00:00:00TIAH EDMUNSON-MORTON: Ok, go head.
MATT SAGE: Ok, my name is Matt Sage. I was born here in Portland, Oregon, in
June 22nd, 1954. And We're in the Indie Hops office in SE Portland.
TEM: So you were born in Portland. Where did you go to school? What part of
Portland were you settling in?
MS: My family moved around a little bit when I was a small child, but we ended
up in Maywood Park up by Parkrose area for mostly my grade school and high
school years. And I went to Catholic schools. I went to St. Rita Grade School
which is a few blocks from my house. And I graduated from Central Catholic High School.
TEM: So, same area? Same part of Portland?
MS: Yes.
TEM: What are some of the things that you're interested in when you were younger.
MS: Boy, I haven't thought of that question for a long time. I never thought
00:01:00that-originally, as I'll explain later, I started out in wine making and then
moved to brewing from there, but I never really seriously thought that-that was
I would do when I was growing up. Although, when I was 16 or so, I did make some
wine with some thought-out Welches' grape juice and cans of yeasts that I hid in
the backyard. Really not to be able to drinking cuz it was horrible, but just
kind of with fascination with the process. So, I never would have thought of
that as something I want to do-that not why I did it. It was just a science
experiment, I guess.
TEM: Did you taste it?
MS: It did. It was pretty awful.
TEM: So, were you interested in science when you were in school? Was that always
a track that you felt like you wanted to follow?
00:02:00
MS: Yes. I guess I wasn't extremely in that direction. I did well in school in
that direction so people tend to touch you on the back and say that you're good
at that. So maybe you tend to go there whether you want to or not. But I think
what makes brewing and wine making such a cool thing is that it's such a great
mix of art and science, and the long history of it. And at the same time, you
have modern gadgets to work with if you're actually doing it, and machines. So I
think that' why it's so appealing to other people, cuz what's not to like? And
you end up with beer too, or wine.
TEM: Not Welches' grape juice. [Laughs]
MS: Not Welches' grape juice, yeah.
TEM: So what was it like to be in Portland during that time? What are some
things you remember about the city that really stand out in your mind?
MS: It was a pleasant growing up as a kid-we were by Rocky Butte before they put
00:03:00through I205. And where that it is right along the back was basically a wild
wooded area. So it was great to be in the city and have outdoor trails we could
ride our Stingrays through or had our own little war games and that sort of
thing there. So it was a very safe and pleasant neighborhood. Later on, I guess
as I got older, I thought Portland was rather boring. And I think at that time,
there wasn't nearly as many things for young people to do, especially before you
reach the age of drinking as they are now. So I thought it was kind of boring as
a teenager. But I was in a very comfortable situation, very safe. So it's a very
pleasant place to grow up.
TEM: Did you have brothers and sisters?
MS: I have just one sister-was quite a bit younger that I was.
TEM: And what about your parents? Did you live with both of them?
MS: Yes. So I live with both of my parents. And they were both born in Oregon
00:04:00themselves. My mother was born in Portland and my father was born in-I think it
was-Coquille. I think he was born in Coquille. I know he lived there in his
early life. [Pause] No I'm sorry, he was born in Lake Oswego. Then his family
moved to Coquille because his father, my grandfather, was a highway engineer,
road construction engineer. And he had his own company with a partner that went
buster in the Great Depression. And he got a job with the Coos County road
departments. So that's why they ended up moving down there. The family story is,
his partner ran off with little money they had left, and left him with nothing.
TEM: So did you visit the coast then? Was that a place where your dad liked to
00:05:00go back to?
MS: Well, Coquille was a little ways away. We went to the coast a lot, both my
parents and all as my whole family enjoy going to the beach a lot. But usually
they would be just closer to Portland. We did make one or two family trip back
to Coquille. It's getting way off track but it really sounded like a very cool
place to grow up as a child because my father would talk about that's where we'd
just go out and camp during the summer, and by the river, Mayberry kind of
place. So he obviously enjoyed that. But even more than what I was just saying
about myself, it got really boring by the time you were a teenager and
definitely wanted to move away to some place relatively more cosmopolitan.
00:06:00
TEM: So did he move to Portland then? Was that a straight shot from Coquille?
MS: No, he ended up going to high school in Coquille and went to the University
of Oregon in Eugene. So that was when he left.
TEM: And then what about your mom?
MS: She grew up in Portland. And they met at the University of Oregon. And they
got married when they were still down there. And eventually my dad became a
contractor-he had a degree in engineering, general construction. So he got a job
in Portland. They moved back here and that's why I was born here.
TEM: What about your mom? What was her interest of study?
MS: Before I was born, she was on track to be a schoolteacher. But she ended up
being a housewife most of her life.
TEM: So, a teacher still. [Laughs]
MS: Yes, yeah.
TEM: The way that we think about that part of Portland now, it's definitely more
00:07:00connected as sort of sprawl. But did you feel a kind of affinity with downtown.
Were there opportunities for you to explore not just the section of Portland you
were in. Did you go to Forest Park? Did you go downtown?
MS: Not before I got into high school. But one thing which was kind of good
about going to Central Catholic High School was that it drew kids from all over
the city instead of just your neighborhood. So either you go visit kids at their
home, or especially after we could drive, we'd go around and cover the town,
picking our schoolmates up to go to high school football game or something like
that. So I got to know a lot more of the city then. But that was before the
urban revolution. At the time in the 60s, everybody was moving out of own, and
00:08:00places like NW Portland which was almost kind of a scary part of town to go to.
It was old people and students, and hippies into the 70s before it became
popular again and people moved back into the city and fixed up all great place.
But there was, especially for teenagers, a lot to do in Portland.
TEM: Obviously now, you have a job that focuses on science. And you did brewing
which has focuses on science. Was that kind of agricultural side of science
interesting to you? Was is more on the chemistry side?
MS: I think more the biology part of it. So it includes growing material for
beer or wine. Actually when I was in college, I kind of drifted into an
00:09:00agricultural program and, in fact, worked at a USDA agricultural research lab in
Yakama one summer. It was a project on aphids and sugar beets that I was hired
for as a student, to work on an internship as a student. But I guess it's more
the biological part because so much of brewing is biology. The materials are,
obviously, plants that are grown. Malting is a biological process as the grain
is germinated. And beer is really made by yeasts primarily. I guess, that I find
more fascinating. Chemistry is an important tool. But I guess it's the biology
and the impreciseness of working with biology. It's more appealing to me than
00:10:00rows and columns kind of chemistry and engineering.
TEM: So, you graduated from high school in what year?
MS: 1972.
TEM: And then from there, did you go straight to college?
MS: I did. I went to the Evergreen State College in Olympia. And I went there
for about 4 or 5 years. But I didn't go straight through and in fact, I didn't
graduate. I left about a year in. Moved from Olympia to Seattle and worked at-it
was a first winery job-a winery called Assoc. Vintners which eventually evolved
into Columbia Winery which exists now. And Assoc. Vintners was founded of
University of Washington professors as a hobby/cooperative business among them.
