maui, which was the number 43 brewery in 2021, and Modern Times, the number 48 that year, in this Kraft Ohana platform placed number 28 this year. Also, Made by the Water, which is just several acquisitions and mergers with Faborg, Palmetto, Oyster City and Catawba. They just cracked the top 50. But even, you know, we talk about artisanal brewing ventures moving up a spot because Bell's dropped out. There's a collective, right? Anarchy's in the top 10. Duval Market with Firestone Walker and Boulevard. That's number four overall. So there are a lot of these combined things. I mean, even Harpoon jumped some spots this year, and I didn't even think, you know, when we were rushing to get this all pulled together, that Longtrail, yeah, they acquired Longtrail. So there's a lot of movement on this, but there's a lot of consolidation that we're seeing with it as well.

[00:07:18] Zoe Licata: Yeah. And some greater context to why you might see some of those people moving up in ranks. It might not necessarily be like one company itself is really increasing production, but they're just bringing on more people and more volume.

[00:07:32] Justin Kendall: Yeah. The other thing I would say about this list is it's going to change. These are preliminary numbers. And so like last year, I was trying to go back to last year's story and pull from that. And then I'm going through it and I'm comparing it to the new Brewer. And then I'm like, why are these numbers off? BrewDog reported late. So it shifted number 38 on or so in the list to tell you about the minutia of this. And I should show you the piece of paper that I was like scribbling notes on, which is, looks ridiculous. But yeah, I mean, this is subject to change, although I wouldn't expect a lot of change at the top, but in that, you know, 30 to 50 range, it might shuffle a little bit.

[00:08:17] Zoe Licata: Yeah. These are all mostly self-reported numbers. There's a mix of how people keep track of things. Take everything with a grain of salt, but the greater themes and bigger movements are going to stay pretty consistent.

[00:08:31] Justin Kendall: Yeah, and a few other notes on this before we get out of here. Breweries that meet the BA's independent and small brewer definition collectively produced 24.3 million barrels of beer in 2022, and they gained 0.1% share of the overall beer market, so they now claim 13.2 share by volume. And Bart Watson said that production is on par with 2021. I don't think he gave a percentage difference, did he? It was pretty like static.

[00:09:05] Zoe Licata: Yeah, we had heard like very early preliminary data from Bart and said that it was like less than one percent. It was like a point. I think the last number was point zero three or something percent. So it seems like it's relatively flat, but we don't have an exact number of what that was.

[00:09:24] Justin Kendall: Also per BART, the number of craft breweries in operation in 2022 reached an all-time high, 9,552, and that breaks out to 2,035 microbreweries, 3,418 brewpubs, 3,838 taproom breweries, and 261 regional craft breweries. And that number is, well, obviously it's up. And then the overall number of breweries in operation across the U.S. was 9,709, which was up from 9,384 in 2021.

[00:10:01] Zoe Licata: big jump, I mean, not massive, but still a pretty decent chunk considering that, you know, this time last year, Bart was saying, you know, 2022 is going to be kind of a big determining year for beer and looking at these like openings and closings numbers about whether those would stay pretty consistent. And they, they did relatively, I mean, he said multiple times that the gap between openings and closings is still getting smaller, but the amount of closings isn't at a scary spot right now where they're outpacing previous years.

[00:10:34] Justin Kendall: Yeah. Openings were 549 last year. Closings were 319. So still outpacing that, but those numbers are inching closer to being in line. And I mean, just anecdotally, we have seen a number of craft breweries closed this year. So, you know, we'll Whale Watching it to see what happens. And jobs up 9% year over year, direct jobs at breweries. So lots of little data points that were shared today.

[00:11:05] Zoe Licata: You can always rely on BART for that.

[00:11:08] SPEAKER_??: Yeah.

[00:11:09] Justin Kendall: Let's get into some other news of the week. And I don't want to spend very much time talking about Bud Light and what's going on there. You can get all that elsewhere. But what we've seen in the preliminary data from Nielsen IQ, which was shared earlier this week by Bump Williams Consulting, is that Bud Light took a little bit of a hit in the first week of the boycott following The conservative call for a boycott of Anheuser-Busch products, but mostly Bud Light following their, I don't know, what would you call it, like an activation with Dylan Mulvaney, who is an influencer who documents her life as a transgender woman on all social platforms?

[00:11:55] Zoe Licata: Yeah, her main platform has been TikTok, but this Bud Light post that she did, which was for March Madness, was on Instagram. So it got a bit of a wider audience, I think, because it's less specific with their algorithm. The numbers, I think, aren't too surprising because, again, this is the first week of the outrage. It's going to be the most extreme, I would think. But also, as Bumbley's Consulting pointed out, Bud Light has been recording declines before this was even happening. There's an uptick in those declines in this week compared to previous ones, but it's still nothing too outrageous.

