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Alex Wenner joins me this week to discuss

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his experience starting a craft brewery. This

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This is Beersmith Podcast number 279, and it's mid-April 2023.

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Alex Wenner joins me this week

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to discuss his experience starting a craft

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And now, let's jump into this week's episode.

1:37

Today on the show, I welcome Alex Wenner. Alex

1:39

is CEO and co-founder of Lasting Joy

1:42

in the Hudson Valley. Alex previously

1:45

worked at Cricket Hill, Six Point, and

1:47

Coney Island, while earning his degree

1:49

from the Sasebo Institute. Alex

1:52

co-founded Lasting Joy with his wife to create

1:54

a craft brewing experience that's more inviting and

1:57

inclusive. Alex, it's great to have you back on the

1:59

show. Actually, it's a first time guest today, I'm sorry.

2:01

Yes, thank you. So

2:04

how are you doing there? How are things up in the

2:06

Hudson Valley? They're

2:08

pretty good. We're ramping up, getting

2:10

ready for what will hopefully be a nice summer.

2:14

It's very seasonal around here. So,

2:17

oh yeah. Nobody likes to sit

2:20

outside of the picnic tables in the winter? This

2:23

winter, you probably could have gotten away with it. It

2:25

was a pretty mild winter, but for the most part,

2:27

no. It's spring, summer,

2:29

and honestly, we do just as well

2:32

in the fall as we do in the summer because of

2:34

the leaf peepers and all that. Yeah, it's beautiful

2:37

up there in the fall. I grew up in New York, upstate

2:39

New York, so.

2:40

It's a beautiful area. Oh, it is, absolutely.

2:43

I grew up in Rochester. So

2:46

tell us a little bit about yourself, and you

2:48

spent, I guess, over a decade working

2:50

in New York breweries, mainly around New York City,

2:53

I think, right?

2:54

Yeah, so, you know,

2:56

like a lot of people

2:58

these days, I started just home

3:00

brewing, and I brewed

3:03

out of my apartment in Manhattan,

3:06

and back in those days, the only

3:09

place to get home brewing supplies was out

3:11

on Long Island, so I would take a train out

3:13

to East Northport, Long Island to a hardware

3:16

store that sold home brewing supplies. What

3:19

did you start?

3:20

Oh, this would have been,

3:24

or 2004, 2004, somewhere

3:28

around then. And,

3:35

yeah, I just, you know, kind of got into it, but

3:37

of course, living in an apartment in Manhattan couldn't

3:40

really get much past doing some

3:42

small partial mashes, you know,

3:44

a lot of extract brew.

3:47

And then, at that time, I was

3:49

actually still pursuing

3:51

what was in my first career, which was working in the video

3:53

game industry. Oh, really? You're

3:55

a video gamer? Yes, huge,

3:58

huge gamer.

3:59

And so after my wife and I got married,

4:02

we actually moved to California and I started working

4:04

for a video game company out in the Bay

4:06

Area. Uh-huh. And

4:09

that didn't last very

4:11

long. Turns

4:13

out that I hated working in

4:15

a cubicle.

4:17

And I did not

4:19

like being stuck inside all day, at

4:22

least not being active. And

4:25

the nice part, though, is we lived in the Bay

4:27

Area and we were renting a house that had a two car

4:29

garage. And I was

4:32

only about 20 minutes drive from the

4:34

more beer location in

4:37

the Bay Area. You're conquered,

4:39

right? Aren't they? Yeah.

4:40

So my

4:43

home brewing hobby quickly

4:45

exploded to the point where we couldn't park

4:47

cars in our in our garage anymore.

4:51

And my cousin was

4:53

at the time getting his master's degree at Stanford.

4:55

And so it started out with once me

4:58

bringing a six pack to their

5:00

weekend parties. And within

5:02

about a year, I was just showing up with kegs,

5:05

full kegs every weekend

5:07

for these parties on campus.

5:11

Probably very popular, right? Yes.

5:15

But I really just realized

5:17

I was having a lot more fun doing

5:20

that than I was at work. And

5:23

so when my boss at the time came

5:25

to me and said that someone on the team had to be like, oh,

5:27

I put my hand up and said, well, I was actually planning

5:29

on quitting next week anyway. So

5:33

left that industry. And

5:35

that's where I then started taking

5:37

the classes at Siebel,

5:40

starting with online. And

5:42

then I would go in person sometimes. And

5:46

it was around that time that I got my first internship

5:48

at Cricket Hill in New Jersey.

5:50

And I mean, the Siebel has a great program

5:53

up there, right? One of the best. It

5:55

was great. I learned so much in that

5:57

time, not just. about

6:00

the science and technology behind brewing,

6:02

but also their classes on starting

6:04

your own brewery and the business behind brewing.

6:08

Really really helped a

6:10

lot.

6:11

I think they did a good job

6:13

of putting the fear of God into

6:15

me. You

6:18

know, with the fact that if you decide to

6:20

run a brewery, it's not a hobby, it's

6:22

a business. It is a business, yes. And

6:25

business takes most of your time, I think, right?