00:11:00But they're one of the first new wineries in the period, in the 60s. There
hadn't been many new wineries since back in the day before Prohibition. Or, very
early years, there were few wineries in western Washington-it actually made 4 or
5 wine that sort of thing. But it was one of the first fine wineries using
European grapes. And they have vineyard in the Yakama Valley and bought from a
few other growers. But it started out very small. It's just actually a hobby
among university professors that evolved into a business. I never would have
thought of doing that.
But, as I said, that time in my early 20s, I really was unclear about what I
wanted to do. I was visiting a friend in the bay area. I must have been making
some wine at home again just as hobby because they had a wine shop that I've
00:12:00heard about in the bay area that I stopped at, on my way out to drive back to
Seattle, to pick up some supplies and just to see what they had because there
weren't a lot of them in the northwest. And they had a sign on the wall, because
they an operating winery, actually, out of their place. And they had a sign
"Help Wanted". So that's what put the idea in my head that you could actually
make a living doing something like that. And I applied and drove back. I didn't
get it. But that put the idea in my head, for the first time, to consider it as
something you would actually do for a living instead of just a hobby. So, I
didn't get that job but I started look up wineries in Washington, which were
just starting, and ended up working at least for one harvest time at Assoc.
Vintners. By then, this was the late 70s.
00:13:00
TEM: So the growth of the wine industry in Washington predates Oregon, is that right?
MS: I think they were about roughly the same time. There was an early wave with
David Lett and, I think, Charles Coury-he went on to do Cartwright beer. There
was a first wave of them in the late 70s. And then there was a bigger wave of
them. It started around the same time Bridgeport did in the early 80s. But
roughly the same time.
TEM: Ok. So it must have been an exciting time because we were growing grapes in
a place where people were not necessary thinking that we could have a robust industry.
MS: Right, especially in Oregon. I worked a number of years for Cameron Winery.
And John Paul, the owner and winemaker who had been a marine biologist and
00:14:00worked at the Scripps Institute in San Diego, left that to become a winemaker.
As part of his education, he took an internship in a number of places including
Burgundy and France, and went to New Zealand, and worked at the Napa Valley. And
there, he decided that he really like Pinot Noir. A lot of people thought that
it'd do better in a cooler climate like we have up here than in California. So
he decided to move up here and start a winery. And everybody in Napa told him
"You'll get frosted out every spring and rained out every harvest. It'll be a
complete failure." But a number of people proved them wrong, at least most of
the time.
TEM: So you were up in Seattle. And you worked full time for a season. What were
00:15:00you doing in the off season?
MS: Well, I don't remember the exact chronology. I did work there for at least a
year. And then they had a big shakeup at Assoc. Vintners. I think that was about
the time that they were doing very well as a company and then they ended up
being bought out by a larger group of investors. And that's when they involved
into the Columbia Winery. And pretty much everybody left during that transition
period. I did rehire back for a harvest but it was really between that.
And then I started working in restaurants else where as a restaurant cook. So
that's really what I was doing at the time before my brewing career started. The
idea of brewing was pretty much unheard of then. There was Anchor Steam existing
which was an old brewery. It's the only small brewery that had survived. And
there was one small one in Sonoma, California, New Albion Brewery. I think it
00:16:00was existing but it was really just a glorified home brew operation, really. But
at the time, that's just the time when imported beers were starting to become
more popular. And people started thinking about beer besides American Light
Lager, A-B or Miller. And the interest came. At then there weren't any craft
beers but there started to be bar where you could have a huge selection of
imported beers.
The other young guys that were working in the winery with me thought "Wouldn't
it to be cool to start a brewery?" But it was just an idea. And we didn't really
have the wherewithal to start one at that time. It was really an outlandish
idea. Most people were very patronizing if you told them what you're thinking
about. Mainly because breweries didn't exist, they didn't take up 5 city blocks.
There's gotta be reason for that. How could you get around the incredible
00:17:00efficiency of scale that could make a barrel of beer for a tenth, or far less
than what you could. So how could a small brewery possibly happen.
And I guess in a way, small wineries were a little of a pioneer of the idea of
craft fermentation. Most of the breweries that started at that time started on
very small budgets. And it was really uncertain whether they could survive for a
year or so. And it was really only because, personally, I was into my late 20s
then. But I wasn't marry, I didn't have any children, I didn't have a mortgage.
So I could take a chance on doing something that didn't pay very well that might
end up that I might be out of a job in a year just because it was an interesting
idea, and I was able to do that in my life.
00:18:00
TEM: Were you in Seattle when Redhook started?
MS: Yes, I was still in Seattle. That's right. So Redhook had started and
Cartwright Brewing had started down here. And Dick Ponzi, who was a winemaker, I
had worked for briefly down here in Oregon. I came down here for a short time.
My parents still lived in Portland so I was really visiting them and worked for
Dick Ponzi for a couple of months, and then went back to Seattle. But when I
heard that he was starting Bridgeport Brewery, I came down and interviewed with
Karl Ockert who was the first brew master. He knew Dick because he had been
hired out of the University of California, Davis, as an assistant winemaker for
Dick Ponzi and Ponzi Vineyard. And he was pushing Dick to start a brewery too.
Dick know Charles Coury who's formed Cartwright Brewing because they were both
00:19:00pioneer winemakers in Oregon. So he knew that. That's where Ponzi got the idea
of doing that, with Karl pushing him, sweeping the ice in front of him as best
as possible to go in that direction. So somehow I heard about it and came down
Seattle, and interviewed with Karl in the old Bridgeport building where they
still are, which was just an abandoned brick shell at that time. And I was
hired. So that was my first brewing job.
TEM: Did you know Karl before interviewing with him?
MS: No, I didn't. That was when I met him.
TEM: So you moved back here. You were basically the second employee at Bridgeport?
MS: Yes.
TEM: So what was it like working there? What was the environment, what was the
equipment like?
MS: Well, it was rustic. Because there wasn't a lot of money going to be
00:20:00invested in it. Reasonably because it was so uncertain. We mostly used old dairy
equipment, because with stainless steel, the advantage of stainless steel is
that you can take heat and you can clean it with powerful cleaners which you
need, to have a sanitary situation for brewing beer so you'll hopefully produce
good beer. The building was very rustic. People would probably be horrified to
make beer in that these days.
And the product was pretty rough too. But it was the learning curve. There
really wasn't much brewing education outside of the big breweries, I think, at
that time. You went to college and learned the basics, and learned some
chemistry and maybe mechanical engineering. But then the big brewers would just
00:21:00hire people from that, and then train them themselves in the A-B way, or the
Miller ways, or whatever. So there was a very small fermentation science,
brewing-orient program. I'm not sure how separate it really was from winemaking.
It was sort of an adjunct to the winemaking program at UC Davis. And there was a
Siebel Institute in Chicago which was a private educational research company
that worked for the brewing industry. And they had a little bit of an education
program. But there was really, very little back then because, as I said , the
big breweries would just hire people and then train them in their way. And
that's all they were looking for. So, Karl had gone through the brewing program.
