…PART II Continued

Ryan: So I was curious and I wanted to know from both you guys when did you first lose your virginity to craft beer, and what was the whore that kept you coming back?

(Laughter)

Doug: I was 16 or 17, Jr in HS and it was the Rogue Chocolate Stout.  That was the beer that I tasted it and I was like “Holy mother of God!  This is the greatest thing I have ever tasted!  I can’t believe there is actually beer out there like this!”  I always loved chocolate and I liked beer, more strong flavorful stuff.  And I was like “Chocolate?  Beer?  There is no way this is actually for real” It was limited at the time and I think Japan was the only place you could get it and somehow I got a bottle.  So that was the beer that did it for me.  There are other beers, I would say about every 2 years there is a beer that really knocks my head back and I say “Holy hell!”  It’s like you see God.

Ryan: And what is that beer right now?

Travis: Whatever he is drinking.

(Laughter)

Doug: Well there are a lot of them

Ryan: I know it is going to be one of your own, so let’s just say what is your favorite beer right now that is not one of your own?

Doug: Taras Bulba from Brasserie de la Senne in Brussels…It’s hard to find.  Blind Lady has it on tap.  O’Briens gets it in the bottle from time to time.  It’s just delicious.  Awesome.  Wonderful.  Umm, yeah.  Stone Imperial Russian Stout is probably my favorite of all time, I say that more than anything else.  Hottenroth from the Bruery is absolutely killer as well.  I want to bathe myself in it, it’s soo good!

Ryan: Travis?  When did you lose your virginity?

Travis: It was about 21 when I started drinking.  Started drinking craft beer and never shied away from it.  It began with a bottle collection and I don’t remember all the beers, I do remember that Mississipi Mud from Trader Joe’s was in there

Ryan: What about your favorite beer right now?  Other than your own

Travis: Drie Fonteinen sours, I wet my pants over.  Oude Geuze is phenomenal!  I am a hophead, so my favorite IPA right now is Alpine Nelson.

Ryan: Did you geuze in your pants first time you had Oude Geuze?

(Laughter)

Travis: Just about

Ryan: Haha.  So people that don’t know business, they’ll walk into your taproom and see it is full and say “Life is so good for these guys!  Oh, they’re making so much money!”  But people who have done business know there’s a climb.  You’ve got to climb a mountain before you get to enjoy the view, before you can reap the rewards.  People don’t ever really talk about the dark days, and you guys have been open for, how long now?

Doug: We’ve been operating for 4.5 months but we have had this building for 13

Ryan: So in those 13 months what has been the scariest thing?

Doug: Fucking everything! (laughter) I mean, what I tell people is you always hear in the industry “Don’t open a brewery!  You’re absolutely crazy for doing it!”  I know why.  It’s not “Don’t run a brewery, don’t own a brewery”.  It’s “Don’t open a brewery”.  Opening this place was such a friggin nightmare!  Every single day you don’t know what is going to come up, if you have enough money for this.  We had to go out twice already and get more money.  It’s just nightmare, after nightmare, after nightmare.  The unknown.  I don’t care how well you prepare there’s going to be stuff that will pop up that you have no idea will pop up.  For example, I don’t care if you’re the best brewer in the world.  You’ve been running breweries for 20 years. You open your own brewery.  Oh!  You messed with the fire sprinkler system?  You know what they make you do?  They make you install a backflow preventer for the fire sprinkler system.  The unit alone costs $12,000.  Installed about 15.  There goes a tank.  See you later.  Stuff like that.

Ryan: How many different agencies do you have to go through?  How many different people have to sign off?

Travis: (laughter) I don’t think there are enough fingers between us (5 people).

Doug: We have a folder this big (hands held 2 feet apart).  I mean everything.  Steam, fire sprinkler, water, gas, electric.  There was somebody here just watching when we poured the concrete.  An old guy, just dozing off, but he had to be here watching.  He had to be here when we were drilling the tanks into the ground.  There is so much stuff you have to deal with it’s a friggin nightmare!  People say “Oh we’re opening a brewery.  We’re about to sign a lease on a building”, say it’s September, “We’re hoping to be open December/January” BULLSHIT!  Absolute bullshit, unless you are cutting corners and doing something the wrong way.  If you want to do it the right way, bullshit.  I give you a year.

Ryan: Do officials here take bribes?  Does it work?

(laughter)

Travis: No comment

(More laughter)

Doug: Um, I wouldn’t know

Ryan: Travis, you’re in agreement?  The scariest moment has been everything?