6:28

Yes, for sure. It's not all brewing either.

6:31

No, no, it's, I definitely took

6:34

the very long route from

6:36

hating being in a cubicle to now most

6:38

of my job is just sitting at the desk again.

6:41

Wow. Well, I

6:43

guess that's, but you're doing something you enjoy at least.

6:45

Yes. So tell us about, I think you worked at three

6:47

different breweries around New York City, right?

6:50

Yes. Well, so I worked for Cricket

6:52

Hill in New Jersey. I worked for Six

6:54

Point in Brooklyn. And

6:57

then after I left Six Point, I actually

6:59

ended up working for Brooklyn Homebrew, selling

7:01

home brew supplies and teaching classes there

7:03

for a few years. And

7:06

then I started working for

7:07

Coney Island Brewery

7:09

once they opened their location in Coney

7:12

Island, Brooklyn.

7:14

And when did you finally decide to

7:16

move over to your newest, your newest venture

7:18

and launch your own brewery? Well,

7:21

so it was a few years ago. My

7:24

previous boss, the head brewer

7:26

at Coney Island was leaving and I was

7:28

interested in trying for that position.

7:33

But

7:34

that kind of prompted a whole discussion between me

7:36

and my wife about whether or not we

7:38

really felt like staying in the city long

7:40

term. I grew up in the city. I love

7:43

New York City. But by

7:45

that point, my wife and I have, we have

7:47

four kids and

7:50

having four kids living in the city was

7:52

really, really

7:55

starting to challenge us. And

7:58

was so we really were.

7:59

starting to consider leaving the city. And part

8:02

of that was, well, if we leave, we

8:04

should

8:05

make sure that a part of that is us starting our

8:08

own thing. That's awesome. Well,

8:10

what are some of the good and bad things you saw working

8:12

in the craft beer industry? I

8:16

mean, the good is just,

8:18

for the most part, it is an exceptionally

8:21

welcoming and fun

8:23

community. It's unlike

8:26

a lot of

8:28

other industries, how

8:30

much we all like to support each

8:33

other. There's

8:35

such a great camaraderie between breweries. We

8:38

all like to see each other succeed. We

8:40

just, we love to hear

8:42

about other breweries opening and

8:45

really doing their own thing and doing it well

8:47

and making it. It's, and we,

8:50

as an industry, are

8:52

so supportive of each other. If a brewery

8:55

in the area called me right now and said, we

8:58

really need 30

8:59

pounds of cascade, I'd

9:01

be like, dude, I'm in the car in five minutes. Just,

9:04

it's that kind of an industry that's

9:06

really great to be a part of.

9:10

But then of course, the

9:12

flip side to that is, as

9:15

most craft beer nerds and people in the brewery

9:18

industry are aware of over the past few years,

9:21

with people bringing up issues

9:23

in the industry,

9:25

is realizing that a lot of that

9:27

camaraderie and support definitely only

9:30

applied to people that look like me. White dudes

9:32

with beards. Oh no. So

9:36

I think that that's something that we need to, as an industry,

9:40

as a whole, is

9:41

be more welcoming to people that are

9:44

not just already a part of the industry.

9:46

I think it's

9:48

a factor of taking something like craft beer,

9:50

which

9:53

has been in its infancy, for

9:55

the most part, and has had this kind of punk rock mentality

9:58

for the past 20 years of just trying.

9:59

trying to struggle against big beer and

10:02

trying to stake our claim in this industry.

10:04

And getting to the

10:07

point where we can

10:10

stop being so combative and

10:13

drop some of the gatekeeping that there

10:15

is as far as being a beer nerd and

10:18

be a little bit more welcoming and kinder to

10:21

people. Yeah, one of the things I've been saying for years now

10:23

is it's a very technical thing, beer brewing.

10:26

Whereas if you go to wine making, mead making,

10:28

other things, it's a little more artistic.

10:30

And I think sometimes we get overly focused on

10:33

the technical.

10:34

Yes. I honestly, it's one of my

10:36

favorite things about brewing is

10:38

it's such a great marriage between

10:40

art and science. And

10:44

you see people succeeding on both

10:46

sides. When I taught homebrew

10:48

classes, I would really point out that you can

10:50

succeed as an artist or you can succeed

10:53

as a scientist

10:55

or you find that middle ground that works for you.

10:59

The example I always use is you got Sam

11:01

Calgiani at Dogfish,

11:04

full artist, right? Just

11:07

very much tasting ingredients

11:09

and throwing them into a batch and seeing what happens

11:11

and very much going by the emotion and

11:13

the artistry of it. And then on the flip side,

11:15

you've got people like Ken Grossman at Sierra Nevada

11:18

who are just

11:21

pure technical science.

11:24

And you can do very

11:26

well on either end or find that

11:28

middle ground, but it's such a great marriage of the

11:30

two. The whole art

11:32

and science of brewing is so

11:35

much fun to me.