But compared to starting out today, we started with very little knowledge and
learned a lot as we went.
00:22:00
TEM: At that point, were you home-brewing beer?
MS: No, not really.
TEM: Ok. I was at Steinbart's earlier today-I stopped by-and they were having an
Oregon Brew Crew meeting tonight. So I'm curious, did you guys go to home
brewing meetings? Was it really more using more Karl knew and then experimenting
on your own? How did you grow and learn in those early months?
MS: Actually, I take that back. I had done some home brewing with John Alban who
was another winemaker, a few years younger than Karl, who graduated out the UC
Davis program and had gone up to work at Assoc. Vintners. So that's how I met
him. And he was one of the guys there that I talked about-we thought, "wouldn't
00:23:00it be cool to start a brewery?" In fact, we did do some home brewing at his
house. I'm really trying to remember why. But we had talked to the founders of
Redhook Brewing whose names just escaped me-I haven't crossed my mind there for
a long time. But we ended up not joining with them. One of them was the one of
the founders of Starbucks Coffee. And he was kind of a entrepreneurial type.
Another guy ended up becoming the president of Redhook for quite a while and I'm
sorry his name just doesn't pop in my head right now, maybe it will later. I can
amend it. So I think they had the idea of starting Redhook but we never
combined. I really don't remember the reason why. Maybe by that time, I had come
down to start working at Bridgeport, cuz Redhook started at about the same time
roughly as Bridgeport did.
00:24:00
TEM: It's life. [Laughs]
MS: But anyway, we started studying it and looking into it. Karl had done
brewing with the program. When he and Dick decided to start Bridgeport, he
started, more or less, home brewing to try out recipes to continue what he'd
done, started at UC Davis to come up with ideas for how we would get started at
Bridgeport-what the first kind of beer would be and that sort of thing.
TEM: It seems like then there were very many brewing books. Even
homebrewing-wise, it was pretty limited in publications.
MS: Yeah in fact Fred Eckhardt, he published one of the first homebrewing books
in this country. And there were some I remember reading that were written in the
UK cuz there is homebrewing. The early beers were lucky because, this wave of
00:25:00popularity, even the ports had. So people started thinking about beer and having
more variety in beer. And that's what we early brewers were trying to
imitate-would be to make that kind of beer here inspired by existing European
brewer. Home brewers today are still looking at that, except they're also trying
to imitate modern American craft beers.
TEM: It's interesting. So culturally in Portland when you came back-taking a
step out of brewing for just a second-what was it like to come back? Did you
feel like Portland was different when you returned in the early 80s? Was it more exciting?
MS: It was more exciting but not compared to Seattle in the early 80s. And I've
sort of missed that. Seattle in the early 80s was a very fun place for young
people, as Portland is today. And Portland I think became that, in my humble
00:26:00opinion, ten year later. And it as still very affordable to live in Seattle.
There just was a lot going on. That's when the cultural shift were-urban became
popular again. I lived in an apartment in NW Portland. It was very inexpensive.
And still, most of the houses run down a lot of the early employees at
Bridgeport, both in the bar and the Bridgeport. There were students from Louis
and Clark college that lived in houses all together in NW Portland. And the
neighborhood was just staring to turn into the much more trendy and expensive
neighborhood it is today. So that was starting to transition in the 80s. So
Portland was definitely starting to accelerate but it was a little blah compared
00:27:00to Seattle for somebody in their 20s at that time, from my point of view.
TEM: So at that point, Henry Weinhard's was still an operational brewery?
MS: Yes.
TEM: And that was the only brewery that was operational-cuz I don't think there
was anything similar at that point-was that kind of it for other breweries in
the state?
MS: There was General Brewery in Vancouver Washington. I'm trying to remember
when they closed down. I think they were still operating in the 80s. That
eventually closed down and all the equipment got sent off to China. They had a
brewery there. I remember driving to Great Western Malting in Vancouver cuz we
picked up our own malting in pickup trucks back then from Great Western Malting.
And we'd driver by the General Brewery. I remember it being taken apart. The
00:28:00whole building was taken down, and tanks were hauled out of that and put on a
ship for China at that time.
But Henry Wienhard's was still going on. And the brew master, again whose name I
don't remember, was very kind to us. They did so lab work on some of our early
brews and even loaned us some kegs to fill, and even washed them for us in their
facility. So that was very generous. I remember he and a bunch of the employees
of Blitz Weinhard came to the opening party for Bridgeport Brewing. His joke,
which he loved telling over and over, "I bought enough people so that in a few
hours, we'll put you out of business by drinking all your beer cuz that's all
you're able to make." That's partly true but that was the running joke of his at
that party. But he was very kind. He was very nice to us as a startup.
00:29:00
TEM: So you were within five blocks, is that right? Bridgeport is pretty close
MS: Yeah it was just down the street on 13th, which was unpaved rail road line,
the Portland terminal railway. And trains were still going by at that time,
hauling dumping off boxcars to businesses along the street. Because the whole
Pearl rail yards District redevelopment hadn't happened then. To east of 12th
street it was just rail yards. And going as far south as, I think, Hoyt Street,
was all just rail yards and old warehouses. Freight trains would be stored there
but it really wasn't very active, which is why they eventually decommissioned
and turned it into the condos seen as it is now. They filmed the Drugstore
Cowboy movie by Gus Van Sant who had an office on the top of Bridgeport building
00:30:00at that time after fairly recently-filmed some of the opening scenes and the
credit runs just a block from Bridgeport down under the old Lovejoy. You can see
what it looked like then from that movie.
TEM: What are some of the stories that stick out before you open? So you were
figuring out what your signature beer is? Is that what you guys were thinking
about? What were you doing to prepare for opening?
MS: Karl, since he had a big head start, he already pretty much settled on-he
tried a number of different-yeasts, which are what give each brewery a house
signature flavor. Really, it's the strain of yeast that's used, especially with
ales. So he had decided on one. The difficulty back then was that all the
ingredients were made and perfected for making Budweiser, basically. There was a
00:31:00variety of hops to use but hops in beer, the way they're used now wasn't
imagined then. We use more hops than were used for American Lager. But it was
more to try and to get into the zone of European beers which are not nearly as
hop-forward as modern American craft beer. So that wasn't there. The basic pale
malt was malt that was, as I said, developed and perfected for making Budweiser.
So it was very pale. It had a log of enzymes for converting rice and corn, and
other adjuncts. It really didn't have the flavors we were looking for. So, to
compensate, we had use a lot of what are called crystal or caramel malts which
is malt that's been partially germinated and roasted while still damp so you can
crystallization of sugar. So you'll have those kind of flavors which, in
00:32:00European beers, are only used a small percentages to give a little bit of an
accent because they have a flavorful base malt. But those malt ended up being a
large percentage of the beers, 20% or 30% of craft beers cuz we were trying to
find some way to make the base malt more interesting or have more flavor, or
distinctive. So that sort of was the beer-not that hoppy, and they were a little
bit on the sweet side because of the use of caramel malt and modern alcohol.
That was sort of the craft beer of the time.
