Work or Play: A Day in the Life of a Microbrewery

“This is a business that becomes part of your life,” he said, and I could see what he meant.  It was Friday afternoon, I had just gotten off work, and this man had already put a free beer in my hand. Business?

I was sitting at a table in a dank warehouse with black walls which shone with condensed moisture.  If there had been torches on the wall it could have been a Neanderthal cave, but the interior of the Atlanta Brewing Company is modern; the moisture on the walls reflected light not from torches but from rows of suspended florescents.  We sat in the midst of stacked pallets, parked forklifts, gargantuan vats, enormous sacks of what I assumed was grain.  On one wall a dry-erase board was covered with cryptic reminders of the countless scheduled chores involved in the brewing process.  Moving, sweeping, pressure readings.  There were no notes reminding employees to sample the product, by some oversight, no doubt.

The man speaking was Greg Kelly, a large empire-building fellow who'd founded of the Atlanta Brewing Company, Atlanta’s first microbrewery, and he continued to explain how beer drinking, the little “ceremony at the end of the day,” had become such an easy career for him. Before he started ABC, Kelly worked distributing the Guinness line of beers, but found the constant travel wearing.  On one visit to Seattle, he visited the Red Hook brewery and was inspired to start his own.  To hear him talk, Red Brick Ale, and the host of "craft-brews" that ABC has put out after it, was the end of a process as natural and inevitable as the tide coming in.

“You don’t realize you’re working,” he said. We all sampled the product in agreement. Greg looked around the table at his employees for confirmation.  “I mean, we’ve been here all day, we’re still here, right? What is it, seven o’clock?”  The way they shook their heads, it was obvious no one cared about the hours.

“Better ask what hours we don’t work,” said Jeff Banker, the man responsible for transferring the thousands of gallons of brew to bottles and kegs without contamination.  While the new Brewmaster, John Zanteson, who sat next to him, did have a degree in brewing from UC Davis, he was like the other employees; the love of brewing proceeded any conscious career decision.  Jeff has a degree in business, but took courses in microbiology on the side; one fellow had no real qualifications at all when he applied at ABC other than his homebrew experience.  I asked him how he got the job.

“I wrote a letter,” he said. Obviously in an industry as new as this one, fanaticism is the first qualification. So far the majority of microbreweries are having no trouble getting press- it's sales volume that challenges them. Some estimate that only one in five microbrewery's survives three years.

The love of beer established, we got down to specifics.  ABC recently released a new beer in cooperation with the owners of the Vortex and wanted to promote it to me.  ABC brewed the beer, the Vortex added its logo, and Laughing Skull Bohemian Pilsner was born.  Are such arrangements common? Greg pointed out that ABC had done the same thing for Taco Mac when it created Mac’s Stout.

“It’s called custom brewing, and in other markets its a very common thing,” Greg said.  He felt it was important to distinguish between custom brewing and contract brewing.  “There’s no integrity there [in contract brewing],* ” said Greg.”Sam Adam’s and Oregon are brewed by Strohs.   It was funny, Jim Koch [who owns Sam Adams and Oregon] denied even owning Oregon.”

“So Oregon isn’t brewed in Oregon?”  Everyone laughed.

“If they could’ve strung Jim up,” said Greg.

“At the Oregon Brewers Festival,” added John.

ABC claims to rise above such marketing ploys.  “It’s not about marketing,” said Greg.  “The mass of people say they're not interested in marketing, but they are, if you think of marketing in terms of a story. Sam Adams and Pete’s Wicked Ale are both great stories.”  He let the implication float; are their stories part bullshit? On the other hand, if a beer is made with "integrity," can you taste it? Blind taste tests of microbrewed beers frequently reveal serious taste problems; "burnt vegetable flavor" being one of the most common, overhopping being another.

So what’s the story/marketing ploy behind Laughing Skull?  Greg gushed about a visit the Benoit family, who own the Vortex restaurants, paid to ABC.               

“They are so discriminating," he said.  "They have individual standards that they set; they’ve established themselves as leaders.  You cannot influence them.”

“But you did,” I prompted.

He shrugged, but smiled and nodded, pleased.  “We did.  We took them on a tour.  It was like a pop quiz.  They had questions about everything.  There was this beer thief [a small tap for sampling, essentially]  on one of the tanks of Red Brick Ale.  We gave Hank [Benoit] a sip, and he said ‘This is the best beer I’ve ever had in my life.’”

Of course the Vortex’s distinctive image played a role as well. “Go into any liquor store,” said Jeff.  “Look at all the six packs.  Imagine attracting a customer to buy your beer out of all the others.  That’s where the Laughing Skull comes in, it’s the packaging.”

While the Benoits were unavailable for comment, busy moving their Midtown restaurant to another location, all the questions anyone has about the Vortex are already answered, albeit rudely, somewhere on the menu.  “Don’t let choice frighten you,” it says.  “Variety is the point, so just go crazy.” They carry over 200 varieties of bottled beer, and they don’t really care whether your taste agrees with theirs.  “If you choose a beer that you absolutely hate, that’s just TOO BAD!” the menu reads. “We don’t brew it, we don’t bottle it, we just sell it.” And this is even true, technically, of Laughing Skull.

So what is the actual beer like?  While most local brewpubs/microbreweries tend to focus on quicker and easier to brew ales, ABC convinced the Vortex to risk their name on a Bohemian style pilsner, brewed in the same style as the famous Czech Pilsner Urquell.  “There’s nothing in this part of the region that compares,” said John.

In a blind taste test, my friends and I found that ABC had hit this target.  We placed it near Urquell in quality, and high above Staropramen- which tastes, in a strange way, exactly like it sounds. And the Skull’s a dollar cheaper than both, retail, and has a rockin' skull on it. ‘Course you have to appreciate Czech pilsners, which are a far cry from the medium body ales that are populating the American market so densely at the moment. “I think they all suck,” said my roommate of the pilseners.

“When somebody sits down and has a beer, they don’t wanna be serious, they don’t wanna overthink it,” said Greg. He could’ve been talking about my roommate, who went on to get tanked on daiquiris that night.  Struggling to collect my notes while Greg and his cronies watched in amusement, I was having difficulty taking anything seriously at all, with the possible exception of wondering where my designated driver was. As I left the staff of ABC were getting in cars with their own designated drivers. Whether they were getting off of work or play was still blissfully unclear.

*[author's note: About a year later Greg Kelly sold ABC to Anheuser-Busch. His accusations that "contract brewers" like Samuel Adams lack "integrity" should therefore be taken with several pints of salt.]