11:36

Now, you said you started on your

11:38

own just a couple of years back. What are some of the challenges

11:41

you saw, especially around COVID in the craft

11:43

beer industry in general and maybe in yours

11:45

as well?

11:46

Well, so we were doing construction

11:48

for most of COVID, which

11:51

was horrible. Bad timing.

11:54

You know, very, very bad timing.

11:57

Trying to plan the finances.

11:59

if anything, through every, you

12:02

know, the prices fluctuating

12:04

like they were doing during COVID was

12:08

in no way fun or enjoyable. Yeah.

12:10

You know, the example that I've used with people

12:13

was at one point we were negotiating with the company

12:15

that was going to be doing most of our

12:17

glycol piping.

12:19

And they bid on us, piping

12:22

us a system that was going to be copper, that was insulated.

12:26

They gave us a quote, we negotiated

12:28

with them over the course of about a week.

12:31

They were willing to drop their quote by

12:33

about a few thousand

12:35

dollars.

12:38

But of course over that same week, the price of copper

12:41

went up. So that by negotiating

12:43

with them, the amount that

12:46

we negotiated their price down, the

12:48

price of copper doubled. Oh

12:51

no. So we ended up losing

12:53

money by trying to negotiate them down. Not

12:59

an enjoyable experience. But luckily

13:01

we pretty much opened right when

13:04

people were really raring to get back out

13:07

there. So we kind of were able to

13:09

hit the ground running when we opened. So

13:11

you're going again in what, 2001, I guess, probably.

13:15

Already opened.

13:17

Sorry, you said 2001. 2000, sorry, 2021. That's

13:22

what I meant. No, we actually, so we opened in

13:26

last summer.

13:27

The weekend before father's day was

13:29

our first, our first weekend open.

13:33

And yeah,

13:36

we, we pretty much just, that first

13:38

weekend was insane. It was really, really

13:40

great to be a part of, but it was insane.

13:43

Well, we've touched on this a little bit, but what made you decide

13:45

to really go on your own and start lasting

13:47

joy? You'd already worked at several breweries.

13:50

Was it, was it a combination of the family factors

13:52

or was it other things you were hoping to do accomplish

13:55

for the brewery?

13:56

A big part of it

13:58

had to do with.

14:02

And my wife will readily

14:04

say that I have

14:06

dragged her and the kids to so many breweries

14:08

over the years and that

14:11

a lot of them, like

14:14

I said, are designed for people that look

14:16

like me. They can be great experiences

14:18

for your middle-aged

14:22

dudes with beards but are not exactly

14:24

the most enjoyable places for families

14:26

to hang out, for

14:29

younger people, older people.

14:33

The

14:35

beer industry as a whole is making amazing

14:38

beer but as far as a hospitality

14:40

industry is very young.

14:42

Well, it's kind of interesting. I had Randy Mosher on

14:44

some months back and he was talking about, we were

14:46

specifically talking about tasting beer and he was talking about

14:48

how much the environment

14:51

that you're tasting the beer in actually affects

14:54

how you perceive the beer. I thought

14:56

that was very, very interesting that,

14:58

you know, he said even things like the music

15:00

and the smells and the foods and the other things

15:02

that you're enjoying

15:04

really drives

15:05

how you perceive the

15:07

beer itself.

15:09

Very much so. And it's the kind of thing

15:11

of if anyone that

15:13

does beer tasting,

15:16

you know, you try and set up environments, especially

15:18

if you ever do like judging for a competition,

15:21

you know, and it's all about trying to make an environment

15:23

that is, you know, free of other

15:25

aromas that it doesn't have

15:27

excess noise that you can actually pay attention

15:29

to it and all this kind of stuff that we put

15:32

in such an effort to create a proper tasting

15:34

environment for something like a competition. Whereas

15:38

those same people will then open up a brewery

15:41

where you've got,

15:43

you know, your dumpster parked right next

15:45

to the front door and it's just

15:48

you're kind of just, you're

15:50

there and then you just do something like that

15:52

without thinking about it. The music's so loud you

15:54

can't even hear yourself think, right? Yep.

15:57

Or, you know, a big one that

15:59

I've

15:59

noticed and it's a far

16:02

easier fix, but you know, servers

16:04

that are wearing a lot of perfume or

16:06

cologne, things

16:09

like that, that really can just throw off the entire

16:11

experience.

16:14

Well, how large is your brewery and

16:16

how did you go about selecting the equipment you ended up

16:18

with? So we have a 15

16:21

barrel brew house and

16:24

we've got four 15 barrel fermenters

16:27

and three 10 barrel

16:29

fooders.

16:31

We've also

16:33

just started our fledgling little barrel

16:35

program.

16:38

But a big reason behind picking that

16:40

size is a lot of the

16:43

people that I know that have gone on to start breweries

16:45

and or the breweries that I've worked for breweries

16:48

that I've been a part of in some way or another.