TEM: What were your options for yeast? Could you import from Europe?
MS: Davis and the Siebel Institute, and a few other places in North America, had
yeast libraries where they actually keep cultures of all these different yeasts.
00:33:00So that was accessible, especially if you're a graduate of UC Davis. You could
send back to your friends in the lab and have them send you. They're called on a
slant, which is on a test tube. It's a little streak of yeast on a media that's
kept cold so they don't grow. And then they have to be brought out and
repropagated so that they're alive for a short period then they go back into
being kept cold. So that's how they maintained a strain. So that was actually
available. That was another way you could distinguish your beer. And then, most
breweries were making ales then. I think the idea was really that it was as
different from American Lager as possible. It's getting to be distinctive as one
of the reasons. And coincidentally, you didn't need as many tanks for storage
because it matured faster. Really, that was a practical reason for it. But what
00:34:00I remember is that we were trying to be as distinct from mainstream American
beer as possible. So making ale was a way to do it. And a lot of brewers just
liked English ales-had been to England and liked the beers there. So they were
back trying to imitate that.
TEM: So, Widmer was right across the street? Is that right?
MS: Practically. They are a block and a half away.
TEM: Was there kind of free exchange between the two as you were setting up, not
totally concurrently but within months of each other?
MS: Yeah, within months, and Portland Brewing as well. So the three of us are
all very close. I think the brew masters felt a little more competitive with
each other, even though everybody was making tiny amounts of beer. It was more
difficult to get number-of-visiting accounts, where people would say "Well no,
we have Bud, Bud Light, Coors, Coors Light, Miler, Miler Light. And Henry's,
00:35:00we're set. What more could we want?" So it was more difficult getting ahead. But
we were still such a drop in the bucket at the market that there really wasn't
that much. And we knew it was growing and started growing really fast. So it
wasn't like we are intense competition. It was more like rival high schools, I
guess. But especially among the brewery workers on the floor, it was more a
brotherhood at these new craft brewers. It's much stronger than competition.
And we shared a lot of ideas and equipment, especially with not exact recipes
that was a little more proprietary, but techniques and equipment, and who's a
good refrigeration guy, and that sort of thing. All the daily details of
business that was offered freely. And we all drank beer together too. So it was
00:36:00really a nice comradery in one, cuz we were doing something new.
TEM: What about just even the scale if you bonded together. Could you get
discounts on orders? Did you go together on malt orders? Did you share kegs or
anything at that level?
MS: We might have shared kegs. I think malt and hops, you pretty much have to
buy. I guess we all had our own ideas of what we wanted. And Great Western,
again, was another company that A-B was one of their principal customers. And
that's where their malt was. And they were extreme kind in dealing with us. We
were really, practically sampling their lots. They were operation on such a
scale with rail carts of malts going to breweries including Blitz Wienhard. We
were able to buy bags. And eventually, they have these things called super sacks
00:37:00which are about 2000 lbs of malt in a sack that sits on a palette that you can
fork with into the back of a truck. But they were very kind to tolerate us and
help us because we were such a tiny scale compared to what they were operating on.
TEM: What about other places where you were getting tap space? McMenamins
Produce Row? Is that right? Is that what it was called out in Hillsboro?
MS: Actually, Produce Row is down here on the waterfront.
TEM: Oh ok. So was there tap space?
MS: There was, yeah. McMenamins was one the earliest supporters at the craft
business. And it was slightly later that they started making their own beer. The
Hillsdale one may be one of the earliest breweries-I don't remember the time in
00:38:00exact. But anyway, they were great supporters of all of us early on. Eventually,
as they put more and more their own breweries in, they started selling a higher
percentage of their own beer. But they were great supporters in the early days.
TEM: What about other non-brewery places that you could count on getting tap space?
MS: There were a few other around. Let's see, what were some of the early ones.
Jake's Crawfish downtown. Some of the old institutional ones were actually quite
friendly. Portland bars, Higgins which kind of new at the time. I forget when
they started up. They were just early. Even some neighborhood pubs where most
people came in and had Budweiser, we were able to get on enough of them to
support. It was all kegs back then because it was much easier to start that way.
Bottling equipment can cost as much as the whole rest of the brewery put
00:39:00together. And it's less forgiving than just selling beer in kegs because the
bottles aren't necessarily refrigerated. And it might be a while before they are
sold. You need to have a good lab, and good bottle and equipment to keep the
oxygen levels down in the beer so that the beer won't stain. So that was more of
a challenge. But really, it's partly just cost. Most of these places started up
on the shoestring and it's much cheaper just to fill kegs and deliver them
around town then bottles
TEM: Did you guys deliver them yourselves?
MS: We didn't. At the time the laws were if you were a producer, you could
choose to either have a retail outlet or distribute. You couldn't do all three.
So Bridgeport chose to have their pub. And Portland Brewing chose to have their
pub. And Widmer's chose to do distribution.
00:40:00
TEM: Oh. So they weren't selling on site.
MS: No, they weren't selling on site. They weren't allowed to do that. I think
they had tours with tastings. And a lot of the laws were rather strict back
then. But gradually over the last 30 years, they've loosened up quite a bit. And
at some point, they got rid of the restriction on being able all three aspects
if you are under a certain size. The beer distributors were very leery of that
because they wanted to be able to have any keg that was served in a retail place
to have to go through them, originally. But gradually, all those laws were
loosen up. But start out, that was the choice-if you're a producer, you could
either distribute or have a retail outlet. And then it became you could have one
or two other retail outlets. So the McMenamins used that to produce in one place
and then distribute to one or two of the other ones that didn't have a brewery,
00:41:00because by then, they had a dozen or so. So they were kind of working at that
way. That was the rules back then.
TEM: So how long were you at Bridgeport?
MS: Six years, in the first stint I was at Bridgeport.
TEM: And then you left in 1980? Is that right?
MS: No, 1990.
TEM: Oh 1990. That was some math. You were going back in time. [Laughs] So 1990,
you left to go back to the winemaking side, right?
MS: Yes. Actually, I left and Karl actually left at about the same time. I
actually worked for Widmer for a short time. And then I can't remember the
detail cuz I did do quite a bit of switching back and forth. I think that may
have been the first time I work for Cameron Winery. I think it was just for a
00:42:00harvest time. But then, one of the guys that had worked at Bridgeport in the
early days, Mark Youngquist who is from Colorado, went back home to Colorado and
convinced Frank Day to start a brew pub in Boulder, Colorado. And that was
successful. And eventually he opened one in Denver called Rock Bottom because it
was at the plaza level of a skyscraper in Denver. It was the prudential plaza.
So the prudential rocks of Rock Bottom is where that name came from. And Mark,
since I was sort of at loose ends, he recruited me to come out to Colorado and
try Colorado out and work when the first Rock Bottom in Denver started up. So I
did for a little bit less than a year.
TEM: What was your motivation for leaving Bridgeport? Like, you wanted something
00:43:00different? What was the kind of input is for leaving?