[00:12:29] Justin Kendall: Yeah, it accelerated a little bit. We'll see what happens next week. These are off-premise comps. We don't know what happens in the on-premise. We only know anecdotal. We've only know anecdotal what we've heard from wholesalers. And I don't know. I mean, these things seem to come and go. We'll see. And the only other thing that was new with this is Anheuser-Busch's CEO, Brendan Whitworth, released a statement that said a whole lot of nothing and didn't mention Dylan Mulvaney at all, didn't mention a boycott at all, did not apologize, did not affirm support, and didn't really mention the impact that ABE employees have felt because they've been personally criticized online, they've been targets of attack. So just an odd, odd statement.

[00:13:20] Zoe Licata: Yeah, it was a very strange response that drew criticism from both sides of the conversation. So I don't really know what the strategy was there because it seemed to just, if anything, it just made things worse.

[00:13:33] Justin Kendall: It was to bring people together and they somehow figured out a way to bring everybody together but against them.

[00:13:40] Zoe Licata: Yeah, right. And this is like pointing against one of those things we've talked about a lot in the past, where like consumers, particularly younger consumers now, but I think it's become an overall trend. We don't want companies to be wishy-washy on things anymore. We want you to have a pretty solid stance on something. So when you're trying to kind of toe this line on something that people are, whether it's right or wrong, pretty passionate about, it's not going to go over well.

[00:14:09] Justin Kendall: You nailed it there. The only other thing that we could say about this is there's somebody trying to capitalize on this by launching a beer brand. Although there are a lot of questions about the legality of the operation that you can read in cranes. It's called Ultra Ripe Beer. There's an online video and you can get a six pack for what? $19.99 plus shipping. So around $30 and then they'll try and sell you a pint glass and a shirt to add on for another $25 or more. I did not order this product. This is purely research. This is purely research. But you and Jess called the phone number on this.

[00:14:54] Zoe Licata: Yeah, the the man who was promoting this ultra right beard left a phone number, which I guess goes directly to his personal cell phone and answered right away when just called and was I think, I think it's fair to say seemed a little overwhelmed by the situation where he was saying, you know, 50% of people love us for this and the other 50% in his words said, they want to burn our children. So I think he was overwhelmed by the responses, was hesitant to answer any of our questions about like where the beer is being made or how they're shipping their beer. And his reasoning was that he wants to give the brewery producing this beer more time to prepare in case anyone were to physically go to the brewery and any sort of incident happen. But as he admitted, you know, you have to put where you make the beer on the beer can. So people are going to find out eventually where this is being made. And he mentioned he has partners who know about the beer industry and are advising him on legally what he has to do to get this out there. But it seemed like very still early stages, not quite fully wrapping his head around everything quite yet.

[00:16:12] Justin Kendall: It's a novelty right now. This is not a product that's likely to be available in a Target, Walmart, Hy-Vee, Kroger, H-E-B. Maybe it will, who knows, but I doubt it. And so once you finish off that six pack, it's going to take you a while to get the next six pack shipped and the next six pack. And beer is heavy as we know, and not cheaply shipped. Let's get on to another piece of news, and that's Allagash has signed with Reyes Beverage Group in Southern California and parts of the Bay Area. And this is a product of the Breakthrough Beverage Group's acquisition of Wine Warehouse, which opened up things so Allagash could sort of review the market, see if they wanted to go with Breakthrough and Wine Warehouse in the future or if they wanted to switch wholesalers, which clearly they did. So they've chosen the Reyes Beer division Shauna Golden State accounts for nearly 10% of Allagash's annual volume.

[00:17:18] Zoe Licata: And the acquisition of Wine Warehouse, they just announced yesterday that this had officially closed.

[00:17:25] Justin Kendall: And you know what I'm going to say. You know what I'm going to say is the most important part of this story, and it's the only part of this story that really matters, which is Reyes, get Alligash White back on draft at Shea Jay, and that 10% volume number is going to tick up.

[00:17:43] Zoe Licata: especially in the month of December during Rebound Life.

[00:17:47] Justin Kendall: Absolutely.

[00:17:48] Zoe Licata: Well, I'm heavily in favor of this because I have never been able to experience Alligash at JJ because it was gone before I even started.

[00:17:57] Justin Kendall: Yeah. And then because of the pandemic and everything. Yeah. You got a raw deal. So help Zoe out. Help me out.

[00:18:04] Zoe Licata: I want Alligash coast to coast, please follow with me.

[00:18:09] Justin Kendall: You are also working on another California story, which is Anchor and the union talks there because their contract has come up. And where do things stand?

