Appleton is a thriving brewing community and we've brought two other local brewers to prove it: Steve Lonsway of Stone Arch Brewpub and Oliver Behm of Hop Yard Ale Works. Gary, Bobby, and Allison host a round table with the two fellow brewers to discuss how they got their start, what their specialties are, and what they give guests who ask for the closest thing to Budlight.

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Guest Bios

Steve Lonsway

Stonearch Brew Pub, Owner, Founder, CEO

https://www.stonearchbrewpub.com/

Steve's brewing journey began in college in 1991 after discovering his passion for home brewing. Partnering with his father and brother, they established Homebrew Market in 1993 then Steve further honed his skills at the Siebel Institute of Brewing Technology in 1996. As Corporate Brew Master of a local brewery, he oversaw multiple locations before starting Stone Arch with his father in 2004. Steve enjoys traveling with his wife, two daughters and rescue dog, supporting the Chicago Bears, and finding solace in his yard and parlor.

Oliver Behm,

Hop Yard Ale Works, Owner, Founder, Brewer

https://hopyardaleworks.com/

Oliver & Amy Behm were born and raised in the Fox Valley. Their passion for food & love for beer took them on many adventures across the county. What they created for you is a collaboration of the best parts of their memories.

Their wish is you enjoy the atmosphere, community and brewery experience as much as they did to risk it all, and follow their dreams!

Episode Timeline

00:00 Introduction and Hosts

00:27 Meet the Guests: Steve and Oliver

00:52 Steve's Brewing Journey

04:57 Oliver's Brewing Journey

09:31 The Brewing Community and Competition

10:37 Craft Beer Trends and Market

12:15 Brewing Styles and Brand Identity

14:46 The Cast Conditioning Journey

15:29 The Business Side of Beer and Food

16:24 Handling Non-Craft Beer Drinkers Who Ask for Budlight

17:08 Pizza and Beer: A Perfect Match

19:26 On-Premise vs. Off-Premise Sales

22:02 Signature Beers and Brewing Stories

25:24 The Art of Recipe Tinkering

28:35 Happy Accidents in Brewing

29:06 Conclusion and Farewell

--

CREDITS

Hosts:

Bobby Fleshman

Allison McCoy-Fleshman

Gary Ardnt

Music by Sarah Lynn Huss

Recorded & Produced by David Kalsow

Brought to you by McFleshman's Brewing Co

Gary Anrdt: 00:00:00

Hello everyone.

Gary Anrdt: 00:00:00

And welcome to another episode of Respecting the Beer.

Gary Anrdt: 00:00:02

My name is Gary Arndt and with me as usual is Bobby Fleshman and Allison McCoy.

Allison McCoy: 00:00:07

Hello!

Gary Anrdt: 00:00:08

Owner's of McFlehsman's.

Gary Anrdt: 00:00:09

Do you realize that Mick Fleschman's is a lot like Bennifer?

Gary Anrdt: 00:00:14

That it's a combination.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:00:16

But it's the opposite.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:00:17

Yeah.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:00:17

It's her name and then mine.

Allison McCoy: 00:00:19

That's true.

Allison McCoy: 00:00:19

I dominate.

Gary Anrdt: 00:00:21

But we got some guests this week.

Gary Anrdt: 00:00:23

Doing something a little different, having a round table discussion.

Gary Anrdt: 00:00:25

Why don't you both introduce yourselves?

Steve Lonsway: 00:00:27

I'm Steve Lonsway.

Steve Lonsway: 00:00:28

I'm owner and brewer and janitor of Stone Arch Brewpub here in Appleton and Little Chutes.

Gary Anrdt: 00:00:34

And Oliver.

Oliver Behm: 00:00:34

Oliver Behm owner of Hop Yard Ale Works my wife is my partner in that endeavor, but she is not here cause somebody had to work today.

Oliver Behm: 00:00:42

So fair enough.

Oliver Behm: 00:00:44

You guys got me.

Gary Anrdt: 00:00:45

So we've talked to Bobby and Allison about their story, about how they, they launched this place and why they got into it.

Gary Anrdt: 00:00:50

So why don't we start this out by talking to you guys?

Gary Anrdt: 00:00:52

How did you get started?

Steve Lonsway: 00:00:56

Oh boy, it goes way back.

Steve Lonsway: 00:00:58

1990 as a college kid, wasn't really a beer person at that point.

Steve Lonsway: 00:01:03

Dabbled in a little bit, but came home for spring break and a brother, my brother and a friend were homebrewing didn't even know it was a thing at that time, it turns out my buddy found a kit at a rummage sale, found some ingredients and we're whipping it up.

Steve Lonsway: 00:01:19

So I was trying to get involved with it.

Steve Lonsway: 00:01:21

And they kept.

Steve Lonsway: 00:01:22

Bowling me out, having their own fun.

Steve Lonsway: 00:01:26

So kind of watch the process.

Steve Lonsway: 00:01:28

I again, didn't know much about it.

Steve Lonsway: 00:01:31

I bought a starter kit, went back to college and started playing around with it.

Steve Lonsway: 00:01:35

At the time I was outside of Chicago.

Steve Lonsway: 00:01:37

So to get ingredients, I had to go into Chicago and being a poor college kid.

Steve Lonsway: 00:01:41

I didn't have the opportunity to do that too often or afford the stuff that I was buying.

Steve Lonsway: 00:01:45

So I didn't brew a lot, but I, I enjoyed it immensely.

Steve Lonsway: 00:01:50

After I graduated there, I went to a study abroad program in England and fell in love with beer.

Steve Lonsway: 00:01:56

I fell in love with the, the English pub scene and everything about it.

Steve Lonsway: 00:02:01

So it, it just captivated me.

Steve Lonsway: 00:02:03

Came up with the idea to open up a homebrew store, which we did in April of '93.

Steve Lonsway: 00:02:09

And I ran it full time for, for many years and the passion just, it got uncontrollable.

Steve Lonsway: 00:02:17

At that time, I was, the, the homebrewing is really catching on at that point.

Steve Lonsway: 00:02:22

So I was, there's a lot of new things.