16:53

They start very small, you know, and

16:55

then within

16:57

whether you're talking a couple of months or a couple

16:59

of years, you get to the point where you've outgrown

17:02

your initial system and now you've got to shut down

17:04

for a few months because you

17:06

need to completely replace your brew house and

17:08

all your tanks and your glycol system and

17:10

everything. So we started

17:13

with a 15 barrel system with an eye towards this

17:15

is the system that's going to last us a nice

17:17

long while and will be very hard

17:19

for us to outgrow. We also

17:21

our glycol system that we put in is sized.

17:24

We

17:26

can double the number of fermenters. We've currently

17:28

got which we're working on

17:31

right now. We've got fermenters coming and

17:34

we definitely had an eye towards trying

17:37

to make it as.

17:41

Make it as least disruptive as possible

17:43

to grow as we do. And

17:48

you're located out in the Hudson Valley. You're

17:50

not near a major town, right? I don't

17:52

think not

17:55

really. We're about 20 minutes from

17:58

Kingston, New York, which.

17:59

which was the first capital of New York,

18:03

but still a small city. But

18:06

we're near Hudson, we're near Poughkeepsie,

18:10

about an hour from Albany, but

18:12

it's definitely,

18:15

we're full country here. That's

18:18

another part of it is my

18:21

entire brewing career up until this point has been

18:23

in New

18:24

York City or

18:26

New Jersey,

18:28

where it's always been city water

18:30

and city sewer. Here

18:33

we're on a well in a septic field, so that

18:35

was a big learning curve. No,

18:38

did you have some challenges with the water system?

18:41

We're actually

18:43

very lucky, our well is really

18:46

good. We have a cold liquor tank

18:48

and a hot liquor tank. Those are both 30 barrels,

18:50

so those trickle fill off the well pretty much 24 hours

18:53

a day. Oh, nice. But

18:56

the wastewater has been the

18:59

biggest headache for us.

19:00

Yeah, you generate a lot of water, right?

19:03

You generate a lot of water, and of course, you can't put

19:05

anything that's, you know, you

19:08

can't put caustics and acids and all that stuff

19:10

into a septic field. No, no, that would

19:12

be bad. So we have a

19:14

small wastewater treatment plant

19:16

that has been a real learning curve.

19:20

That's interesting. I don't think I talked to another brewery

19:23

on a septic tank before, at least not that I can

19:25

recall. Yeah, it's

19:27

definitely its own challenge. I know more

19:30

about wastewater treatment plants than I ever expected

19:32

to.

19:34

I mean, what we have is really

19:36

just a smaller version of what

19:39

most municipalities would have for a wastewater

19:41

treatment plant. Ours just fits in a shed. But

19:45

it's cause some

19:47

headaches for sure. I guess I'd probably pull

19:49

the acids and the other caustics out, right? So

19:52

it basically everything from the

19:54

brewery goes into the first

19:57

tank where it all kind of just

19:59

evens out. And just mixes together

20:01

between acids caustics brewery

20:04

waste water that way

20:06

it all just kind of becomes one homogenous mix.

20:09

When at that point it gets pumped through a

20:11

system which actually checks the ph and then

20:13

will dose it in order to bring the ph

20:16

to seven.

20:17

I'm so it'll dose it with

20:19

a caustic or an acid in order to adjust

20:21

the ph before it goes into

20:23

another tank where the the.

20:26

Microbes

20:28

live in and will start to digest digest

20:31

the waste and then it passes

20:34

through a membrane system and then it ends up on

20:36

the subject field.

20:38

What were some of the other challenges getting

20:40

the brewery off the ground i think you mentioned financing

20:43

was a challenge because your costs

20:45

were changing constantly.

20:47

Financing is going to be a problem for every

20:49

brewery i don't think you know it's it's the

20:51

kind of thing it doesn't matter how many times you hear whatever

20:53

you're planning add 50% and then you

20:56

plan on it.

20:58

Yes, assuming you're going to add that 50% and

21:00

it turns out that that was also wrong, especially

21:03

when especially going into building and covered.

21:05

You know it was. I

21:07

mean things were insane I started a friend of mine,

21:10

he said the the price of like getting a

21:12

container from China, a single you

21:14

know single one of these little. containers

21:16

that they ship things and went from like $3000 to $30,000 at one point.

21:21

Yes, yeah there was there was a lot of that

21:23

so the tank that I just

21:25

mentioned for the wastewater treatment plant. It

21:28

was

21:29

when we were specking the whole system out

21:31

was a relatively

21:32

you know I mean it's not like you get a 6,500 gallon

21:35

tank off the shelf, but as far as those things go it

21:37

was a standard.

21:39

item and then once it took game

21:41

time to us to actually order it the

21:43

only one we could find was in Turkey.

21:45

So

21:48

it was it was a lot of things like that of just

21:50

like okay this thing is supposed to cost X we found

21:52

it for that price but we're going to pay double that just to ship it here

21:54

from.

21:57

So

22:00

it was, it was a lot of just that, that

22:02

little stuff that adds up so

22:04

quickly.

22:06

Um, so how did you finance, did

22:09

you self finance? Did you get investors to

22:11

come in? Did you do a bank?