[00:18:20] Zoe Licata: Yeah, so things are at a bit of a standstill right now. Anchor started their union back in 2020, had their first contract start then, and it was a three-year contract, so it was expired in March of this year. And I talked to a couple of the spokespeople for the union, and they have alleged that they've been trying since July of last year to start negotiations for the new contract and leadership at Anchor and at their parent company Sapporo have delayed that process and did not really start negotiations till January, which the union thinks it's a little naive to think you can really put a union contract together in just a couple months. And as a result, the contract expired, the union decided not to extend it because there weren't certain safeties for them put in place, such as back pay. So if they, in their new contract, had better wages and things, Anchor had not guaranteed that they would get those new wages for the months that negotiations were going on. It's all still in the process right now. It doesn't seem like any extreme things are going to happen yet, but it is a little peek into how breweries are still trying to figure out how you have a union at a craft brewery and how you figure out contracts and things. And it seems like very civil between the union and Anker and everyone there. have said that, you know, there's no ill intent with these delays. It's just people are unexperienced with making a union contract and they don't really want to make the first move and are trying to feel everyone out. We'll have a piece up, should be this week, that's kind of just giving you some insight into what that process has been like. It's also complicated a little bit because Sapporo also just bought Stone, as we mentioned earlier, and that deal was happening right as the union was starting to ask for union negotiations. So there's a lot going on for Sapporo right now.

[00:20:27] Justin Kendall: And there are so very few craft breweries that are unionized out there. Anchor was one of the few. I think Fairstate is one that is. There's a union effort going on at Creature Comforts and they're getting pushed back there, but you can probably count most of them on one hand. And if not one hand, two hands.

[00:20:50] Zoe Licata: Yeah, and interestingly, some of the people who helped form the union at anchor also helped their state figure out their stuff. So it's definitely like a community effort and trying to just get craft breweries to understand unions more. But in the conversations we had, The guys were like, this is probably the most pro-union the country has ever been. So if there was ever a time for more craft breweries to figure out if they want a union or not, now is. I mean, we've seen things happen with Starbucks and stuff. So there's more union conversations happening. And the more places like Anchor open about how those conversations are going, the more transparent they are, the more other crafts breweries might be willing to figure it out on their own too. But I mean, I talked to Patrick, who is one of the shop stewards. So they're one of the union leaders at Anchor. And he was like, there were guys that were kind of old timers, been an anchor forever, and they were pretty against having a union to begin with. And now that they've seen how it's worked out the past couple of years, they're all for it. So there seems even within workers, there's a change in how they're perceiving how unions work and the benefits of them. So there's a shift in the air, but still very, very few breweries actually participating so far.

[00:22:13] Justin Kendall: Should we play a game of another round or tabbing out?

[00:22:16] Zoe Licata: Yes.

[00:22:17] Justin Kendall: All right. Let's go with this one. Heineken USA is launching a Red Stripe canned rum cocktail. You in on this or you out?

[00:22:28] Zoe Licata: I think I'm going to tab out. I think I'm going to close out. I'm a fan of the canned cocktails. I'll have to say this is a little biased. I just don't really like the can design at all. It's a little hideous to me. I feel like because Spirit Space RTDs are so big right now, you need to really make yourself stand out in some way, whether that's quality of ingredients or interesting flavors. This just didn't seem to have anything super specific about it that made it stand out, except for the ugly red stripe across the front.

[00:23:03] Justin Kendall: But how many rum can cocktails are out there now? I think that's the only reason that I might be in on this is there's not a lot of rum can cocktails that I've seen out there. Everything's either vodka or tequila based. And so I think that they have sort of a space to play here.

[00:23:22] Zoe Licata: That's fair. There isn't a lot of rum going on. It was vodka and now tequila is like the Whale Watching now. So there's less rum competitors.

[00:23:33] Justin Kendall: Molson Coors is extending its partnership with Coca-Cola to launch Peace Hard Tea as an FMV and that's coming out in September, 2023. How are you feeling about this one?

[00:23:46] Zoe Licata: I'll go another round.

[00:23:47] Justin Kendall: Really?

[00:23:48] Zoe Licata: Yes. Interestingly, because of the instant convenience channel strategy and how it connects to the existing PCT consumer. PCT is sold in already these 24 ounce cans, mainly in convenience stores like this is a just quick pickup item. And so I think those consumers are already in these locations and looking. So if they see, Oh, I'm, I enjoy PC. Here's a hard version. I think they'll be into it. We know single serve is doing really well right now. We know kind of higher ABV things is doing okay. So I think, I mean, this one's 5%, but it's still a larger serving size. I think it has potential and Molson Coors has a pretty good track record so far with these products, their partnership products with Coca-Cola. So They figured something out.

[00:24:40] Justin Kendall: You almost sold me on it. You almost sold me on it until the single 24 ounce. I think there's extra, you know, 4.8 ounces or so or whatever it is. It just kind of killed it for me. I'm old. I don't need 24 ounces of really anything other than water at this point.

[00:25:02] Zoe Licata: I mean, that's fair.

[00:25:03] Justin Kendall: Yeah.

[00:25:04] Zoe Licata: It's definitely a very specific consumer. It's also speaking to the like value trend that's going on right now. I mean, we still have all these weird beard trends where there's the mixed messages where, you know, people aren't trading down, but also want value. So it's, it's going to speak to some people and not. I'm being an optimist for once with this one.

[00:25:25] Justin Kendall: No, no, no. You can be an optimist. I'm a 45 year old white man. It's not all about me. And it shouldn't be at this point. I'm old. See, you know, like I said, 24 ounces are too big for me. So I sound like a baby.