Steve Lonsway: 00:02:24

toys, a lot of new things out on the market to, to make homebrewing more successful and more fun.

Steve Lonsway: 00:02:30

So I was, it was my job to try all these things, try all these new ingredients that were hitting the shelves.

Steve Lonsway: 00:02:36

So I was brewing constantly.

Steve Lonsway: 00:02:38

I can say it now with statute of limitations being passed, you could do a hundred gallons a year.

Steve Lonsway: 00:02:42

Yeah.

Steve Lonsway: 00:02:43

I was probably doing about A hundred barrels a year.

Steve Lonsway: 00:02:46

I was brewing a lot.

Steve Lonsway: 00:02:47

And, and fortunately I have a lot of drunk friends, so they drank it.

Steve Lonsway: 00:02:51

and I, I just kept getting better at it.

Steve Lonsway: 00:02:53

in 96, I think it was, I went to the Siebel Institute of Brewing Technology to learn on a commercial scale how to, to, to do it.

Steve Lonsway: 00:03:02

And, shortly after that, I took a job at another local brewery and ran that.

Steve Lonsway: 00:03:09

Actually two of them.

Steve Lonsway: 00:03:10

So I was the corporate brewmaster for them for about six and a half years, won some national awards got an ego, and then, had the opportunity to take over a preexisting brew pub, which was at the time Adlibrow is the third one in the state opened in 89.

Steve Lonsway: 00:03:26

We took it over in 2004 and I brewed For the first, I'd say 10 years, pretty much myself.

Steve Lonsway: 00:03:35

And then started bringing other people in as we drew production and you know, voila, here we are.

Gary Anrdt: 00:03:41

And as you know, Adler Brau was the brewery for Appleton back in the day.

Steve Lonsway: 00:03:45

It was.

Steve Lonsway: 00:03:46

Yeah.

Steve Lonsway: 00:03:46

So Adler Brau was actually George Waltra Brewing Company started in the 1800s.

Steve Lonsway: 00:03:52

They were located where the Appleton police department now resides.

Steve Lonsway: 00:03:55

And They shut down in 72 with the national pressures of the big brands coming in.

Steve Lonsway: 00:04:01

So they did not survive that, unfortunately, but we did happen to find a recipe from 1946, randomly stuck in a log book.

Steve Lonsway: 00:04:12

We've resurrected that recipe now.

Steve Lonsway: 00:04:14

and we have some big grandiose plans for that in the future.

Allison McCoy: 00:04:17

And that's the one that's named Adler grow.

Allison McCoy: 00:04:19

Cool.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:04:20

Yeah.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:04:20

And the notes didn't use units.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:04:21

Like, what would be like, didn't use ingredients like bog myrtle or, or, hog's head.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:04:27

And it's 46 not 18.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:04:28

I know, I know, I know.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:04:29

But a lot of these old recipes you find can't even translate.

Steve Lonsway: 00:04:31

Well, honestly, the, the recipe that we did have, it said first we didn't know how big of a batch of brewed Right.

Steve Lonsway: 00:04:38

It, it just gave you the amount of ingredients and hops literally said hops.

Steve Lonsway: 00:04:42

So I had to do a ton of research to find out what was.

Steve Lonsway: 00:04:45

Common in that time, you know, back then there wasn't many varieties like there is now.

Steve Lonsway: 00:04:50

So it's our best interpretation of the 1946 recipe that we found in the log book.

Gary Anrdt: 00:04:57

Okay.

Gary Anrdt: 00:04:57

Oliver, once you explain how the

Oliver Behm: 00:04:59

hop yard got started.

Oliver Behm: 00:05:00

Well, my story is nothing like Steve.

Oliver Behm: 00:05:02

So that's kind of hard to follow.

Oliver Behm: 00:05:03

We're the new kids in the block.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:05:04

I'm going to interject and honestly, both of your stories can be summarized by you decided to ruin a perfectly good hobby by opening a brewery.

Oliver Behm: 00:05:11

Right.

Oliver Behm: 00:05:12

Yeah.

Oliver Behm: 00:05:12

I mean, I think, The, the joke that we have is we try to figure out what is the most expensive way to enjoy beer.

Oliver Behm: 00:05:18

And that's opening a brewery.

Oliver Behm: 00:05:19

It's painfully expensive.

Oliver Behm: 00:05:22

It is.

Steve Lonsway: 00:05:22

Amen.

Oliver Behm: 00:05:23

Yeah, I mean, my story a little bit different because it didn't start with brewing.

Oliver Behm: 00:05:27

I think it was, man, 20 some years ago my wife and I went over to England and we just drove through the countryside.

Oliver Behm: 00:05:33

We had no plan.

Oliver Behm: 00:05:34

We, you know, just rented a car and drove and we found ourselves stopping at all these pubs spending the night upstairs after we got too snickered up.

Oliver Behm: 00:05:42

And I think for me, it was seeing the pubs over there, and, And how people interacted at them, as opposed to, like, here, it was all just sports bars and, you know, drink until 2 a.

Oliver Behm: 00:05:54

m.

Oliver Behm: 00:05:54

and over there, it was like families coming after work and people getting together and friends meeting there.

Oliver Behm: 00:05:59

And then all of a sudden they would go home and it was like, well, this is really cool.

Oliver Behm: 00:06:04

that's kind of where it started for us, but we had no idea that we were going to open up a brewery someday.

Oliver Behm: 00:06:09

We just kind of fell in love with that atmosphere.

Oliver Behm: 00:06:11

I've got 4 children, so when they were smaller, we couldn't afford to go on long vacations.

Oliver Behm: 00:06:16

So we would just do like weekend vacations, Milwaukee, you know, Minneapolis, whatever We had a passion for food and beverage.

Oliver Behm: 00:06:23

So we'd always find like the most unique bars, the most unique restaurants.

Oliver Behm: 00:06:26

We'd always hit them up.

Oliver Behm: 00:06:27

That slightly turned into us just going to breweries and only breweries.