22:13

Um, we, so we, we worked with a

22:15

local bank and we relatively local bank

22:17

just, um, and, and finance

22:19

through them and, and, uh, and,

22:21

and ourselves as well,

22:23

uh, just personal financing. Um,

22:26

so we'll, we'll load the bank

22:28

a lot of money for a long time. So,

22:30

um,

22:33

well I know you guys spent a lot of time designing the

22:35

space for the brewery and the tap room. We talked about why

22:37

that's important. Um, but what were your goals

22:39

here and what were you trying to achieve? Uh, and

22:42

what design did you end up with?

22:43

So, uh,

22:46

we worked with, uh, a friend of

22:48

a friend who's an architect. Um,

22:50

and he was just starting his own

22:52

firm at the time when we were planning

22:55

this. Um, so Aaron was, was

22:57

a great person to work with.

23:00

Um,

23:01

and what my wife and I went to him with

23:03

was our idea of, we really wanted to make a

23:05

space that was something different that was,

23:08

uh,

23:08

hospitality focused. Um,

23:11

and we really wanted to take a lot

23:13

more design cues from the wine

23:17

industry, the hotel industry

23:19

restaurants. Um, as

23:22

far as making something that was, I was

23:24

going to stand out. Um, and

23:27

a lot of the inspiration for the place ended up

23:29

just coming from the Hudson Valley itself. Um,

23:33

but it's a beautiful, beautiful part of the country.

23:36

Yeah, it really is. Um,

23:39

and so we've, we ended up creating

23:42

a space that's, um, it's very

23:44

modern. And I like to say that it,

23:46

it both blends in and stands

23:49

out, uh, in the area, uh, considering

23:52

it's an area that's full of a lot of, you know, old,

23:54

old buildings, old barns. And

23:57

we built something that's very modern and very crisp.

23:59

But at the same time, a lot of the design

24:02

cues for it came

24:05

from the natural landscape. So

24:07

it's a lot of natural wood, a lot of glass,

24:09

so it's inside and outside.

24:13

You feel like you're a part of the landscape.

24:16

And then a really cool thing that Aaron came up

24:18

with was the idea of it's just as much a part of

24:20

the natural Hudson Valley landscape to see

24:23

rusted barns, rusted tractors,

24:26

old farm equipment sitting in the

24:28

middle of a field. So we used a lot of core 10

24:31

steel, which

24:34

develops a really great patina on it.

24:37

So it's definitely a unique looking building.

24:39

There's that aged look to the roof,

24:41

I guess, probably. We actually,

24:43

so the core 10 steel wraps some of the exterior

24:46

walls off the patio. And then we have

24:48

louvers that kind of wrap around the windows

24:51

to cut down on the

24:52

afternoon sunlight inside. Nice.

24:55

And how was it received? How was the

24:58

people enjoy the space? Are they able to bring their families

25:00

and friends?

25:01

Yeah, yeah. It's

25:03

honestly, I.

25:06

One of my favorite things a lot of last

25:08

summer when I was working in the tasting room

25:10

was just watching people kind of

25:13

walk up the path to the building from the parking

25:15

lot and seeing their

25:17

their reactions when they stepped inside. It's

25:20

been really great to see people.

25:24

Without us having to explain anything,

25:26

see them kind of understand what we were going

25:28

for. Having so many people show

25:31

up with

25:31

families, with dogs and

25:34

and just. Being

25:38

able to enjoy the property that we're

25:40

on. Nice, yeah. Well,

25:43

let's go into your beer lineup and talk a little about

25:45

brewing for a minute. What was your initial beer

25:48

lineup and and how did you pick which

25:50

beers you were going to produce up front?

25:52

So the

25:54

funny thing was is,

25:57

you know, with building through Covid, the

25:59

plan. as to have the brewery building

26:03

finished a few months before the

26:05

tasting room. Uh-huh. So that I

26:07

would have time to fill up. Yeah.

26:11

Uh, did not work out that way. I had about

26:15

three and a half weeks,

26:18

um, before we opened. So

26:20

not, um, so I

26:22

kind of scrambled

26:25

to have, I think

26:27

I have four beers ready. When

26:30

we opened out of, um,

26:32

our, uh, nine taps

26:34

that we have devoted to beer. And so

26:37

filled the rest with guests, taps, um,

26:39

from friends in the industry. Um,

26:41

you know, just, just made a lot of phone calls

26:44

and said, what do you have that I could get

26:46

from you? Um, uh,

26:48

but our, our flagship

26:51

beers, well, the ones that we ended up starting

26:53

with, we had our, um,

26:55

our English beat stout, um,

26:59

and our Belgian wit

27:02

and our Pilsner and our

27:05

hazy IPA, uh-huh.

27:07

Uh, hazy IPA. Cause everyone has

27:09

to have a hazy IPA these days. The

27:13

unwritten rule of the brewing industry. Um,

27:16

and IPAs, unfortunately are still, still

27:19

over 50% of the craft beer, right? Oh,

27:21

they, they are king. It really doesn't matter what we're

27:23

doing. Our hazy IPA

27:25

is pretty much every

27:27

week, our number one seller. Yeah. Yeah.