MS: I guess Karl can speak for himself. I think we both became a little bit
frustrated with the vision of the brewery not really going beyond what it was at
that time. And clearly, it was possible to go to another level in the type of
equipment we had and just the upgrading and taking it to another level. Either
that wasn't gonna happen, or that wasn't gonna happen quick enough for us. We
had been there 6 years. And we kind of felt like we were a little bit at the end
of what was going to happen for us there. And we were looking for someone else
beyond that.
TEM: So then you moved to Rock Bottom which is new, and weren't there for a long
00:44:00time. But what was it like to be back at square one again? Did it feel like the
excitement of starting something new?
MS: When I came back to Bridgeport, you mean?
TEM: No, when you were in Denver.
MS: Oh, in Denver. So I as only there for less than a year. I helped Mark start
that and that was the first one. Obviously that company, which is still around
today, has-I'm not sure how many-thirty or so Rock Bottom restaurant and
breweries around the country. Started that. And I really moved back because my
girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife, didn't want to move to Colorado. So
that's really the reason I didn't stay there longer than I did, and I moved back
to Portland. So we had a long-distance relationship for 10 month, then I came back.
TEM: So then when you came back, did you go back to Bridgeport? What was the
00:45:00next stop?
MS: No. I think when I came back, that's when I started working for Cameron. And
I worked there for quite a few years until Rock Bottom came to Portland. And I,
once again, was recruited. So I worked for Cameron Winery for several years. And
then when the Rock Bottom Portland opened up, I helped start that, and ended up
working there for six years. So that was, at least, approximately 1994 to 2000.
TEM: What was the wine scene like then? Stepping back to working in wineries,
had it changed? Did you feel like it was remarkably different than it was when
you left to come to Bridgeport?
MS: Oh yes. That was really developing, both in the number of wineries, size,
00:46:00the sophistication of how things were done. It was obviously gonna be a
successful thing. So it was easy to attract more money to do a more expensive
job. So it was really developing in every direction a lot faster cuz it started
to become a hit and people were doing it. But again, that early generation of
wineries were still people that had to make a go of it and put their kids
through college on it. And back then, wine land was still affordable enough that
you could do that. Now it's so expansive to start wineries that I'm really not
sure how it pencils out for people. I think it's mostly started by people who
already have money, instead of people who're gonna make money by doing this.
Many wineries, like Cameron did a very good job-and it was legal for them to do
00:47:00it-could just sell directly to restaurants around town. And that was a very
important part of their economy to be successful in a small size-be able to
direct sell to restaurants. And of course, it was part of their success because
restaurants love having the winemaker come in the back door, bringing their wine
to them. And they could ask you how the harvest is, what's going on now at the
winery. You know, you don't do that to the distributer, truck driver. So those
were big parts of their success. And I think southern Oregon is a great place to
grow wine and it's really developing fast now. But I think the Portland area,
within an easy drive of Portland, is why the wine industry came up. "Here's a
good place to grow grapes for wine, but it's proximity to Portland"-made those
small wineries possible by having been able to sell close to a metro area to
00:48:00support them. Not that they didn't also sell out of state and elsewhere, but
Portland was a major market for them.
TEM: What was your role in those years? What did you do?
MS: Well, Cameron Winery, again, was very small. It was John Paul, the owner and
winemaker. And there was one or two other people that work there. Everything was
great about it. Most of the grapes, we bought from vineyards that the winery
didn't own. But we did have a small six-acre winery [vineyard] that we took care
of ourselves. So it was from planting sticks in the ground to putting label on
the bottles-a lot of it was very hand done, semi-automated-and of course,
fermenting wine and moving up from barrel to barrel, and the whole steps. So
that's what made it really fun. And John Paul was quite a character, very fun to
00:49:00work for, extremely pleasant person to work for. And really made it fun and very
educational. He had a Ph.D. in, I believe, biochemistry. As I said, he used to
be a marine biologist and worked at the Scripps. So he was a great mix of art
and science. And his experience working in Burgundy for a while when he was
teaching himself about it-it was a great experience working for him.
TEM: So you have the big breweries that operate on a five-square block. And then
were these micro-breweries. Was the same thing happening in the wine industry?
Were there big production facilities for wine, I guess, maybe in California? Was
everything much more micro here?
MS: Yes there were no large wineries in the northwest at that time. I think
00:50:00Chateau St. Michell was the first one big that comes to mind, up in Washington,
that grew into a larger one. But especially in Oregon, it was all really built
around an individual's personality. And there wasn't any kind of real corporate
winery at all. And mostly in Washington too, they all started out smaller. And a
few of them grew into larger ones. And still, there are not that many large ones
in Oregon.
TEM: So I'm curious, we hear about the acquisition of smaller breweries by
larger breweries. Is that something that was ever happening or does happen in
the wine world, where larger corporate wineries want to by the smaller wineries?
MS: I don't know. I think larger corporates wineries or wine holders will buy a
00:51:00famous name in Napa or something like that, and have that part of their group.
But I think that does happen. I don't know. I've been a little bit out of the
loop in the wine business so I'm not really like on latest things.
TEM: You're commuting, though, during that time, right? You were living in Portland?
MS: Yes.
TEM: So, you did that for 6 years.
MS: Yeah. I didn't work for Cameron quite that long. But the winemaker also
lived in Portland too. So we would just get together and carpool out there. But
that was part of the reason. Why I eventually is my child was born. It would be
a very long day to go out there cuz it's a long drive even then. Traffic wasn't
as bad as it is now going out to Dundee. But I'd get home very late at night. So
00:52:00it became less practical. And then I guess the same thing that made working at
Cameron as great, which was John Paul's personality, also was a reason for
leaving in that is was so much his winery, and his personality, and him making
every decision which is why it is what it is, and why they make fantastic
wine-it's a great place. That's also limiting for anybody else that works there,
like what you're gonna do. I just didn't wanna spend the rest of my life just
doing that. I guess that's why I ended up eventually coming back to Bridgeport
in 2004.
TEM: And Karl was obviously back then?
MS: And Karl had gone back there too. He came back in, I think, '96.
TEM: When did Dick Ponzi sell Bridgeport? Was that while you were there the
first time?
MS: No, they kept it for about 5 years after Karl and I left, and then sold it
00:53:00in 1996. And then that's when Karl came back for the new owners, the Gambrinus Company.
TEM: What was it like to come back to Bridgeport?
MS: It was like coming back to an entirely different place. The new owner put a
lot of money into it. It was-I don't how many times the size-much bigger, run
entirely different. It was really different. There're probably, really, three
Bridgeports in its history. They could be regarded almost as completely separate businesses.
TEM: Yeah.
MS: The whole vibe of the place was entirely different.
TEM: So I'm assuming then, at the point that you come back, obviously there are
considerably more breweries in Portland. Coming back from the business,
obviously you had been in Portland. But coming back in the brewery space, I'm
curious about how it was differently professionally to come back to not only a
00:54:00different company but really, a different culture. I guess you were here for
Rock Bottom so it wasn't entirely different.