Oliver Behm: 00:06:32

And then what we found is at a brewery, it reminded us so much of over in England, where, you know, friends are coming together, people are meeting new friends, there's families coming together, they're eating, they're drinking, and then they're going home.

Oliver Behm: 00:06:44

And it was just a really unique, special.

Oliver Behm: 00:06:47

Place and we just fell in love with it.

Oliver Behm: 00:06:49

And I wanted that in my life.

Oliver Behm: 00:06:51

We just, we wanted some of that joy, to be part of us.

Oliver Behm: 00:06:54

We were in a different industry and it gets stressful.

Oliver Behm: 00:06:57

And I'd always say to my wife, like, "Are we ready to open up the brewery?"

Oliver Behm: 00:07:01

In fact, I think we had our code word was actually like taco truck.

Oliver Behm: 00:07:04

Like you already do a taco truck, even though we had no intention of doing a taco truck.

Oliver Behm: 00:07:07

And then she just kept saying, we don't know how to brew.

Oliver Behm: 00:07:09

We can't do this.

Oliver Behm: 00:07:10

And I would just say to her, well, someone's got to, I mean, every brewery starts somewhere and every brewer starts at the beginning.

Oliver Behm: 00:07:17

So why couldn't this be our beginning?

Oliver Behm: 00:07:19

And then COVID hit, you know, and the world gets turned upside down.

Oliver Behm: 00:07:22

you know, we just weren't happy.

Oliver Behm: 00:07:23

And we went.

Oliver Behm: 00:07:24

Is this the time?

Oliver Behm: 00:07:25

And the moment she said yes we went in full gear and just went crazy with it.

Oliver Behm: 00:07:30

You decided a global pandemic where everything was shut down was the time to open up a business.

Oliver Behm: 00:07:34

Perfect timing.

Oliver Behm: 00:07:34

Yeah.

Oliver Behm: 00:07:35

We weren't doing anything anyway.

Oliver Behm: 00:07:36

At the time I was, you know, sheltered in all, it's like, Oh, let's build a brewery where our brewery is.

Oliver Behm: 00:07:41

now, we gutted the whole place.

Oliver Behm: 00:07:42

We built the whole thing from the ground up ourselves and a lot of help with family and friends.

Oliver Behm: 00:07:46

And along the way, we had to learn how to brew, which was fun.

Oliver Behm: 00:07:51

Amy went to school for it.

Oliver Behm: 00:07:52

Of course, it was online because of the pandemic.

Oliver Behm: 00:07:54

And then we just started buying what we thought we needed and dramatically now that we somewhat know what we're doing.

Oliver Behm: 00:08:01

But yeah, it was, it was a pretty wild ride for us just because we came of it more from the fact of like the tap room side of things and the, you know, the community side of things as opposed to, you know, I was homebrewing in my basement for 20 years that didn't happen.

Oliver Behm: 00:08:16

So I was just a little bit of a different path.

Oliver Behm: 00:08:18

But what I find so interesting about this business is if you talk to any brewery at any time, they all have a different story of what got them in and how they got there.

Oliver Behm: 00:08:29

And there's no one recipe where like you have to do it this way to be successful.

Oliver Behm: 00:08:33

Everybody does it a different way and they can be successful.

Oliver Behm: 00:08:36

And I find that really, really cool in this industry because it's kind of unlike any other industry out there.

Steve Lonsway: 00:08:41

Well, and the support from the other breweries is something this industry.

Steve Lonsway: 00:08:46

Exhibits that almost all do not.

Steve Lonsway: 00:08:48

And so a newbie coming in, I'm sure you've had conversations like, Hey, how do I do this?

Steve Lonsway: 00:08:54

Or, Hey, can you borrow me this?

Steve Lonsway: 00:08:56

It's really cool.

Steve Lonsway: 00:08:57

I'm pretty sure our

Oliver Behm: 00:08:58

first batch of beer, I had to call Bobby and borrow kegs because we didn't have any to put our beer in.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:09:04

Keg washing was involved.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:09:05

The keg washing.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:09:05

Yeah.

Oliver Behm: 00:09:05

Like how the heck does this work?

Allison McCoy: 00:09:07

And one of our most viral social media posts was, it was the weekend you open or it was weekend after Hop Yard opened that Bobby and I go over there and I just take some pictures and I post like, Hey, new brewery in town.

Allison McCoy: 00:09:16

This is exciting.

Allison McCoy: 00:09:17

And like, everyone's just like, yes, new brewery in town.

Allison McCoy: 00:09:19

We're so excited.

Oliver Behm: 00:09:20

Yeah.

Oliver Behm: 00:09:20

We, we are very happy to be part of the brewing scene in Appleton.

Oliver Behm: 00:09:24

I think it's, it's a special place and there's a lot of room for growth and, it's, it's pretty cool that we're a part of it.

Gary Anrdt: 00:09:31

Let's, let's talk about that because you guys are obviously friends.

Gary Anrdt: 00:09:35

You work together, but at the same time.

Gary Anrdt: 00:09:38

You're also kind of competitors.

Gary Anrdt: 00:09:40

How do you balance that?

Oliver Behm: 00:09:42

We drink with each other.

Gary Anrdt: 00:09:46

A town

Steve Lonsway: 00:09:46

misfits, right?

Steve Lonsway: 00:09:48

Cause I mean, you don't

Gary Anrdt: 00:09:49

represent, and there are other breweries in this town, other than the people sitting at this table, there's the Appleton beer factory right over there.

Gary Anrdt: 00:09:55

Yeah.

Gary Anrdt: 00:09:56

How many can this town support?

Allison McCoy: 00:09:58

Two more

Bobby Fleshman: 00:09:59

how

Allison McCoy: 00:09:59

I have no idea.

Allison McCoy: 00:10:00

Yeah.

Allison McCoy: 00:10:01

Well, look

Steve Lonsway: 00:10:01

at how many bars they got

Bobby Fleshman: 00:10:03

Well, and they're all doing fine.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:10:05

And there's a lot of volume being consumed of Budweiser Miller Coors So that sort of answers your question how many people want to drink craft beer as opposed to those beers?