[00:25:39] Zoe Licata: I mean, honestly, that's borderline too big for me as well. But I know some people out there who would definitely pick this up.

[00:25:47] Justin Kendall: How are you feeling about Spindrift launching Spike Strawberry Lemonade?

[00:25:53] Zoe Licata: I'm tabbing out mainly because I honestly forget about Spike Spindrift a lot, even though I should remember them. They're kind of like our neighbors, like they're regional, but I don't know. I think the time has come for these seltzer brands to just kind of slowly fall out.

[00:26:16] Justin Kendall: I think a lot of them have, because if you go to a lot of their Instagram pages or whatever social page, they haven't posted in like 30 weeks or something ridiculous.

[00:26:28] Zoe Licata: I don't think Spindrift is one, but this feels like a brand that should have launched two or three years ago, like with the lemonade trends and this hard seltzer trends like this feels really late to the game.

[00:26:42] Justin Kendall: Yeah, we're going to do a final final. Molson Coors is trying to teach AI how to drink beer. They've done a commercial on this. They're trying to go viral, basically.

[00:26:56] Zoe Licata: Yeah.

[00:26:57] Justin Kendall: What do you think about making AI drink Miller Lighter, Coors Lighter?

[00:27:03] Zoe Licata: No, tab out, close out, shut down the whole bar. I'm terrified of any of this AI stuff. Why do you need it to drink beer? There's no point in that. I mean, it's definitely one of those headlines just to like draw attention and go viral, but don't mess with computers. We don't understand them enough to be doing all these things. If you teach them how to drink a beer, what if they suddenly learn how to like, I don't know, like consume other things like humans. It's terrifying.

[00:27:37] Justin Kendall: I mean, that's one extreme of it, but. Really, the execs or the marketing folks at Molson Coors should have been watching 60 Minutes over the weekend and learning how scary this could be, or talking to you for that matter. We'll call it there, and we'll go to our featured interview now with Finback Brewery's Basil Lee. Festival season is upon us and Finback Brewery has a big one coming up in Rhode Island. Finback co-founder Basil Lee is here to catch us up on all the latest things going on at the Glendale, New York headquartered brewery. So Basil, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. Finback is putting on a major festival, like I said, Whale Watching in Rhode Island on May 20th, and that's going to bring together around 60 breweries, maybe more than 60. So we know that craft beer sales have sort of slowed down in recent years, but it seems like there's a lot of enthusiasm for this event. Tell us what the appetite is for a craft beer festival in the year 2023.

[00:28:39] Finback Brewery: Yeah, I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head. I think things have definitely changed a bit. You know, in some ways, I feel like the past two years have kind of, you know, forced a kind of growth and maturity in the craft beer market as we've seen it in the past kind of five, eight years. And I think that's kind of shown in festivals as well. But I think people are still, you know, looking for really great beers and enjoying them together. You know, at a festival. celebrating beer together and having a great time. And so I think people are still, you know, very interested. For us, Whale Watching is super, you know, something we're super passionate about. And it's kind of interesting, right? Because we're doing a beer festival in Rhode Island, even though we're a brewery in New York City. The reason is, you know, myself, I'm from Rhode Island, my partner's from Massachusetts. So we've always had these New England roots. And a lot of the breweries that we've been able to meet, you know, around the world in New York, don't get a chance to pour at festivals around that often, especially recently, there aren't as many in the kind of region. And so for us, it's a great opportunity to introduce a bunch of breweries to Rhode Island and vice versa, and have some beer fans in Rhode Island get to try things that they don't usually necessarily get to try. So I think we're super excited about it.

[00:29:51] Basil Lee: Basel, how many years have you guys been doing Whale Watching?

[00:29:54] Finback Brewery: Yeah, so this is our second year. So we've actually, you know, this is our second year, but it was supposed to take place right before COVID. So it was originally scheduled, I want to say that was April 2020. Oh, God. We canceled in March, about a month before, right, as everything was kind of getting crazy. And so then we kind of had a two year break. And so we did the first one last year, and this is the second one.

[00:30:20] Basil Lee: Because festivals are kind of going through like two competing tidal waves of all the COVID changes that had to be made. And, you know, I feel like that time away really made people kind of re-examine what they were hoping to get out of these experiences. But like Justin mentioned, like you talked about, like craft's going through a bit of a moment too, where maybe like national interest is waning. So to make a festival really attractive to consumers right now, what do you have to do?

[00:30:47] Finback Brewery: On the consumer standpoint, I think it's kind of founded on bringing exceptional breweries that, you know, you don't necessarily get to try. I think that that kind of formula is still really important. Right. I think people are interested to try new things. Certainly, I think from a style standpoint, you know, we you know, the kind of idea of Whale Watching is to kind of find things that are a bit, you know, whale beers in some ways. Although I feel like for so many of us now that go to a lot of festivals, you're also looking for balance at a festival, right? So we have great pilsners coming, you know, we're going to have a lot of drinkable beers as well to kind of take a break from some of the crazy imperial stouts and you know, and, and, and, and things like that. So I of breweries and a great of breweries pouring is s I think for us it's all a a great experience for us It's kind of this beautifu river. So it's kind of lik place to hang out anyways. And then people enjoying time together. There are a couple of great beer festivals in Rhode Island, but not that many with kind of a lot of international and national breweries, I think. And so I think that that kind of helps. But you're right, I think it is more challenging than it used to be. I think they're, they're more great festivals than there used to be, right? I think accessibility, both festivals and beer is at a high point. And so I think it's a great time to be a consumer in some ways, but definitely, you know, a little bit more difficult to sell tickets. But I think, you know, having a great experience and kind of offering a great experience, you know, people still are looking to have a good time and a day out.