27:31

Um,

27:32

but so, I mean, we are in New York state,

27:34

uh, farm brewery, um, which means

27:37

we're required to use, uh,

27:39

right now, I believe it's 60% New York state ingredients.

27:42

Um, we're pretty close to 100%

27:45

New York state grown ingredients. Um,

27:48

and so I really wanted to highlight

27:51

what grows in New York.

27:53

Um, so that was the, the

27:55

inspiration behind our English beat stout. Um,

27:58

New York state grows, I believe.

27:59

a third of the country's beats. Um,

28:02

and so I, I honestly

28:05

haven't brewed with beats. What do you, what do you get out of the beach?

28:07

I guess. Well, it depends on how

28:10

much of the beats you use. Um, so we're not just

28:12

using, we're not just using sugar beats. It's

28:14

not just, you know, um, like using

28:16

beach sugar in a, uh, in

28:18

a, in a Belgian triple or something like that. Um,

28:21

we're, um, we're

28:24

using, uh,

28:25

beat juice and

28:28

some beat puree. Um,

28:31

and we use it, um,

28:34

we had just enough that you get the earthiness

28:36

and the richness from the beats without

28:39

getting that distinct beat flavor.

28:42

I know beats are very divisive. Not

28:45

a lot of people are really gung ho

28:47

about beats. Um,

28:49

but,

28:49

uh, honestly with that beer, I've

28:51

really enjoyed

28:54

being behind the bar, having people notice

28:56

it and ask about it and

28:58

the number of people that love beats,

29:01

but maybe say they don't like stouts

29:03

or don't like beer at all and they

29:06

try it and they enjoy it. Or the number

29:08

of people that say, I like stouts. I really

29:10

don't like beats. And I'll just say, just try

29:13

it and seeing them maybe

29:15

change their minds about beats. If

29:18

only for our beer. Um, so

29:20

I maybe the English, uh, English beat style

29:22

you're making, I guess it's a, is

29:24

it English style or Irish

29:26

style or what? Yeah. Yeah.

29:29

So it's, it's, it's an English style stout. Um,

29:31

so not, not quite as dry as an Irish

29:33

style and, and certainly not hoppy

29:36

like an American stout. Um, so

29:38

nice sessionable, um,

29:41

stout that just kind of has that enhanced,

29:44

um, earthiness out of the, out of the beats.

29:47

And I mean, it's kind of interesting. You picked a lot

29:49

of European styles here, Belgian, Whit Pilsner,

29:52

uh, and so on.

29:53

Yeah. I, I really, like

29:56

I said about the New York farm, uh, brewery

29:59

aspect of it.

29:59

that my goal is really to

30:02

make classic beer styles with

30:05

a New York farm twist. If

30:07

there's something that's being grown on

30:10

a farm in New York, I'd like to figure out a way of

30:12

making it into a beer. So

30:14

we've definitely been playing with some fruit,

30:17

but I also, as we're

30:20

developing recipes and

30:24

developing relationships with the local farms, just

30:26

finding out what they've got and

30:29

how we can get it and turn it into a beer.

30:31

Well, can you talk to us a little bit about the New York

30:33

State ingredients? Where

30:36

are you getting some of the local suppliers? I understand

30:38

they're growing hops a lot in Central New York again,

30:40

right?

30:42

Yeah, there's some

30:44

really great hops being grown in New

30:46

York, which is definitely the trickier

30:48

one with the current hop

30:51

trend. Yeah, it's kind of funny

30:53

though, because if you go back like 200

30:55

years, or 100 years,

30:57

they were growing hops there for a long, long

30:59

time until it was blended out, I think.

31:02

In fact, at one time, I think New York State provided most

31:04

of the hops for the country. It was the

31:06

premier hop growing state for a while pre-prohibition.

31:10

And

31:12

it's honestly, it's a great area for

31:14

growing hops. The tricky thing is a lot

31:17

of the, if you buy rhizomes these

31:19

days, they're all coming from

31:21

the Pacific Northwest for the most part.

31:24

So the hops, it takes time

31:26

to get them to grow here with

31:29

just the different humidity levels. You've

31:31

got to worry about different,

31:35

there's different challenges to growing hops

31:37

here

31:39

than in the Northwest. It's more

31:41

arid, I think, there, right? Yeah, it's taking

31:43

a little bit of time to

31:45

get the varieties, different

31:48

varieties growing well here. But some of

31:50

them, I mean, Cascade loves to grow in

31:52

New York.

31:53

And especially with the

31:56

current trend of thiolized yeast.

31:59

Some of the New

32:02

York state grown cascade is

32:04

so

32:05

dense with thiol precursors.

32:08

Really fruity.