MS: Just much more professionally done. It was more sophisticated and
professionally. Beer had to meet a higher standard. And brewing beer on that
scale just require more equipment and knowledge. It was more division of labor,
certainly. Back in the old days, everybody did everything, or at lest rotated
around jobs to keep it in the stream. But this was big. It was more like-it's a
small factor but it was a little factory where he had different categories of
people doing different things. And we had much better equipment to work with and
ways to control the process, which you needed if you're gonna make beer on that
scale, and especially ship it farther away and that sort of thing. So it was a
00:55:00much more professional scene to come back to. The whole industry had grown up a
lot during that time, Bridgeport along with them. So that's one of the ways it
was very different in.
TEM: What was that like for you? Was it kind of exciting to see that-you know,
you had helped to start the seed of this industry. Was it exciting, then to come
back to the same place and see how much it had grown?
MS: It had, though we weren't really in control. It was control by the owner of
the Gambrinus Company. So that was kind of the tradeoff-it's that it was kind of
fun to come back and brew beer with all these great tools, but it wasn't quite
as craft. It more factory and less craft than we did. And I actually did enjoy
brewing on a smaller scale, on a brewpub-size scale at Rock Bottom where you
could think of new beers and have them at least for a special or something. If
00:56:00they stuck, they became a regular brand. But this is more making the same
product over, which is an important part of brewing-not making good beer once
but be able to make the same beer.
It's kind of the difference between home brewing and professionally brewing.
Consistency is a very important part of brewing. And a lot the breweries now,
it's kind of led by the demand by consumers. Those second most popular category
beer are seasonals or specials. So it's great now you can be in a larger brewery
and be making new beers all the time. And so there's that creative side as well
as the more engineering side of doing a good job of making the same beer of your
main brands. I think that seems relatively new. Ten years ago, it was more the
case of larger craft breweries had their flagship brands and stuck to it, and
00:57:00there was a little bit of experimenting. But I think that's a cool trend, and
partly made possible by what consumers want now but also craft brewers taking
more control of the raw materials, and being able to get hops and malt that were
spec'd for them, not spec'd for the big breweries.
TEM: One thing that I didn't ask about-we don't have to dwell too long-we talked
about malt, we talked about yeast. Was there any relationship, when Bridgeport
started, on the hop side? Did you guys go visit hop yards? Was there a kind of
direct relationship at any level with the farmers just down the road?
MS: No. In fact, Bridgeport was one of the first breweries that bought direct
from a farm, from Goeschie Hop Farm. But that was pretty much unheard of at the
time. You just bought through the brokers. I was certainly aware of it after
00:58:00working at the winery cuz John Paul, the winemaker asked me, "Well, as a brewery
certainly, you must go down and talk to the hop grower, visit the farms and see
how things are doing." Certainly, that's such a big part of winemaking. And the
answer is no. At that time, brokers were really trying to keep customers and hop
growers at arm's length with them in the middle. So Bridgeport, at Karl's
initiatives, is one of the first people that actually took advantage of us being
right here. And people started-I'm not sure when fresh hop beer started-at least
buying a little bit of their hops direct from growers. In retrospect, that was a
strange thing. And again, the craft brewing industry started out having to buy
materials just off the shelf that were designed and perfected for making-and
00:59:00they worked very well for us. It's not that they were bad. They just were
intended for a different purpose than the beers we were trying to make.
TEM: What about when you came back to Bridgeport? What was your job title when
you were there?
MS: I guess I had several different things on my business card cuz it was a
little bit unclear. I was the purchaser of the brewing materials. And I also
would research new equipment and methods. At that time, Bridgeport had gone
through a growth spurt and look like they might be moving off the original side
into a new brewery, to have a big expansion of equipment. And I was brought on
the help with the planning for that. That ended up never happening. So I ended
up doing really a lot of office work and inventory, almost quartermaster you
01:00:00could call. But I would also help out in the brewery because I could. When
they're shorthanded or something like that, I'd help in various parts. But
mostly, it's more administrative kind of things.
TEM: At that point since part of your job is the ingredient side, were you
working with growers then? Was there an increased link with the raw materials as
they were grown?
MS: Yes, but still more as far as going to the broker and selecting hops. We
were starting to meet some growers. That was when we had first direct contacts
with growers a little bit. But still, not really that much. The Oregon Hop
Commission had, and still has, at least one annual get together with brewers and
01:01:00hop growers. So we'd go down to visit Al, I remember meeting Al the first time
down at the experimental yards outside of Corvallis, I think on one of those bus
tours where we'd visit hop yards. But it still was not that direct. But it
started getting a little more. And certainly I learned a lot more about hops and
the hop business by that role. In retrospect, it naturally let into the job I'm
doing now, but only in retrospect probably more than at the time. [Laughs]
TEM: That's life. [Laughs] In retrospect, it makes sense. So how long were you
at Bridgeport the second time?
MS: Six years also.
TEM: Six years.
MS: From 2004 to 2010.
TEM: So then what happened to lead you away from Bridgeport the second time?
MS: I first met Jim and Roger, who are the founders of Indie Hop. Just before
01:02:00they stared setting up their facility in Huber, they came to visit us at
Bridgeport as potential future costumers and told us about their idea of
starting this new company. And the context of that-too for Indie Hop's
founding-is there's upheaval in the hop industry in 2007 and 2008. Really, the
price of hops had been near, if not below, the cost of production for a very
long time, like 8 years. And fewer hops were being grown, because both areas in
Yakima and in Oregon are very mixed. They're not areas for hops only. There're a
lot of other crops being grown. So if farmers weren't making money growing hops,
they'd grow something else on the land and shift that out of it.
But the big stabilizer in the industry was the old A-B which was very security
01:03:00conscious about their raw materials, and would maintain a very carry over raw
materials from year to year, and would not quibble about price too much,
especially in their dealings. They're probably one of the fairest purchasers of
hops at that time. And if there's access, they would just buy it up. Cuz they
were really looking for stability and security. When they were bought by InBev,
the company immediately saw this huge inventory of materials as a chance to save
money. So they basically pulled the rug out of a lot of growers, especially in
Oregon which was very dependent on selling hops to A-B. And then at that time,
there was also the craft brewing which is accelerating and accelerating. I can't
remember if they had a bad harvest. They had a fire in the warehouse that burned
up a million pounds of hops, which is not huge in the whirl of things.
01:04:00
But all these factors came together, the declining supply and increasing demand.
At some point, they crossed and created a huge shortage, which the existing
supplier which were then very few took advantage in their dealings with brewers.
So this created an opportunity for more competitors to come into in the scene.
And that's why Indie Hops and Crosby Farms and a lot of the new players came
into business at about that time. And also just to link up with craft, it was
becoming big enough to have a voice of their own. So there's more of a
demand-just as they're now-small beer lister bitters that exclusively distribute
craft, now small hop suppliers like us that just exclusively service the craft
industry. I can't remember if I got off on your original questions or not.
01:05:00
TEM: No, you were answering it. It's the "how did you end up here in the office
as where we are." So in 2010, did you directly come from Bridgeport?
MS: Yes I did.