[00:32:23] Basil Lee: Yeah, I love the name that play on words is great.

[00:32:26] Justin Kendall: How did you land on Pawtucket? I'm guessing this is where the event has been every year in the two years that you've done it, but you're a New York brewery. So how do you make that work in another state?

[00:32:38] Finback Brewery: Yeah, definitely a lot of coordination, a lot of effort in terms of, you know, kind of moving all of our goods and tables and tents and chairs and all things down or rentals or whatever it might be. But Pawtucket, I mean, it's interesting. I think, you know, it's kind of a simple story. So I actually grew up not too far from there. and my family actually had a restaurant not too far from there and so Pawtucket was always kind of where I grew up and knew this area and so there was a site there that we knew and so kind of worked out and Rhode Island is small enough where you know Pawtucket obviously is in Providence right but it's all small enough where everything is pretty close and it's a great outdoor scene and yeah and that's how we kind of landed on that site.

[00:33:18] Justin Kendall: That's awesome. You've got the roots, so that's perfect. And like you said, a beautiful setting. One of the other things that sort of came out over the last couple of years was the reckoning that everybody dealt with, with harassment and such. And there was a lot of talk about just the way folks were, especially women, were treated at beer festivals. So in sort of a post reckoning world, How have the considerations changed for what you need to have at an event to sort of create a safe space?

[00:33:50] Finback Brewery: I think a lot of it is about awareness and about setting procedures and kind of, you know, telling people procedures in terms of being aware, having a code of conduct for sure is important. And I feel like, you know, not just us, but most breweries have generally adopted codes of conduct in general, but specific to festivals will post like you know, essentially a code of conduct for the festival and also just a kind of mechanism if you, well obviously, you know, for everyone to be aware to kind of keep an eye on everyone else, right, I think that's very important, right, obviously if someone's intoxicated it's going to be harder for them to keep an eye on themselves in some ways, so I think everyone being aware in terms of taking care of everyone else. And then having staff that are kind of trained to handle these things and being able to have a code of conduct where people will be able to reach out to staff and say, hey, I saw this behavior or this needs to be taken care of or something needs to be addressed or whatever it might be. I think it is super important.

[00:34:47] Basil Lee: Awesome. Well, I can't wait to hear how the festival goes. I'm in Massachusetts and I love Rhode Island. My little brother went to URI. So while I was up here in Boston, I would go down and visit him a lot, which was a lot of fun.

[00:34:58] Finback Brewery: Also, I hope you'll both be able to come.

[00:35:00] Justin Kendall: I'd like to I'm in Iowa. So it's a bit of a jaunt for me. And Jess has a better reason for not going.

[00:35:07] Basil Lee: We'll talk about it offline. So let's get down to your tap rooms. Like you guys are in New York City, Brooklyn and Queens. What's the at the brewery business like right now? Because New York's been through a lot in the past couple of years.

[00:35:20] Finback Brewery: Yeah, it has. You know, on the one hand, I wish, you know, we all want to talk about fun and exciting things and having, you know, a lot of kind of optimism for the future, which which I do. But it has changed a lot. I think, you know, there was this kind of and again, I think it all kind of started with COVID. Right. And we were going through so many ups and downs. You know, there were moments during COVID where where I think people were buying a lot of beer and then that changed. Right. And I think that beyond just kind of consumer habits with beer, I think, I think COVID kind of did what would have taken years to do, right? COVID did in a couple of years, we just changed the distribution landscape, change, you know, how package to draft and kind of how we dealt with SKUs in some ways, obviously changed, you know, the whole hospitality industry in terms of how people were drinking and going to bars or not. Right. And so I think all of those things happened. And we thought that it would kind of go back. Right. That when when Kobe was beginning or would get kind of a little bit more tamed that there's kind of this idea of like oh it's just going to get go back to normal. And I think that the new normal is very different. Right. Partly because I think the industry just evolved and all of that. And so for sure, we felt that the industry has matured. I think our industry and by our, I kind of mean like the third wave of craft breweries, you know, the past kind of eight years, 10 years or so. Right. So we're all very, very young in my mind anyways. And we're finally as a group beginning to mature. And I think we're seeing a lot of the same things that previous generations of brewers have seen. And to me, I kind of find it, you know, exciting as a moment. I think that it means that, you know, we all have to be good at what we do. We have to make great beer. Certainly, that's, I think, the fundamental kind of reason to have a brewery. But I think having great engagement with customers, I think having great taprooms that are comfortable and inviting and inclusive for a wide audience, I think is really important. And so in some ways, I feel like we've, you know, as a company have really kind of like gone back to basics a little bit, right, which is, Which is like, hey, you know, it's still just about making great beer that people want to drink and want to have a good time doing with other people. And that's kind of what we're focusing on now a bit and kind of simplifying a lot of what we do.