32:09

And it's amazing using

32:12

some of those, the New York state cascade

32:14

with those thiolized yeast, you get some really

32:16

intense fruit flavors out of. Which

32:19

I've actually had a couple of guests on the last

32:21

few months talking about thiolized yeast. Which

32:24

ones are

32:25

you using? So we use Cosmic Punch

32:27

from Omega-Ease. Cosmic Punch, okay. That's

32:30

how we do our hazy IPA

32:33

is with the Cosmic Punch. And so

32:35

on the hot side,

32:39

we use only New York state cascade

32:41

and New York state sots.

32:43

Oh, nice. And the sots

32:45

as well is very, very heavy with those thiol

32:48

precursors. So

32:51

before the dry hop, our hazy IPA

32:53

is just cascade and sots, which is not

32:55

anything I was doing when I was home brewing.

32:58

That's pretty cool. And

33:00

then are you using local malts and local

33:02

barley as well? So

33:05

we are using a lot of

33:07

local malt. In fact, our malt, our

33:10

maltster that we buy probably

33:12

over close to 90% of our malt from, there

33:15

are five minutes down the road. So

33:18

I usually just go pick up our malt in my

33:20

truck.

33:21

They

33:24

malt with 100% New York state grown

33:27

barley, rye,

33:30

wheat,

33:30

oats and corn.

33:33

And most of it's honestly from

33:35

inside the Hudson Valley even. It's

33:38

very, very local. And then we just had

33:40

a farm plant two acres

33:42

of barley on our front yard a couple

33:45

weeks ago. So we'll be able to

33:47

make some beers

33:49

with barley grown on our property

33:52

in the fall. That's awesome.

33:54

And you have, I guess you have a supply

33:56

of local malsters. I know there's a lot of craft malsters

33:58

popping up now.

33:59

Yep. Yep. So Hudson Valley Malt, they're

34:02

in Germantown and they're, they've

34:04

been amazing to work with. Dennis and Jeanette have

34:07

been awesome. They made great Malt.

34:09

And, um,

34:11

they've made me everything I've asked for. Um,

34:15

and yeah, they've, they've been awesome to work with. Great.

34:18

Um, well, what are some of the other styles you ventured

34:20

into? You mentioned the four flagship ones, but

34:22

I assume you're making a number of other beers as well.

34:25

Yeah. Well, and then, so those were the four beers

34:27

that were planning on opening as our flagships.

34:30

Uh, and then it was actually our towns.

34:34

I'm trying to remember the actual term for it, but whatever

34:36

the long word is for 150th anniversary, um, it

34:40

was a sesquicentennial something like that. Yes,

34:43

I think that's correct. Um, and so it was,

34:45

it was there, uh,

34:46

their 150th birthday. So we

34:49

decided to try and make a, um,

34:51

made a Vienna style logger, uh,

34:53

for them. Um, the,

34:56

the name of the town is Tivoli, which,

34:58

uh, backwards is I love it. Um,

35:01

so we made the, I love it logger. Uh,

35:03

and that was

35:05

supposed to be a one off and has gone

35:07

over so well. We have not stopped making it.

35:09

So what, what, uh, what style of logger

35:11

is that?

35:12

So it's a Vienna style logger with some flaked

35:14

corn. So more of, you know, Mexican Vienna

35:16

style logger. Um, but

35:19

it's, that one has just gone over so

35:21

well, uh, with our, uh, Lagers

35:23

have been picking up in the craft beer industry. Have you had a

35:25

good, I mean, you said you have Pilsner's one of your flagships,

35:28

but have you had a

35:29

good luck?

35:31

The Pilsner, the Vienna logger,

35:34

what other loggers have we done? We, I mean, we've also done

35:36

some of the hybrids. We, we just put

35:39

out a Colsh

35:40

a few weeks ago. That's going really well.

35:43

Um, it's definitely, those are the beers that

35:45

I find do best with our local

35:48

regulars. Um, the people that are looking

35:50

for, you know, drinkable beers, lawnmower

35:52

beers, um, the end

35:55

of a long day of farming kind of beer. Um,

35:58

so we, we've definitely been.

35:59

doing pretty well with with

36:01

with the loggers.

36:05

Yeah, what else are we making? Well, I was going to

36:07

mention, you mentioned, I think, earlier, a barrel age program.

36:10

Are you making sours or just barrel aged beers?

36:13

So we so,

36:15

like I said, well, we have the fooders. So last year

36:17

we did a

36:19

series of saisons that were all aged in

36:21

the fooders, but they were just done straight.

36:25

Nothing, nothing sour

36:27

about them. And then once we emptied

36:30

them, we brewed, like

36:32

I said, just in order to fill fill our

36:34

tap lines last year. But

36:37

once we had a little bit of breathing room, we then

36:39

put

36:39

into them

36:41

some beers that are souring. One will be coming

36:44

out for our our

36:48

first birthday in June. We

36:50

have a saison

36:52

with black currents that's been aging

36:54

with Brett and

36:57

lacto since last summer. I

36:59

like black currents. I probably enjoy that.

37:01

New York State black currents as well. And

37:05

then we've in the other two fooders,

37:07

we've got kind of.