TEM: What was the selling point for you to shift over to this end of the brewing ingredients?
MS: Again, Bridgeport was controlled by a man in Texas who made a lot of money
importing Corona into the United States. But I feel I was really disconnected
with the craft scene. And we were really missing out on a lot of opportunities,
just really going down our path and missing the ball. It was not very inspiring.
And also in my position at Bridgeport, even if I stayed there for another
decade, I'd probably be doing exactly the same thing. So again, I had a chance
01:06:00to get into the ground floor of a really interesting new business. And what's
appealing about this is, for the first time, really connecting with growers, the
agricultural part of it which I enjoyed in the winemaking. With winemaking, it's
connected with grape growing and the production of the raw materials. The
research of aspect at OSU and the breeding work going down there is whole
another asset that's very interesting. And working with all these breweries-it's
such an interesting and diverse group of customers, all these different sizes of
brewers and personalities of people. So it's a very interesting and diverse
business to be in.
TEM: Do you have a synopsis of what Indie Hops is and what your role is?
01:07:00
MS: Indie Hops is a company that-I guess we haven't settled on exactly where to
call ourselves-is just a hop seller. We don't really like the term "broker"
because that implies somebody, like a commodities broker, who's just looking to
find whatever they can and then resell it for as much as possible, because most
of our hops that we sell are on acres that were established for us by a few
growers in Oregon. There are acres which we paid establishment fees to help
defray some of the cost of installing new acres and putting up trailers and all
that. And in turn, we have at least first right of refusal off of all the hops
that come off of that land that was planted for us on our contract, at least for
quite a number of years. That helps secure our supply and stabilize the prices
01:08:00of hops that we're buying, because we have long-term agreements with all these
growers. And it also frees us up with playing casino games at the end of each
season with what the demand and supply is that year. So we can plan ahead, which
allows our customers to plan ahead. We could look at prices on a long term.
Again as I said, we were founded out of the instability of that period when
supply went down. And then the very next year after prices went up, 7000 acres
were planted up in Yakima. And then there was too much hops for a short time,
and now it's back down. So it's really been a roller-coaster. So we're trying to
do our part. Another aspect of it is Oregon was once one of the largest hop
producers-at one time is was the largest hop producer in the world by itself.
But it played a much large role in US hop growing than it is now. I think now
01:09:00it's about 18%. And all the people involved in Indie Hops now are native
Oregonians that grew up in the Willamette Valley. And especially ABI pulled the
rug out of a lot of hop growers down here, we really wanted to try and
invigorate the industry. Our breeding work with OSU is trying to come up with
new varieties that work really well here, cuz our climate is very different from
Yakima and most of the new breeding of prior varieties has been done up there.
And obviously, they're gonna select what does well up there. So we're really
trying to support Oregon. I think it's the smaller sizes of farm and operations
in general makes it an ideal fit for the craft brewing industry. So I guess
that's another aspect of being Oregon centric.
01:10:00
TEM: So the breeding program is established to find new varieties that grow best
in Oregon, right?
MS: Yes.
TEM: So then what's your job here?
MS: My job, I guess, is customer service, brewery, liaison-Jim often calls it.
It's very common for supplier of breweries-I think a lot of the industries, for
the suppliers-to hire people that were former customers because they know what
it looks like from the other side. So, really that's my role-is to talk to
brewers every day. But also business development, decide in what direction we
grow, how big we grow, and to help decide with breeding, and help bring in
brewers to help select which varieties coming out of the breeding program are
01:11:00most promising to carry on for further trials. Again, it's a small company so I
do a little bit of everything.
TEM: Well, we were talking earlier about the difference now in wrapping brewers
into the science and the development of new varieties. Can you talk a little bit
about how that works and why that's exciting, and why that matters on the
brewing end and the grower end?
MS: I think because there are so many new brewers, it is getting competitive out
there for people. The industry is still growing very quickly, especially
nationwide. But it is getting more competitive. So brewers are looking for
points of distinction for their beer. They're also asking for what do you have
that's new. The problem from the supplier sample end is that there're also a lot
01:12:00of new varieties coming out. So it takes a lot of time, and expands and risk to
come up with new varieties. And is it gonna be the exciting new thing? For how
long? And then many something else supplant it.
So it's important, from our point of view from the developmental varieties, to
have brewers involved early on to find things that they like, in a way, adopt
it, because they will be the first users. And we're hoping they'll like it
enough, or be excited about it enough, to contract for three years. So we can
take the risk of planting a number of acres of it, and then having it developed
like that. So in a way, they're co-sponsoring new varieties for us. That's why
it's good.
Another practical reason is, between Shaun Townsend at Oregon State and Jim and
01:13:00I, we have pretty good noises for hops. But it really is a matter of taste. And
we want as many noses as possible on these new varieties for feedback to decide
where the interest is. And I suppose there're two ways of selecting, or starring
hops. One is the hops that are most popular with a broad range of people. But we
also put a star by hops that even a few people become very passionate about-that
a few people are very excited about that has something special for them. But
again, not just to create new aromas-to circle back to what I think I said
earlier, is that-new varieties are needed just to keep ahead of the evolution of
diseases. And to keep hops affordable to produce for everybody along that are
01:14:00easy enough to grow that the growers don't have to charge too much for them, to
keep them as reasonably priced as possible.
TEM: We were talking, too, about how something that can be a strong producer for
10 years and that's long enough that people see it as a stable fundamental hop.
It can start to peter out. So I guess that kind of replacing's not just for
disease evolution, but plant evolution too, that they are plants. [Laughs]
MS: That's true. Since everybody is in a hurry to come out with new varieties
these days, because they're such a demand for it. Brewers will find a hop they
like that's just in the early development stage, what I want to buy all this
next year, which isn't possible that process has from the Al Haunold days where
they used to take 14 years to come out with a new variety which by then you
01:15:00could start to see how they were. And really to his credit, a lot of varieties
that Al, Dr. Haunold, produced out of the USDA program are very stable, both in
their tendency to peter out. But they're yield from year to year. And taking
that time to look at the long term thing like that is a fantastic advantage now
that there's a lot of pressure to come out, to cut that time in half or so.
That's a question mark for a lot of new varieties that are coming out.
TEM: So you guys have test plots.
MS: Yes.
TEM: And where are you test plots, can you say?
MS: The test plots that are grown, which are really just one plant grown from
one seed, are at the Oregon State USDA research field just outside of Corvallis,
01:16:00just east across the river from Corvallis. Maybe we should take a break for the train.
TEM: Yeah
TEM: So test plots at the experimental yard. And then, do you go straight from
the experimental yard to the plots that are-
MS: Well, the next step is-the most promising ones we find there do test plots.
Right now, we have two farms that are working with us. They have an acre or so
set aside where we will have a dozen of so hills of each variety that looks
promising, actually maybe more like twenty of so hills, so that we can have
enough material for people that brew with this. Right now, it's really just a
handful of hops to work with. And you can't really use it. Even with the next
step, some breweries, it's great to have a very small pilot brewers-they're
01:17:00practically like home brewery size-that can use a few pounds of hops and have
some kind of meaningful results. But that's sort of the next step-is some of
these interested customers do actual test brews with these hops, which are now
coming from a number of hills. So we have a little bit of a trail. And then the
winners out of that will get planted on probably 5 acres. That would be the next step.