Allison McCoy: 00:10:14

But also as Oliver pointed out that these these places are not places that you're gonna go and you know closed down at 2 a.

Allison McCoy: 00:10:20

m.

Allison McCoy: 00:10:20

We most of us close earlier like our hours we go to 11 in the summer.

Allison McCoy: 00:10:24

But you know you go out after work you go have a pint and then you go home and if you could do that you know two or three nights a week then you could go to each of these different breweries and just have it be part of your daily ritual.

Oliver Behm: 00:10:37

Yeah, I think we're, we're really only scratching the surface on craft beer, especially in Appleton.

Oliver Behm: 00:10:42

I mean, I, I know it's a, it's all over the country and it has been for a long time, but I think what craft beer still only occupies 12 percent market share, you know, compared to big boys,

Bobby Fleshman: 00:10:52

money it's 20%, but volumes 12.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:10:54

So, I mean, there's

Oliver Behm: 00:10:55

a lot of room for growth and what I'm seeing just, you know, being new in this industry and Appleton you know, when we first opened, everyone was coming in the door going, what's the closest thing you have to Bud Light?

Oliver Behm: 00:11:05

I haven't heard that anymore.

Oliver Behm: 00:11:06

Now it's people coming in and they want fruited sours, they want IPAs, they want some weird stuff.

Oliver Behm: 00:11:10

I mean, it's It's this area is craving good beer and, it's, it's just growing by leaps and bounds.

Oliver Behm: 00:11:17

And I think

Bobby Fleshman: 00:11:18

it's about quality over quantity too.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:11:20

I think that's what the craft beer industry is about.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:11:22

That's a big part.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:11:22

For sure.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:11:23

Well,

Steve Lonsway: 00:11:23

and look at Asheville, North Carolina.

Steve Lonsway: 00:11:25

Yeah.

Steve Lonsway: 00:11:25

It's a town about our size, maybe a little bit bigger, and I don't even know it.

Steve Lonsway: 00:11:29

How many brewers they have a ton.

Steve Lonsway: 00:11:31

Yeah.

Oliver Behm: 00:11:32

I think they've got like 12 or 13.

Oliver Behm: 00:11:34

Three of them are right next door to each other.

Oliver Behm: 00:11:36

So, I mean, they're just literally one after another.

Oliver Behm: 00:11:38

After Sierra

Allison McCoy: 00:11:38

has built their huge facility.

Allison McCoy: 00:11:40

That's Mecca.

Allison McCoy: 00:11:41

Just outside of town.

Allison McCoy: 00:11:43

It has like, like hop gates that are, we can do a whole podcast on that.

Allison McCoy: 00:11:49

Let's get, let's get

Bobby Fleshman: 00:11:50

King Grossman in here.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:11:51

One of the

Gary Anrdt: 00:11:51

things I found interesting is that both of you said that at least kind of the germ of this idea came from a trip to England.

Gary Anrdt: 00:11:59

You had an advisor from England that you brewed for

Bobby Fleshman: 00:12:02

and a trip to England that inspired this so yeah, yet

Gary Anrdt: 00:12:05

this community in Wisconsin in general.

Gary Anrdt: 00:12:07

It's brewing tradition is really German.

Gary Anrdt: 00:12:10

Is there still any of that, what you took from England or what you got?

Gary Anrdt: 00:12:14

There are the type of beers that are part of what you're brewing or part of your businesses today.

Steve Lonsway: 00:12:19

A hundred percent.

Steve Lonsway: 00:12:19

Our, our number, our flagship is a Scottish ale.

Steve Lonsway: 00:12:22

So for sure.

Steve Lonsway: 00:12:23

I, I, one of my favorite styles is an English bitter, which is a, it's like a 3.

Steve Lonsway: 00:12:28

4, 3.

Steve Lonsway: 00:12:29

5 percent beer, super easy drinking.

Steve Lonsway: 00:12:32

We have tried them in the past.

Steve Lonsway: 00:12:34

Bitter is not a word that people want to associate their beverage with.

Steve Lonsway: 00:12:39

So as long as you call it something else, we always do well with it.

Steve Lonsway: 00:12:42

We

Bobby Fleshman: 00:12:42

make one and hit it in an acronym.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:12:44

It's called McFleshman special bitter.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:12:46

Yeah.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:12:46

MSB.

Oliver Behm: 00:12:48

We're more of like the IPA scene.

Oliver Behm: 00:12:50

I mean, we're going in a, in a different direction a little bit.

Oliver Behm: 00:12:53

But that doesn't mean that we don't brew those things, love those things.

Oliver Behm: 00:12:56

I mean, we've done a English bitter.

Oliver Behm: 00:12:57

It was great.

Oliver Behm: 00:12:58

But we're, we're on a weird side of IPAs.

Oliver Behm: 00:13:01

I think that goes back to your comments about like, how do we all get along when yet we're competitors?

Oliver Behm: 00:13:06

I don't think we are because we're all brewing different stuff, you know?

Oliver Behm: 00:13:09

And, and that kind of helps us all get along.

Steve Lonsway: 00:13:11

Well, and your hazy is different than my hazy than your hazy.

Steve Lonsway: 00:13:15

And.

Steve Lonsway: 00:13:16

you know, my dad's a big hazy guy right now.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:13:18

And I know what's a hazy?

Bobby Fleshman: 00:13:20

I'm sorry.

Steve Lonsway: 00:13:22

I remember you saying I'm not going to be brewing.

Steve Lonsway: 00:13:24

New England.

Steve Lonsway: 00:13:25

Sure.

Steve Lonsway: 00:13:25

I wasn't,

Bobby Fleshman: 00:13:26

we weren't doing a podcast.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:13:27

And so there's no record of that.

Steve Lonsway: 00:13:29

and that's the thing.

Steve Lonsway: 00:13:31

There's a, you can make every beer style many, many, many ways.

Steve Lonsway: 00:13:36

And

Allison McCoy: 00:13:36

We also, I think, I think we respect it because when we first opened so Bobby worked for you, Steve, for a few years and we were first opening, we were thinking about, okay, where, where is the market currently and what beers can we really push with our flagships?