Doug: Opening.  Running this has been what we know best

Ryan: But the opening?  Scariest moment

Travis: Opening, without a doubt

Doug: Also money.  The amount of juggling around we have had to do with the money is ridiculous.  We pay every bill on time.  That’s the goal.  But you know, do you open up a new personal credit card that allows you to transfer up to $5,000 from another credit card at low interest rates?  Yes, you do that stuff so you can pay the bills.  You do it because you have to buy grain to brew beer to sell it to make money.  You have to be creative.  It’s a juggling thing.  If we bottled it would be easier to make money.  Ounce per ounce, you make a lot more money off bottles.  You make about as much money as you would selling draft beer in a tasting room as you do from bottling.  The tasting room is keeping us alive.  Completely.  We knew the tasting room was going to be very important in this.  Even if we are only selling 10% of our beer out of this room, it pays the rent and it pays some of the other stuff.  Our biggest nut is this building.  I don’t know another 1000 barrel a year brewery operating in a 16,000 square foot space.  We knew by getting this building we had to have a lot of people in here moving a lot of beer.

Doug(To Public): So please come here and drink our beer so we don’t go out of business!

Ryan: On the flip side of that, what has been the most rewarding moment?

Doug: DRINKING!

(Laughter)

Ryan: Travis?

Travis: Um, it’s hard to argue that

(More Laughter)

Doug: Haha.  Drinking the beer that you’ve dreamed of making for so long.  It’s so good.  Not only that, that’s really rewarding, but seeing people come in here and enjoy the beer is the best feeling.  And you hear every brewer say that.  And even hearing you guys say your beer is awesome.  We have 2 people we respect the most as far as bar ownership and taste in good beer, in this city (San Diego) who buy the most of our beer, those are our 2 biggest accounts, and that is such good validation.  That is the only reason I can go to bed at night.  It doesn’t keep me asleep all through the night, but it puts me to sleep.  Not knowing if we are going to be able to pay the bills, that wakes me up at 4am.

Ryan: So what is the perfect day off for Travis?  What’s Travis doing?

Travis: Well…(laughter)…whenever I have time off I spend it with my family

Ryan: So family.  Family is important. (To Doug) Perfect day off?

Doug: The perfect day?  Wake up at 9, pour yourself a Duvel and watch a movie to start the day.

(Lots of Laughter)

Doug: Maybe 2 Duvels if it was a rough night before.  Uh, you know, start the movie at 10:30-11, blinds shut, dark in your room, freezing in your room and you are sitting there drinking awesome beer.  1 O’clock rolls around, you go outside, maybe go get some fish tacos somewhere, drink a Sculpin.  Then maybe you go hit O’Briens, then Hamilton’s and Toronado.  Blind Lady for dinner, pizza and then you come back home and you go to sleep.  You do this all with your girlfriend, or your boyfriend (Points at Ryan), the love of your life.

Ryan: Why did you point at me and say your boyfriend?

(Room Erupts in Laughter)

Ryan: Hahaha.  What is that all about?

Doug: Tell me about West Hollywood

Ryan: Uh, I like West Hollywoo…I’m married to a woman.

(Laughter)

Ryan: Don’t flip this on me.  I’m interviewing you, Okay?  You don’t get to do this.

(Laughter)

Doug: So that’s my ideal day but it sucks to do it alone, so to do it with friends, I mean, get a group of 6 people, my girlfriend, buddies I went to college with, that would be the ideal day.

So there you have it.  If you are in San Diego and you don’t hit Societe Brewing you are a fool.  Be sure to make it down to the tasting room at the brewery, 8262 Clairemont Mesa Blvd. in San Diego.  Doug and Travis keep it open 7 days a week and they are almost always there.  You can check the hours on there website here.  Stay soggy friends!

These days there is no shortage of people getting into the game of brewing craft beer.  Plenty of them are making good beer but it is not that often that a new brewery springs up that absolutely blows you away.  Everybody meet SOCIETE BREWING CO in San Diego.  Societe just opened its doors to the public in May of this year, and in a mere few months they have gone from another new kid on the block no name to an absolute local sensation.  The founding duo of Doug Constantiner and Travis Smith first met at The Bruery in Placentia, where at the time Travis was lead brewer and Doug came on board on the bottling line.  Travis had previously hailed from Russian River while Doug had recently escaped the dark recesses of Wall St to chase his true passion, craft beer.  They formed an instant love affair that ultimately brought them to San Diego to launch Societe, where their focus is on doing “IPA’s, Belgian inspired brews, and wine-barrel aged sours handcrafted on a 20 barrel brewhouse”, and doing it they are.  I had the opportunity to catch up with the duo recently to learn more about Societe:

(Doug and I are shooting the shit on our past times in finance, just waiting for Travis to join us…)

Doug: …At the time (back on Wall St) I’m doing deals for an industry that I don’t care about, so I started trying for so long, pitching to my bosses and managing directors, let’s start buying into beer companies, and they all said “Oh no, it’s a fad, it’s a fad.”  So for 18 months, my last 18 months at the firm, I was accidentally pitching my own company and I didn’t even know it yet.