[00:37:36] Justin Kendall: As that consumer changes, what do you do to sort of keep up with them? And I guess that's the question, because everybody's trying to figure that one out.

[00:37:45] Finback Brewery: Yeah, right. I think so. It's interesting and actually festivals in some ways, right? And a lot of what we do, you know, we travel a lot. Not only are we putting on Whale Watching, but we attend a lot of festivals and pour a lot of festivals. I think it's a great way to actually talk to people, you know, whether it's other brewers, but also consumers and you begin to kind of see consumer tastes and tendencies. I think like, obviously, in terms of craft loggers or small craft loggers, I think that we've seen a lot of excitement build back for that, right? I think in some ways, tastes kind of swing, right? We're always looking for intensity. And then when things get You know, you kind of have a lot of that you kind of swing back to like, oh, you know, you're looking for nuance again, you know. And so I think a lot of those things kind of come up at festivals and tap rooms and talking to people. And we just try to be a bit more with an open ear, kind of engaging and listening to these things and brew to that. And I think a lot of it is actually like our staff. And in some ways, you know, brewers are consumers as well, right? We feel the same way. And so a lot of times the things that we also want to drink begin to mirror, I think, what other people want to drink. And so we start brewing beers like that as well. And so I think that kind of helps keep us aligned with consumers in the market.

[00:38:58] Basil Lee: I mean, I think that's what has had all of us wishing and hoping for the rise of Kraft Lager to one day officially make it to the masses. But how has everything that you've learned in the last few years affected your like outside the brewery sales?

[00:39:14] Finback Brewery: What I think was very instrumental in our kind of early success and kind of allowed the brewery to do what it did was that we were really direct-to-consumer, taproom-driven, you know, very much like kind of can release, you know, new rotating can releases every week kind of thing. I think that's really kind of built this wave of the craft brewing industry. And I think that it was really great, right? I think it built a lot of excitement and a lot of ideas of just like, people wanting to experiment and consumers wanting to try new things and be kind of adventuresome. Now, we've kind of taken a little bit of a step back in which, you know, trying to reduce our skews a little bit, you know, we don't brew as many rotating beers, whereas in the past, we do maybe three or four complete new beers a week that we'd never brewed before that had a new recipe, a new label, you know, all these things, we've kind of pulled back a little bit, we have focused a bit more on core, you know, whereas You know, a few years ago, there was probably not one beer that we brewed, you know, a disproportionate amount of, whereas now we're beginning to have, you know, three, two or three beers that are beginning to account for, you know, a serious amount of our production. You know, I can't remember exactly, but maybe, you know, 30, 40% of our production and rising. And I think as we kind of continue to respond to the change in the market, I'd kind of see our core beers and, or, or kind of seasonal rotational beers beginning to grow as a proportion of rotating beers. So I think that's a big one. I think another is just, um, You know, getting back to the basics, you know, really just like engaging with the accounts that are really great fits with us. You know, for us, Taproom is still a big part of what we do. So I think that's still a big part of our business. And so making a great Taproom experience is very important and adding Taproom locations as well.

[00:41:00] Basil Lee: Awesome. So you just basically described that you guys are like Benjamin Buttoning of flagship portfolio, like in reverse. That's, that's wild. Cause you know, like this wave of craft beer, nobody really had flagships, you know, like the Sam Adams and the Sierra Nevadas of the world, like that's how they started. So what beers are you seeing really come into that position in your portfolio?

[00:41:23] Finback Brewery: We have three kind of core beers that we do, two hobby beers. They're both, I'm going to say, relatively kind of new wave, hazy kind of beers. But one we consider a little bit more West Coast leaning. I wouldn't call it a West Coast IBA, but, you know, a little bit more West Coast leaning. And then another one that's called Rolling in Clouds. That's definitely a more, you know, kind of New England hazy IPA. And then we do a pilsner called crispy morning. It's pretty much a series with just all the same base recipes, but slightly different mild dry hopping. But we're gonna essentially have our crispy pilsner as a core. And so those are the three cores we do. And then most of our beers are still kind of rotating, hoppy beers, IPAs, double IPAs and things like that.

[00:42:11] Justin Kendall: It must be refreshing, though, and less exhausting, though, to have sort of those core offerings to be able to fall back on.

[00:42:19] Finback Brewery: Absolutely. As a brewery, I consider ourselves, you know, even though we're almost nine now, I consider ourselves like I feel like we're only two or three years old in some ways, and still a very small brewery. But I think that as we've grown a bit, you know, we begin to see that it was much easier to do Lots of new beers when you're brewing less and you don't have the kind of logistical issues that that you kind of begin to realize as you get a little bit bigger. And so, you know, agreed that now some of it is also our operations, right? That being able to brew some core beers means that our sales and inventory operations are much easier in our warehousing operations become easier and just economy of scale a little bit or, you know, become a little bit better for us as well. And so, so yeah, I think it's, it's kind of all part of this process of becoming a little bit larger, a little bit older as a brewery.