Allison McCoy: 00:13:49

And I absolutely love that Scottish ale.

Allison McCoy: 00:13:53

Oh my gosh.

Allison McCoy: 00:13:53

I was like, please, can we brew this?

Allison McCoy: 00:13:54

And Bobby was like, yeah, but you know, if we do, we need to make sure that it's not, you know, we can't brew the Scottish ale.

Allison McCoy: 00:14:01

That is that the, Stone Arch has that.

Allison McCoy: 00:14:04

And so we need to think of something that's going to be complimentary to that.

Allison McCoy: 00:14:07

And so I think in, in figuring out how our brands develop, we take into account the family or the community of brewers around us to do so.

Allison McCoy: 00:14:14

Cause Appleton Beer Factory, they, they're really pushing kind of some more of the American styles like hop yard.

Allison McCoy: 00:14:20

And so I think we can really, because there's so many different beer styles, we can all kind of work together to say, okay, who can then take kind of that lane, who can take that lane.

Allison McCoy: 00:14:29

And we play in the other lanes as well.

Allison McCoy: 00:14:30

Yeah.

Allison McCoy: 00:14:31

I mean, in terms of how we define our brands, I think we respect the direction each of the brands are going.

Allison McCoy: 00:14:35

And

Bobby Fleshman: 00:14:35

it was Steve that gave me his books on, on beer engines and that cast condition and cast conditioning.

Steve Lonsway: 00:14:42

I'll never forget that.

Steve Lonsway: 00:14:43

What do you want?

Steve Lonsway: 00:14:44

You asked me what do you want?

Steve Lonsway: 00:14:46

I wanted you to work on.

Steve Lonsway: 00:14:47

Yeah.

Steve Lonsway: 00:14:48

And I said, cast conditioning.

Steve Lonsway: 00:14:49

I swear you had a SOP built the next day.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:14:52

I, I went home and I rebuilt the engines and polished them off, rebuilt the cylinders.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:14:57

For

Gary Anrdt: 00:14:57

those who don't know what.

Gary Anrdt: 00:14:59

It's like

Bobby Fleshman: 00:14:59

a, it's like a water well, hand pump.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:15:01

You think of it that way.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:15:02

It, you just, you, you just approach the bar and you pull that, that pump back and forth and you fill a glass with two pools usually, but that was because they didn't have carbonation to push the beer out of the keg back in the old days.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:15:13

And there's a few other reasons, but anyway, he got me down into this rabbit hole and it became a lot of what we do here these days.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:15:19

that's a big English thing.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:15:20

Yeah.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:15:21

It's all associated with English beers.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:15:23

Yeah.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:15:23

And it's romantic to just see in that handle pull.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:15:26

Yeah.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:15:26

It's pretty

Steve Lonsway: 00:15:27

sexy.

Gary Anrdt: 00:15:28

Let's talk about the business part of this.

Gary Anrdt: 00:15:29

I've been to both of your establishments.

Gary Anrdt: 00:15:31

You guys do more than sell beer.

Gary Anrdt: 00:15:34

You also have food that's available.

Gary Anrdt: 00:15:36

What's the breakdown?

Gary Anrdt: 00:15:37

How much do you think is is food versus beer?

Gary Anrdt: 00:15:39

Do you see it as two different things?

Gary Anrdt: 00:15:41

Are they complimentary?

Steve Lonsway: 00:15:43

Yeah, I, I, we're definitely a restaurant that serves our own beer.

Steve Lonsway: 00:15:46

We're about, depending on the season, 35 to 40% beer, or, or liquid, I should say.

Steve Lonsway: 00:15:52

The rest is food.

Steve Lonsway: 00:15:52

So again, primarily restaurant.

Steve Lonsway: 00:15:55

We like that balance, because it, it.

Steve Lonsway: 00:16:00

Kind of levels the field for us.

Steve Lonsway: 00:16:01

We also have a party room.

Steve Lonsway: 00:16:03

You know, we're in a big, huge, old historic building.

Steve Lonsway: 00:16:06

We have a comedy club on the, on the top floor of our building.

Steve Lonsway: 00:16:09

So we get those maybe not craft beer drinkers coming in quite often and we want their money too.

Steve Lonsway: 00:16:15

So they're, they're going to be the ones asking for the bud lights, which you're not going to get at our place.

Steve Lonsway: 00:16:19

So, they'll have a mixed drink and, and some food, so.

Gary Anrdt: 00:16:23

And I've literally seen it happen at McFleshman's where someone said, what's your closest thing to a Bud Light?

Gary Anrdt: 00:16:27

So if someone comes in and wants that, what do you give them?

Steve Lonsway: 00:16:30

Some, depending on the bartender, some will hand him a glass of water actually.

Steve Lonsway: 00:16:35

and what we'll do is we'll steer them depending on what we have on tap.

Steve Lonsway: 00:16:39

Cause you know, we, we have 14 beers on tap at any given time.

Steve Lonsway: 00:16:42

So, it's really up to the bartender and how they can sell it.

Steve Lonsway: 00:16:46

Scottish ale is one.

Steve Lonsway: 00:16:47

And even though it's an amber style beer, it's, it's very low bitterness.

Steve Lonsway: 00:16:52

That's what freaks people out mostly is the bitterness and color does.

Steve Lonsway: 00:16:56

But if we get them past the color freak it's a low, bitter, great tastings.

Steve Lonsway: 00:17:02

It's got a little sweetness, so it's easy.

Steve Lonsway: 00:17:04

It's very palatable.

Steve Lonsway: 00:17:05

And so that's usually the go to.

Oliver Behm: 00:17:07

So at Hopyard we do pizza and it's just pizza.

Oliver Behm: 00:17:11

There's nothing else for food.

Oliver Behm: 00:17:14

I think when we started, we, we had this, I think everyone goes back and forth on should we have food?

Oliver Behm: 00:17:20

Should we not do food?

Oliver Behm: 00:17:21

Some people are successful with it.

Oliver Behm: 00:17:22

Some people just pull their hair out with it because it takes a lot to make it go.