Ryan: You didn’t even know it yet?

Doug: I didn’t know it.  It wasn’t until I left that they said, “Why don’t you start your own brewery?”  But I needed to learn first.  So yeah I spent 18 months pitching the investment (a couple of Societe’s principal investors are Doug’s former bosses)…Our investors are great.  One guy said, “Listen, I’d rather invest with a great person with a shitty piece of paper (I.E. a business plan) than the greatest paper in the world with a shitty person.”  They are supportive.

(Travis walks up)

Ryan: Is Travis mad that you are always dealing with the spotlight, with these guys that come in with a camera bag?

Doug: PISSED!

(Laughter)

Doug: The thing is he loves talking so much, once you get him going he doesn’t shut up!

(Laughter)

Ryan: (To Travis) Anything to add to that?

(No response, just a smile)

Ryan: He doesn’t say a word… So, you guys have a nice staple of good solid IPAs and then you are doing the Belgians along with the barrel aged sours.  There aren’t a lot of breweries that do that.  How did you guys decide on that?  Even Vinnie at Russian River doesn’t offer as many IPAs as you guys

Doug:  Our beers are very similar.  His model is great because he has all these beers that you drink on site.  Beers should be consumed locally.  Packaging ruins beer, for the most part.  You can do it the right way with the right beer and it will be ok.  He does Pliny, Blind Pig and the Belgians and he manages distribution in such a way that you will never find an old Pliny.  If you are going to bottle IPAs that is the way to do it.  Right now Travis and I are not even meeting demand.  We have 60 accounts and each one is getting 2-3 kegs a week.  They could each be doing 5-6 a week.  The normal business thought is meet demand, right?  What we say is why?  You’re a business guy why meet demand?

Ryan: Maximize profits.

Doug: But I am happy right now with the profits

Ryan: But we are all about maximizing profits (with a hint of sarcasm)

Doug: But my quality is great right now.  If I grow my quality might go down so I don’t want to grow for another 2 yrs until we have everything dialed in.  My whole thing is I don’t fucking care about demand.  Everybody’s like, “Oh you’re short on beer, that’s a great problem to have!”  I’m like “That’s not a great problem, that’s just great!”  It’s a great compliment.

Ryan: So what I’m hearing you get a lot of inspiration from places like Russian River, and the way they run their brewery

Doug: Yes, we take no inspiration from places that say they can do 400% more, and they do everything they can in 6 months to ensure that happens.  Not that I have anything against that.  There are great businessmen that have done that.  You see these breweries that have grown very well, like Stone.  They’ve done something right their whole lives.  Lagunitas, Great Divide, Avery, the Bruery, they know what they are doing.  I’m more inspired by someone like Vinnie or Pat at Alpine, where the focus isn’t necessarily growing the business. It’s “I don’t want to sacrifice quality for anything.”  I’m happy people want my beer.  But what would make me upset is if I grew and the beer didn’t taste the same.  That’s what I am scared of.  So we are going to grow at our own pace.  We do want our beer to get out there but not at the sacrifice of quality.

Ryan: The sour program.  Travis I want to hear you speak a little bit more because you are a man of so many words, I can tell.  Tell me more about the sours.  What’s in the barrels?  What kind of barrels are you using?  How long are you aging?

Travis: So, all of our barrels that we currently have are used wine barrels.  The particular barrels that we are using right now came from Stags’ Leap Winery and they are all used cabernet barrels.  They are about 5-6 yrs used, so they are relatively neutral, a little bit of oak character left.  We don’t use any spirit barrels, whatsoever.  No bourbon, no rum, no tequila,no brandy, whatever, you name it we don’t use it.  For various reasons, but one, sour beer does not really taste that great with them.  And the other thing is our barrel program is dedicated to sours.

Doug: Sour ONLY!

Travis: There are different base beers in the barrel.  Some beers we brewed specifically for souring and some that we have on tap.  But ultimately when it is finished it will be blended into new beers to fit something that we are shooting for.  We expect to age them for 12-36 months.

Ryan: You haven’t disclosed what you expect the finished product to be?
Doug: When we know we will probably say something