37:10

I don't even know what you call it, but some sort of an American

37:12

style sour blonde

37:15

and then a my take

37:17

on a. Flanders

37:22

Red. So hopefully

37:24

those will be coming out soon. We've

37:26

we have done a Berliner Weiss as

37:29

as at least to have something on tap that was

37:31

even if not not sour, but tart

37:35

that we actually serve those at the bar with syrups

37:37

as well, which unless

37:41

you're a beer nerd, you don't know. Most people

37:43

don't know much about Berliner Weisses and serving

37:45

them traditionally with syrup. So that's

37:47

been fun to educate people on that.

37:54

Go ahead. Yeah, I'm just trying

37:56

to think of what else we made. It's been a crazy

37:58

year. Okay. Um,

38:02

well, uh, where do you want to go next with the business? What are

38:04

you hoping to do next?

38:05

I should ask too. Are you, are you distributing

38:08

or are you mainly selling through the taproom?

38:10

It's mostly been through the taproom,

38:12

but we've just started, um, expanding

38:14

our distribution. So we've been selling locally,

38:17

uh,

38:17

pretty much if we can drive to you, we've been

38:19

trying to sell to you lately. Um, but

38:22

we recently signed on with a distributor

38:24

down in New York city, uh, who's

38:26

doing the five boroughs of New York and Long

38:28

Island for us now. Um, and

38:31

so we're really hoping to push, uh,

38:33

expanding our distribution and we're starting

38:36

to hire a few salespeople, um, and

38:38

market representatives right now to really push

38:40

our distribution. And then, uh, where are you hoping

38:42

to go next with the business itself? I know

38:44

you, I think you already mentioned you're expanding your fermenters, right?

38:47

Yep. So, uh, like I said,

38:49

we, we have, have four 15 barrel

38:51

fermenters right now. We're adding some 40 and 45

38:54

barrel fermenters. Um, and

38:57

the, the

38:59

plan right now is to figure out the best way

39:02

to make use of the property. We're

39:05

on. Um, so we just put up a big,

39:07

uh,

39:08

it's like a 2000 square foot tent,

39:10

uh, with a bunch of picnic tables under it for the summer.

39:13

Um, like I said, we just planted the barley.

39:16

We,

39:18

it sounds like you have a few acres

39:20

there, huh?

39:21

We're on 30 acres.

39:23

Mm-hmm. And my assistant brewer and

39:26

a general manager, they just

39:28

started our apiary. So we've got

39:30

a couple of beehives going now. Um,

39:34

plan is next year to start planting

39:36

some hops, uh, potentially some

39:38

fruit trees as well, make use of the land.

39:40

Um,

39:43

and yeah, I just want to,

39:46

I just want to keep making good beer. That's really all

39:48

it comes down to. Yeah. Well,

39:51

it's good. It sounds like you're successful and the business

39:53

is growing. Um, so,

39:55

uh, can you tell us again, what your location, where

39:57

you are and your website for people who want to learn

39:59

a little bit.

39:59

more. Sure. So we're

40:02

in Tivoli, New York, about halfway

40:04

between Poughkeepsie and Albany,

40:08

right central in the Hudson Valley area

40:10

where it's

40:11

actually becoming a little bit of a destination

40:14

within driving distances of us. There's more

40:16

than a few breweries, wineries and distilleries.

40:21

So it's a great spot to come spend some time

40:23

and enjoy all the craft beverages in

40:25

the area. Our website

40:27

is LastingJoyBrewery.com.

40:30

That's the same LastingJoyBrewery on Instagram

40:33

and Facebook. And I think my wife

40:35

just started a TikTok as well. So,

40:38

you know, on all the things.

40:42

Well, Alex, so you're closing thoughts

40:44

after, you know, 10 years in the craft beer industry,

40:46

and then of course launching your own brewery

40:49

just a couple of years ago.

40:51

Ah, you know, all I'll say is I

40:54

am just very excited for the future of this

40:56

industry. I think we're, as an industry,

40:59

we are taking a lot of great steps forward

41:01

in terms of just making

41:04

some great products.

41:06

And we're also finally starting to,

41:08

I think, mature as an industry in a way that's

41:11

really fun to be a part of.

41:13

Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that was good was, you

41:15

know, COVID was a little bit of a shake out

41:18

and, you know, it was getting a little

41:20

frothy in the market, maybe. So it's

41:22

kind of nice to maybe

41:25

get people to focus a little more on

41:27

what's important in craft brewing. Yes.

41:31

And not just in craft brewing, but in general,

41:33

let's just focus on what's actually important.

41:37

Well, Alex, it's been a great pleasure

41:40

to talk with you today. Is there anything else you wanted to add?

41:42

No, no, I don't think so. Okay.

41:46

My guest today was Alex Winter, CEO

41:49

and co-founder of Lasting Joy Brewery in

41:52

the Hudson Valley. And

41:54

again, Alex, thank you so much for being on the show.

41:56

Yeah, thank you very much. Thank

42:00

you to Alex Wenner for joining me this week. Thanks

42:02

also to Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine.

42:04

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42:41

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42:43

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42:44

brewing week.