Oliver Behm: 00:17:26

But we have been at breweries before where they don't have food and then you get hungry after you've had a couple of beers and you leave.

Oliver Behm: 00:17:33

And I didn't want that to happen at our place.

Oliver Behm: 00:17:35

We wanted to, you know, People to be able to stay longer and eat.

Oliver Behm: 00:17:37

So we thought we should do some food and we thought, well, I mean, pizza goes well with beer and everyone loves pizza.

Oliver Behm: 00:17:43

And it's simple.

Oliver Behm: 00:17:44

Yeah.

Oliver Behm: 00:17:45

I mean, you can put anything on a pizza and we didn't.

Oliver Behm: 00:17:46

I mean, having dabbled my,

Gary Anrdt: 00:17:48

my toe in the food business a long time ago, which is something I never, ever want to do again.

Gary Anrdt: 00:17:54

Pizza is like, you know, you got one thing, you cook it in.

Gary Anrdt: 00:17:57

It's just the simplicity of the menu and everything has, yeah.

Oliver Behm: 00:18:01

I wish it was, Simple, but it's, it's not . Yeah,

Gary Anrdt: 00:18:04

but it, it's simpler than pizza and a fryer.

Oliver Behm: 00:18:06

Yeah.

Oliver Behm: 00:18:07

I mean it's you know, we do woodfire pizza, so we've got this great big wood oven and she's very temperamental and it's difficult.

Oliver Behm: 00:18:13

And my wife does a great job with the pizzas, making up some really, you know, crazy ideas.

Oliver Behm: 00:18:18

What we put on pieces, which is wild.

Oliver Behm: 00:18:20

But when we first started, I think that helped us get out of the gate because we weren't.

Oliver Behm: 00:18:24

As strong with beer as maybe some of the other breweries that start who've been doing this for a long time.

Oliver Behm: 00:18:28

So when we started, we didn't even have our own beer on tap.

Oliver Behm: 00:18:31

We had all guest taps and we had our pizza.

Oliver Behm: 00:18:34

So we became known for our pizza right away, which is awesome.

Oliver Behm: 00:18:37

It's not what I wanted to hang my hat on, but that's what got people in the door and kept us alive until we grew our beer program stronger and stronger.

Oliver Behm: 00:18:44

So I think right now.

Oliver Behm: 00:18:46

We're more about the beer than we are about the food.

Allison McCoy: 00:18:49

But it's still damn good pizza though.

Oliver Behm: 00:18:50

I appreciate that But it took us a couple years to get to that point and Now it's just you know, who knows where it's gonna go from there

Bobby Fleshman: 00:18:58

And we'll hear the beer factory story in the future, our neighbors here, but they got, they did something similar.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:19:03

They added food because they didn't want people to leave.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:19:05

And then, and then the food took over.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:19:08

It was immensely successful for them.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:19:10

I'll let him tell whether that was a good thing or not, but,

Gary Anrdt: 00:19:12

and you guys don't do food at all?

Allison McCoy: 00:19:13

No,

Bobby Fleshman: 00:19:14

Not really.

Allison McCoy: 00:19:14

No.

Allison McCoy: 00:19:15

I mean, we purchase chips, jerky and chips and popcorn.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:19:19

We're just giving you something salty to chase the beer and stay on premise.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:19:22

And then food trucks are here often.

Gary Anrdt: 00:19:24

How much of your beer sales is on premise?

Gary Anrdt: 00:19:27

Versus like, do you do any packaged canned sales?

Steve Lonsway: 00:19:31

We do, we do packaging.

Steve Lonsway: 00:19:32

We're distributed pretty much on the Eastern half of Wisconsin.

Steve Lonsway: 00:19:36

, It's a big part of our production as far as sales, because the margins are tighter in the, in the outdoor market, I, I, the numbers would be I'm going to say they're about 65 to 70 percent off premise versus in premise, but profits.

Steve Lonsway: 00:19:55

That's a different story.

Steve Lonsway: 00:19:56

Right?

Steve Lonsway: 00:19:56

Yeah.

Steve Lonsway: 00:19:56

Those

Bobby Fleshman: 00:19:57

keep the people paid back in the back to make the beer.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:19:59

Exactly.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:20:00

And

Steve Lonsway: 00:20:01

we look at that when you see our beer at Joe's bar and, and, and.

Steve Lonsway: 00:20:05

El Segundo or wherever that's advertisement that brings people to our door.

Steve Lonsway: 00:20:10

And the beautiful thing that we have in this industry is the beer connoisseurs chase brew pubs.

Steve Lonsway: 00:20:16

And in getting back to the earlier question, you know, are we all competitors?

Steve Lonsway: 00:20:19

Well, you know what?

Steve Lonsway: 00:20:20

You get people into town, they're going to visit all three.

Steve Lonsway: 00:20:24

They really will.

Steve Lonsway: 00:20:25

And there's a story.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:20:26

I'm going to butcher it, but Fritz Maytag was the owner of Anchor Brewing Company, which is topical, but we'll talk about that later.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:20:32

He tells this story about how brewers are not like shoe salesmen.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:20:37

Or they are in the day in that they're competing to knock each other off the handles.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:20:41

But then at night they, they meet up for beers and they, and they share their secrets.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:20:45

They share their process, the recipes and all these ideas and the shoe people go home.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:20:49

He just picks another industry.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:20:51

It could be any other industry that tells that story about.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:20:53

And I think that is unique to us.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:20:55

Like we do finish the day by having beers with each other and sharing all of the, the, the trials and tribulations.

Gary Anrdt: 00:21:01

Are all your sales on premise?

Oliver Behm: 00:21:03

Pretty much.

Oliver Behm: 00:21:03

There's a couple of places that.

Oliver Behm: 00:21:05

We distribute to but it's, it's not a lot and we do that just to get our kind of feet in the water a little bit and see how it's going to go.

Oliver Behm: 00:21:12

We do have plans on doing some distribution, but 95 percent of what we do is in house.

Oliver Behm: 00:21:19

when we started, we had a very small system.

Oliver Behm: 00:21:21

So everything that we made was being consumed on premise, and we just couldn't keep up.