TEM: So this is the third or fourth season that just happened, for the research program?
MS: The very first crosses were actually done in 2009. Shaun started crossing
2009. So we have 5 years now.
TEM: That's 5 years...
MS: Yeah.
TEM: ...getting to the point where you've got a good years of data. What is the
01:18:00thing is the most exciting to you. You don't have to pick one. What is the most
exciting to you right now about the work you're doing and the industry that
you're in?
MS: Well, I guess participating in this hop breeding selection is very exciting.
It's really quite interesting. It's also interesting being an active spectator
in the growth of the industry, cuz it's growing and changing so fast. And it
still seems to be going. Whether there will be 2000 breweries or 10000
breweries, it seems like the percentage of craft beer is gonna grow up. It's
just a question of who's gonna be making it. If you see in Oregon, I think it's
01:19:0025% -or at least that's maybe the Portland area-whereas nationally, it's only 7%
or 8%. And if you could imagine the whole country going up to 25%, that's a huge
growth. So that's very interesting.
I enjoy meeting all the characters that're in the hop growing industry, like
winemaking attracts a lot of characters. And I enjoy working in a smaller
business rather than a large business with a lot of hierarchy and corporate
structures. So that's appealing to me. And I enjoy working with the farms, going
out during the growing season. So again going back to brewing, it's a really mix
of art and science involved in all the steps of the brewing process.
And circling back, again, this is the first time the craft brewing industry has
01:20:00been able to add its voice to sourcing raw material, and Indie hops being just a
very small part of the overall business. And always will be. We're really in the
thick of that. So that's very enjoyable. I do miss brewing though. I did in
Bridgeport when I came back the second time because it's one of the things that
originally attracted me to brewing. It's purely a personality thing, but it's
really satisfying to make something that didn't exist before with your own
hands. And even if it's not the best of it's kind-certainly it needs to be good,
even if it's not the best ever-it's still just the satisfaction of making
something that didn't exist before. So maybe I should have mentioned that
01:21:00originally as part of my original attraction to brewing. And something I miss a
little bit here.
TEM: When you think back now, what are those core piece? I guess that part of
the creativity, the art and science. But we were talking about in retrospect,
there's a thread that connects these things together. Do you see a link to the
kind of the entrepreneurial work that that you're doing now with that early
entrepreneurial spirit of craft brewing? Does it feel like there's a link? Or,
is that me making it like?
MS: Less so now than when I joined 4 years ago, because there were many small
hop companies, like small breweries back in 1984. We talked to one
brewer-actually it was someone at Bridgeport-when Jim and Roger, who founded
01:22:00Indie Hops, came and talk to us first. I was on the brewing side of it,
listening to their pitch, I guess you could say. One of them was just shaking
his head cuz really a few companies have dominated the hop business for a very
long time. And he was quite skeptical. He said it's like a couple of kittens
dropped in the Sahara Desert-is what he thought Indie Hops' prospects. But you
could have said that about Bridgeport brewing in 1984 too. So again, that was
kind of familiar. And it just seemed like it would work. There will be a demand
for this kind of thing.
TEM: This is a summative question. What are you most proud of? When you think
about your career and the impact that you've had, what's the thing that brings
you that feeling of pride in the work that you've done?
01:23:00
MS: I don't know, maybe I'll arrive at something as I talk. As we said, I've
moved around quite a bit in my life, which is both good and bad. At the time, it
never seemed like it was planned out in advance cuz certainly it wasn't. In
retrospect, I guess you can find some threads. But It's nice I've been mostly in
a position to be able to choose what I do for reason other than just money, and
have been willing to so. It's always a value, but it's not the only value. It's
01:24:00been to not be the only value. And I've been able to do things because they're
interesting. It's not really what I'm most proud of. It's just my personality
that I'm not that interested in being the best in the field or success like
that. I'm mostly interested in doing things that are interesting, and hopefully
do pretty well. But because I'm not a driven personality-that has to be at the
top of the hill kind of thing-that's also given me the flexibility to move to
things I think I'm interested in. I don't know if that's something to be proud
of or not. That's just my personality type, I think.
TEM: It doesn't have to be grandiose. [Laughs]
MS: Yeah.
TEM: So when you were thinking about me coming today, what are some things you
01:25:00thought about that the questions I asked maybe didn't bring up, or things that
you wanted to say? Is there anything that you would want to add?
MS: Not really. I think we talked about at length that the main thing I was
thinking of is just that people don't realize that-younger brewers here I talked
to today-there's literally a new brewery opening every day. Just the idea of how
weird and off the idea of starting a small brewery was 30 years ago when people
just thought you're a very strange personal to think you could possibly do this,
because it hadn't been done. I guess that's it. I guess if I want to say
anything, it's just to tell people that are younger than I am and came into the
01:26:00industry after it was already accepted, about how strange it started out. Things
like this can happen.
TEM: Do you have anything that-I would image-you would like to say to them.
Like, "this was weird 30 years ago." Do you find yourself in that position of
the wise-age person conveying that history to them? Or do you just sort of smile
and nod? [Laughs]
MS: Maybe I'll get a word in stuff. But I don give the "when I was the blah"
lecture. [Laughs]
TEM: "In my day, we were weird." [Laughs]
MS: It's successful too cuz it coincide with a broader change in consumer taste,
an interest of a growing part of consumers, to get what's customized for them,
01:27:00or local, or mass produced all that. And that's really what made it possibly. If
people weren't interested in that, "why should I pay more for a glass of beer".
It's the whole uncommoditizing of consumer goods that is going into a lot of
different things. But I think craft brew is really a signature example of that.
TEM: I'm not gonna ask the oversaturation tipping point question. But is there a
point where that customization has become too much. Now, people are doing
weirder and weirder things. Is there too much? Will there be the sort of
01:28:00wrapping back to something more plain and more bland? Do you see that happening?
MS: Well, I see a lot more beers that're not as extreme as they were 8 to 10
years ago. So perhaps that's just more of everything, principle and becoming
more balanced. From my point of view that's what you see in more mature beer
drinking culture, like you do in Europe. They have a lot of flavor but it's more
balanced. Well, what does balance been? Everybody gets to set that for
themselves. But I see a lot beers, less or higher alcohol, that have a lot of
hops-maybe not quite so many hops. So I think we're coming around to more so.
But I don't really know whether people who have been drinking huge beers are now
01:29:00moderating their tastes, or they're just going on and drinking huge beers. And
there's more people coming along that didn't like the huge beers but the ones
that're a bit milder are available. That's why the population of craft beer
drinkers is growing. But I really don't know where it's going to evolve. But it
is changed. I think every five years, you could say there's a little bit
different accent in what beers are.
TEM: Which makes it exciting.
MS: Yeah
TEM: Alright, thank you.
MS: Okay.