[00:43:11] Justin Kendall: And you mentioned the tap rooms, and you're adding a third one later this year in Long Island City, Tell us a little bit about how that project's going. And you mentioned what it was like coming out of COVID and really having taproom business be dried up there for a while and the tourism being down. What's it like to sort of make that investment again?

[00:43:33] Finback Brewery: You know, we've always been very committed to taprooms, right? And kind of direct to consumer. I feel like it's the best way for us to engage and kind of share what we do with people. You know original original location is in Glendale that's where most of the production happens, it's a little bit off the beaten path for New York City in terms of like ease of accessibility to public transportation. And so right you know probably. A year and a half before COVID, we thought, let's open another one, a smaller taproom, kind of focused with a small five barrel system. And then we wanted to kind of brand it as what would be different, right? And so we kind of called it our studio. So the kind of originals like the factory, and then the second one was our studio where we were doing, you know, more drinkable beers. So we're kind of interested in like not necessarily brewing classic styles, but really kind of brewing a little bit more in a different way than like all the kind of hazy hoppy beers we do at the at the factory. So we did a lot more saisons and milds and lagers and pilsners at our Brooklyn location. And then we also do some coffee and spirits. But the third location really kind of came to us a little bit. We weren't interested in opening, but there was a developer with a property and they approached us and we kind of were not I don't think ready at that time to open another another space. And then COVID hit and all this stuff. But over time, we realized just how exciting the project would be and how the location Long Island City, there's a lot of development happening there. It's kind of close enough to our main facility, but not too close and also very well serviced by public transportation. And so we just thought, you know, this is a great opportunity. Let's try to make something happen. But we also wanted to think like we didn't want to just open taprooms that were cookie cutter that would be replicated. And so we thought, what could we do? We have a very passionate brew team. And I think that everyone who works in our brew team, they do it because they really love it. And they personally love brewing. And so one of our staff, his name's Alex, he's been managing our barrel and wood program for a few years now. And so we kind of got talking to him and we're like, maybe we can just focus on wood and kind of interesting fermentations, a lot of fruit fermentations at Long Island City. It's not a big volume, and I think it's actually a pretty tough market to sell these kinds of beers now, actually, much more so than it used to be. But we thought that that could be a great way to kind of highlight fruit and kind of interesting fermentations. And so Long Island City is going to be our kind of mixed firm fruit studio.

[00:45:58] Basil Lee: Awesome. Now, on the complete other end of the spectrum from, you know, Long Island City, which is right across the river from Manhattan, you're also working on a farm brewery. So tell us about that project.

[00:46:10] Finback Brewery: Yeah, we are. And in some ways, we see Long Island City as being, or will be hopefully, the kind of city expression of the farm brewery. So we were kind of fortunate enough, we've always had an idea of opening a production facility out of the city and trying to do some small scale agriculture. And we were fortunate enough kind of at the beginning of COVID to see a property in Walton. It's actually quite a ways from the city. It's about three hours away. Very rural, very agricultural. That's the kind of it's a very kind of dairy and kind of agricultural part of the state. And so it was an old dairy farm, and we wanted to convert it essentially into a small farm brewery event space and bed and breakfast. And so we're kind of working on that, although a little bit delayed in terms of the timeline. So the brewery is probably not going to be up and running for at least another couple of years, but we're starting to put the the kind of agricultural pieces in place, trying to begin growing. We have cows, which is kind of a crazy thing. So we've got a beef herd, which I never really thought I'd become a cattle farmer, per se. But very, very kind of small scale learning about it, you know, because ultimately, we want to have essentially fruit that will having our beer and some farm to table food on site and so really kind of just love that the idea of all those things together in terms of bringing our passions together but a very kind of slower kind of a moving project I guess.

[00:47:40] Basil Lee: I have so many questions about what goes into having a beef cattle herd, but I don't think this is the venue for that. So we're going to have to have a beer and you're going to tell me about it.

[00:47:50] Finback Brewery: Oh, absolutely.

[00:47:51] Basil Lee: We've seen a few other brewers go the route of farm brewing, and it's really interesting because You know, you think of like this current wave of craft breweries that we're in, most of them are in industrial urban environments. And I think maybe everybody, after a few years of running a tap room in a city, it's just like, I'm sick of this and I would like to smell some fresh air. So what goes into a project like this? Have you bumped into anything you weren't expecting?

