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Rob Tod the founder of Allagash Brewing was in California the last couple of days and I had the chance to sit down and speak to him a bit about the brewery and what is coming up in 2020 for the East Coast based brewery.
The meat of the info will be posted on Food GPS for the next installment of Brew & You on February 6th and I will review the barcade in a day or two but here is a teaser photo of beer …
Allagash Brewing Co. and on the occasion of turning 20 years young, founder Rob Tod gave the Bangor Daily News “20 lessons he has learned in 20 years of business.”
Here are the (7) take-aways that I think are most important for the many L.A. start-ups that are soon to open:
When you see trash, pick it up. “If everyone’s doing it, it makes a big difference. We have 93 employees who pick up little pieces of trash when they walk by them — literally and figuratively. If something’s not right, they take the initiative to do something about it. It’s just as important to do it when no one’s looking, when you are not going to get any credit for it. It’s a reflection of how much everyone at Allagash cares about what they are doing.”
Be relentless about improving. “Even though we’re constantly making strides with quality at the brewery, we’re never satisfied. Once we make an improvement, we get back to work and look for the next. There is always opportunity for improvement.”
Value the community you live in. “Maine has been extremely supportive of Allagash Brewing over the last 20 years. We have never taken this for granted. We love Maine, and we love Portland. Our crew’s hard work making great beer has made our philanthropy program possible. We focus our philanthropy locally, and everyone at Allagash is very proud of that.”
Don’t be a mile wide and an inch deep. “Jerry Sheehan, who runs a number of our distributors, told me this. And we learned it the hard way. By 2005 we were selling about 5,000 barrels of beer in 30 states and frankly not doing a great job anywhere. Around then, we made the tough decision to walk away from a fair amount of this volume and pull back — eliminating territories where we did not think we could be competitive and relevant. Now we’re selling 80,000 barrels of beer in 17 states, and I’m much prouder of the job we’re doing today in all of our markets. Better to do a great job in a small pond than a not-so-great job in a big pond. I think every business has concepts like this that are so simple they easily are overlooked.”
Smile. “Earlier today I walked by our kegging line and saw one of the operators who always has a smile on her face. When she is around other people on the line, guess what they are also usually doing? Smiling. It’s contagious.”
Do your thing. “When I made our first beer, Allagash White, not too many people wanted it. It was different — cloudy, spicy, distinctively Belgian. For a very long time it was usually the slowest draft line at the bars that were kind enough to keep us on draft. But I thought it was important to be doing something that was different. What’s the point in spending years building a brewery and possibly a lifetime running it just to make something people can already get? We avoid latching onto industry trends. We try to keep doing our own thing at Allagash.”
Stick with it. “If you are doing something different, sometimes it takes a while to get traction. It took about 10 years for the Allagash White to start catching on, but I’m glad we stuck with it and didn’t switch gears.”
Tomorrow night at Stout’s Cahuenga location. Allagash Brewing will celebrate 10 years of Curieux and by extension, barrel aging beers.
In advance of that party, I e-mailed a few questions to brewmaster Jason Perkins about their signature and first barrel beer and aging in general:
1. Has Curieux changed much in its ten years of being brewed?
The beer really has not changed at all, in terms of recipe and process. We did add better temperature control of the barrel room about 8 years ago, which just helped to control the over oxidation of the beer. As it is a barrel aged beer, and there are inevitable variations from barrel to barrel, the beer is always slightly different batch to batch. We control this as much as we can through blending, but each batch is its own “vintage”. As we have developed our relationship with Jim Beam over the years, we have been also been able to specify the exact barrels we want and have been able to get them fresher and fresher. This has only improved the beer.
2. What have you learned about blending aged beers from doing Curieux?
Blending (like brewing) is a constant learning process. We are always learning new things, especially as we try new beers. Probably the most Curieux specific thing we learned very early in the process, is that this specific beer really open up and becomes more complex with 15-20% un-oaked Tripel blended in. Common sense would make one think that adding un-oaked beer would dilute the oak and bourbon notes, but we actually find that it compliments them, without diluting the beer.
3. Does blending get easier to do or is finding a balance still hard to accomplish?
I suppose the only thing that has made it easier, is having more staff who are competent at it. In the early years, it was myself, Rob and maybe one other person. We now have several of our Senior Brewers and QC folks who are able to blend this beer. This makes it more practical, while bringing more minds to the table.
4. Are there different consumer preferences on the East Coast vs. West Coast?
I don’t think so, not that I have seen. Although California sure does drink a lot of Curieux!!
5. Will there be a crossover in the Coolship and barrel aging programs?
The Coolship beers are, of course, barrel aged as well. As are many other of our Wild and sour beers. We house all of these barrels and foudres in a different building, adjacent to the brewery. There are some obvious similarities between the Non-wild and wild barrels, but what we are asking of the barrels is very different in each of those two areas. We do cycle some of our non-wild barrels into use in the wild barrel area, but never the other way around.
The only blending we have done of wild beer with non-wild beer, was a recent beer called Belfius-which is a delicious blend of a single Coolship barrel and our Saison. We only sold that at the brewery.