Oliver Behm: 00:21:26

I mean, the, we've doubled our production now and I still can't keep up.

Oliver Behm: 00:21:30

So people are really, you Drinking a lot of it at our place, which is awesome.

Oliver Behm: 00:21:34

But there's also that aspect of you want to get out to some places as advertising, and be out there in the world.

Oliver Behm: 00:21:40

So I think it's a balance for everyone.

Oliver Behm: 00:21:42

Some people do it.

Oliver Behm: 00:21:43

Some people don't.

Oliver Behm: 00:21:44

I mean, hot butcher in Illinois is famous for just get it at their place.

Oliver Behm: 00:21:48

There's, there's a bunch of them that are out there in the world that you have to go to their brewery to get their beer.

Oliver Behm: 00:21:52

It's not a one size fits all, but we'll, we'll see what happens for the future.

Gary Anrdt: 00:21:56

You said your signature beer was a Scottish ale.

Gary Anrdt: 00:21:59

Correct.

Gary Anrdt: 00:22:00

Is that something that just happened organically?

Gary Anrdt: 00:22:03

Like, is that what people picked or is this like, this is the beer you're proud of?

Steve Lonsway: 00:22:07

Very much soo what I was proud of, it's more of what my wife made me make.

Steve Lonsway: 00:22:13

So, she is not into the happy beers.

Steve Lonsway: 00:22:15

She's not into the dark beers and still to this day, she's not.

Steve Lonsway: 00:22:20

so early on, I was home brewing a lot of English style, Scottish shales, Irish ales, and things trying to find something that hit for her.

Steve Lonsway: 00:22:28

And then.

Steve Lonsway: 00:22:29

That was it.

Steve Lonsway: 00:22:30

And it's the least I could do because I literally trashed her kitchen over and over and over again.

Steve Lonsway: 00:22:35

So in order for me to use our, her kitchen, I had to make her something.

Steve Lonsway: 00:22:40

And I took years and years and perfected it.

Steve Lonsway: 00:22:42

When I was at the other brewery, I, you know Brutus got a shell that won several national awards.

Steve Lonsway: 00:22:47

And when I left there, I took that recipe and scrapped it because it wasn't what I liked, even though it was award winning and kind of rebuilt it in the way that I want it and it, it works out really well, it's won many awards, not the national ones that the other one did, but I'm real happy with it.

Steve Lonsway: 00:23:06

It's, it's more true to style in my opinion, and it's got a little more smokiness And yeah, it's, I

Bobby Fleshman: 00:23:12

can speak to, to that beer when I, when I was working with Steve, I think maybe you went from around 500 barrels to 3000 barrels in a span of a couple of years.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:23:20

Correct.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:23:20

And we were doing four turns a day on that one beer.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:23:23

Yeah, that's a lot for a craft for a brew pub to make in a day.

Gary Anrdt: 00:23:27

It's a lot.

Gary Anrdt: 00:23:28

If I come to the hop yard, yeah.

Gary Anrdt: 00:23:30

And I say, give me yours, give me your signature beer.

Gary Anrdt: 00:23:34

I'm only going to have one.

Gary Anrdt: 00:23:35

What are you going to serve?

Oliver Behm: 00:23:36

Well, I mean, it'd have to be a hazy IPA, but I'm going to convince you to have more than one.

Oliver Behm: 00:23:42

There's not one.

Oliver Behm: 00:23:43

I mean, I think if you ask anyone in our brewery, they all have their own favorite of a, of a version of a hazy that we produce.

Oliver Behm: 00:23:50

I couldn't say I love one more than the other.

Oliver Behm: 00:23:53

They're like my kids.

Oliver Behm: 00:23:55

I'm I think the one that I love the most is it's called Flight of the Nectaron, and it's a New Zealand IPA, and it's just this, just, it's an awesome beer.

Oliver Behm: 00:24:05

But if you ask my brewer, it's probably, His running teeth first, that, that is first IPA that he made for us.

Oliver Behm: 00:24:11

And my wife will probably say something completely different.

Oliver Behm: 00:24:13

So it's, hazy IPAs is definitely our jam.

Oliver Behm: 00:24:17

It's what we love.

Oliver Behm: 00:24:17

We make the other stuff.

Oliver Behm: 00:24:19

I do have to go and get away from hazy is quite a bit because it can't just drink those all day, every day.

Oliver Behm: 00:24:24

So it's nice to balance it out with a lager or, you know, an Irish red or something like that.

Oliver Behm: 00:24:29

But yeah, I'm definitely pouring you a hazy IPA if you show up.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:24:32

What's your second one?

Bobby Fleshman: 00:24:34

Second one favorite.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:24:35

Yeah.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:24:35

Well, if.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:24:36

You said you're going to force another.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:24:37

Well, they suggest another one on us.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:24:38

Which will that be?

Oliver Behm: 00:24:39

You know, the one that I like probably the most is called troll, the warrior King, and there's a joke about the name.

Oliver Behm: 00:24:45

But that's, we call that a no coast IPA.

Oliver Behm: 00:24:47

So it's like hazy, like a new England, but bitter, like a West coast.

Oliver Behm: 00:24:50

I mean, the IBUs are ridiculous on it.

Oliver Behm: 00:24:52

So that one throws people for a bit of a loop because they are looking at this hazy beer going, Oh, it's going to be a juicy IPA.

Oliver Behm: 00:24:58

And then they take a sip and you're like, Oh, that bitterness is killer.

Oliver Behm: 00:25:01

But that's what we wanted out of that one.

Oliver Behm: 00:25:02

So that's probably one that I'm proud of because it doesn't fit a.

Oliver Behm: 00:25:05

A style profile, you know, and sometimes it's fun to brew beers that are not in the constraints of, well, this is true to style.

Oliver Behm: 00:25:12

I know you guys love doing true to style stuff, but right.

Oliver Behm: 00:25:15

Right.

Oliver Behm: 00:25:15

We like getting out of the, out of those lanes.

Oliver Behm: 00:25:18

Yeah.