[00:48:18] Finback Brewery: Oh, I would say everything, everything has been new. And I almost feel like ashamed to say this, right, because there are people who have committed their lives to farming and really understanding it. And for me, you know, I'm coming to this later in life, and I'm trying to learn as quickly as possible. So I have such respect for people who, you know, grow things and farm things. But for me, it's been just a wonderful experience. You know, we're trying to do it also in some ways, at the same time as trying to run the brewery here in the city. So it's, it's been definitely a long process. But you know, from, you know, all the simple things, you know, mundane things, you know, learning to drive a tractor, building fence, I mean, all of these kinds of things we've been doing, we have been trying to also work with friends and partners of trying to understand like, you know, cider makers that we know, or winemakers that we know, and kind of visiting them and learning from them and And all of that for us, it is, you know, we certainly want to make it a viable and successful project. But at the moment, it really is about trying to kind of pursue some passions. And, you know, we forage some apples. There's some heritage and kind of old apple trees on the site. So we foraged some apples from there and made some, you know, used in some of our beers. So that's kind of the first step. But ultimately, we'd like to grow some things there and have it in our beers. And as long as we can sell enough, you know, IPA in the city to keep the lights on. Hopefully that means we can pursue this kind of farm project and really make a space where people, you know, can go and kind of experience a little bit of agriculture and just drink beer in a beautiful setting. So that's that's kind of the goal we have.

[00:49:54] Justin Kendall: That's awesome. Before we let you go, we mentioned at the top how craft is in this maturing moment in time and things are a little wonky compared to what they've been, you know, over the last 10 years. So you've built a portfolio that's. Pretty diverse. You know, you have coffee, small batch coffee in there. You've got spirits bottled and ready to drink canned cocktails. So tell us about sort of that diversification and what you've seen and what the halo is with the rest of the portfolio.

[00:50:29] Finback Brewery: Yeah, I think I think the diversification has been really helpful for us. You know, in some ways, I don't think we were consciously aware of like diversification for the sake of a kind of a smart business kind of move, per se. I think for us, it really was trying to express our creativity and kind of a couple of different medium or beverages, and then also provide more things for people who don't necessarily or might not necessarily want to drink beer at our tap rooms. And I think that's kind of naturally translated into kind of a robustness in terms of diversification of our portfolio. But on the Spirits project, it's called Halftone. So it is a kind of a different name, a different brand. But Halftone, the concept was that we, again, early days in beer, our passion was about rotating, right, and brewing different styles and using interesting ingredients. And so we kind of thought if we extended that to spirits, you know, gin was the great kind of medium, you know, really is, of course, ingredient botanical driven, you know, you're kind of crafting and creating flavor profiles in the distillation process. And so it was kind of, you know, let's say, in contrast to bourbon or something else, which is really a kind of idea of time in some ways. But for us, gin was a really interesting, you know, kind of botanically driven, layered kind of spirits. And that kind of was right in line with how we think about beer. And so creating a variety of gins and using them in cocktails and gin and tonics and things like that at the taproom has been great. And it's kind of amazing. At first, we're like, oh, you know, are people going to drink it? They're coming to a brewery. But we've seen huge growth in our taproom with spirits and things that aren't beer, especially, you know, it's either You need a break or some people just aren't in the mood for beer or whatever it might be. RTDs, same thing. I think that's just another great format to share it, especially leaving the taproom. And we're trying to kind of, you know, push both of those things. I think right now they've all kind of, let's say the gin, the coffee and the beer have always really been about the taprooms. You know, we kind of make it to serve in the taproom to service the taproom. Same with the coffee. You know, it's taproom only, whole beans or cold brew or coffee used in cocktails, things like that. So it's kind of like all internal. But ultimately, the idea is that, you know, we're seeing the success of it and that we want to kind of push it out there a little bit and probably do a little bit more distribution and getting it out there kind of self-distribution as well. But I think that'll hopefully help, you know, us become or keep being like a relevant and interesting kind of company and brand and kind of move through some of these different products to kind of, you know, engage with people in more ways.

[00:53:07] Basil Lee: I scan the website that the Brooklyn taproom opens at noon most days, like does coffee play a role there? Do you get like the work from home crowd who just wants to get out of their apartments?

[00:53:17] Finback Brewery: So we definitely aren't and even the new space, you know, we're thinking of it as not like a coffee bar. So we in a part of it is also I think, Not just the challenges of finding stuff, you know, in this in this current kind of period, but also just that I feel like and I'm, you know, kind of portray my own hours, but like we're all night owls. So I kind of feel like, you know, we don't want no one wants to come to work at seven in the morning. So our coffee program is really. either we use it in our b spirits or use it in cock we have essentially just So it's like a very bare but it's kind of for peopl you know, you're out dri you want a coffee before y or something like that. R a lot of whole bean coffe the neighborhood, you kno coffee. So the coffee pro like a, you know, like a the other kinds of drink

[00:54:11] Justin Kendall: Nice. Well, Basil, thank you so much for doing this. We really appreciate it.

[00:54:18] Finback Brewery: Thank you so much for having me. It was a great conversation. I hope we can meet in person sometime.

[00:54:23] Justin Kendall: That'd be great. Absolutely. And that's our show for this week. Thanks to Jess and Zoe for all they do. Thanks to our one man audio team, Joe. And thanks to all of you for listening. We'll be back next week.