Gary Anrdt: 00:25:19

I want to touch on something you, you mentioned you, you made this Scottish IPA won a bunch of awards.

Gary Anrdt: 00:25:24

And then you monkeyed with it.

Gary Anrdt: 00:25:25

And we've talked about this on a previous episode as well, about at what point when you create something, do you just like, okay, I'm leaving it alone.

Gary Anrdt: 00:25:34

You walk away from it.

Gary Anrdt: 00:25:35

This is the recipe.

Gary Anrdt: 00:25:36

This is what people are going to be used to as opposed to continual tinkering with the recipe.

Steve Lonsway: 00:25:42

Well, I personal preferences is number one.

Steve Lonsway: 00:25:45

I obviously.

Steve Lonsway: 00:25:48

Talking about being true to style, there are styles that we want to be true on style, but you can't invent new things if you keep doing that.

Steve Lonsway: 00:25:56

Hazy IPAs, for instance, that wasn't even a thing back when we started.

Steve Lonsway: 00:26:01

You couldn't even sell a hazy beer.

Steve Lonsway: 00:26:02

You, if it had, you sold a cloudy beer, people wouldn't buy it.

Steve Lonsway: 00:26:06

so the beautiful thing is things have changed dramatically in that direction.

Steve Lonsway: 00:26:10

But even though I won national awards, it wasn't true to style in my opinion.

Steve Lonsway: 00:26:16

So when I rebuilt it, I wanted it to be more of that true English, Irish, Scottish feel that made me fall in love with the industry.

Steve Lonsway: 00:26:26

Of course I couldn't brew what they had going too.

Steve Lonsway: 00:26:28

So I had to change it up and I'm super happy with, with what we came up with.

Oliver Behm: 00:26:34

You know, if you talk about monkeying with recipes, In general, most consumers don't quite understand how hard it is to make a beer over and over and over and over again and have it taste exactly the same over and over and over and over again.

Oliver Behm: 00:26:48

So it's like once you, once you nail one, you're like, that's a great beer.

Oliver Behm: 00:26:51

You don't necessarily tweak that recipe ever, unless you can't get an ingredient, but typically you're just going, you know, making it again, it's hard enough.

Oliver Behm: 00:27:00

But then you just play around with doing other beers.

Oliver Behm: 00:27:02

So maybe you take like a beer that you're really proud of.

Oliver Behm: 00:27:05

And then you're like, let's just play around with it on a different batch and see how that will go.

Oliver Behm: 00:27:10

But you're not going to mess with that original one

Bobby Fleshman: 00:27:11

necessarily.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:27:12

These are some smart guys across the table.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:27:14

They're not obsessive like I am.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:27:16

Yes.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:27:16

I'm wondering why on earth, why have

Allison McCoy: 00:27:18

you?

Allison McCoy: 00:27:19

Oh my goodness.

Allison McCoy: 00:27:20

well no, but one of the things, and we were actually just talking yesterday so we have an IPA, it's called our stepchild.

Allison McCoy: 00:27:24

And I was like, wait, how did stepchild come to be again?

Allison McCoy: 00:27:28

And Bobby said that, oh, well somehow there was some, the wrong malt went into our five, and it came out red instead of.

Allison McCoy: 00:27:35

The, the kind of golden yellowish color that it happens where

Bobby Fleshman: 00:27:39

they package the malt.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:27:40

So we don't know.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:27:40

Yeah.

Allison McCoy: 00:27:41

So it was somewhere, it was upstream from us.

Allison McCoy: 00:27:43

But we followed the recipe the exact same way.

Allison McCoy: 00:27:45

And yet this different product came out.

Allison McCoy: 00:27:48

So Bobby was like, Oh, I guess I need to add some hops now

Bobby Fleshman: 00:27:51

To make it different on the fly.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:27:53

Yeah.

Allison McCoy: 00:27:54

And so, and then it became kind of this secret.

Allison McCoy: 00:27:57

Everyone really loved it.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:27:58

Mistake they would like to see annually repeated.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:28:00

Yeah.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:28:01

So that's been fun to reverse engineer.

Allison McCoy: 00:28:03

And so I think that some of those happy accidents can occur, but only if you're really in tune with what the recipe should be, what the style should be.

Allison McCoy: 00:28:11

And then if there are deviations along the way, this is where the creativity of the brewers come in.

Allison McCoy: 00:28:15

Cause they're like, Oh, there was a mistake or there was something off.

Allison McCoy: 00:28:18

How do we make this new beer?

Allison McCoy: 00:28:19

You know, cause the other thing too, is that we've put money into the recipe.

Allison McCoy: 00:28:23

You know, those ingredients are expensive and you can't just dump a beer.

Allison McCoy: 00:28:26

I mean, if it's gone bad, yeah, but you, you know, you want to salivate it the best you can.

Oliver Behm: 00:28:30

We had a beer that we actually called happy little accidents because we, I can't remember exactly what went wrong, but something went wrong.

Oliver Behm: 00:28:37

So we had to change it on the fly.

Oliver Behm: 00:28:39

When we did that, something happened where we, we didn't write down all what we did.

Oliver Behm: 00:28:43

Cause we were just panicking and it was such a good beer.

Oliver Behm: 00:28:46

Everyone loved it.

Oliver Behm: 00:28:47

And people are like, make it again.

Oliver Behm: 00:28:48

I don't even know how we made it.

Oliver Behm: 00:28:49

So it's like, I don't know.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:28:52

Which is a better reason to keep notes.

Bobby Fleshman: 00:28:53

So you avoid mistakes or you can repeat the successes?

Oliver Behm: 00:28:56

Exactly.

Oliver Behm: 00:28:57

Yeah.

Gary Anrdt: 00:29:01

All right.

Gary Anrdt: 00:29:01

We're going to wrap up this episode then.

Gary Anrdt: 00:29:03

Thanks again for listening to the Respecting the Beer Podcast.

Gary Anrdt: 00:29:05

If you enjoy the show, remember to subscribe in your favorite podcast player to get every episode and also make sure to follow our Facebook page and support us on Patreon links to both of which are in the show notes.