Gadgetory

water barley hops yeast the wind through the meadow Sun on my face I look out I look forth I want you here refreshing surprising Chris smooth bubbly you make me drunk you make me smile flourish beer sing the song of beer here here I love you beer I'm Alexis Ohanian start-up founder and Y Combinator partner over the last year I went on a two hundred event book tour and met people building small empires all across North America now I'm back with a new season revisiting some of my favorite stops for the tour running a brewery is hard work and at small scales the margins can be pretty low but if the beer is good as the size of the brewery increases efficiencies in the processes and technologies of play allow for larger margins and due to automation a more consistent quality of product than at a smaller space the problem is not everybody who's great at brewing beer is great at running brewery or even wants to and that keeps great beer out of your stomach so some well-equipped breweries like two roads allow contract Brewers or gypsy Brewers to program their beer into the system two roads is kind of like a platform where you can code beer that way gypsy Brewers can get their beard out to the public without having to take on the capital investment requires to open a whole brewery Cheers we're here in Stratford Connecticut not exactly a tech hub visiting a brewery which might be a little surprising and so you realize that to Rhodes Brewing Company is doing some amazing stuff and not just making great beer they are but they're also building a platform so that microbrewers craft brewers all over the region can I make amazing professional quality beer without needing to build all of this very involving Wow do I get goggles too safety first all right this is where it all we're all starts and ends really this is the control room everything you see here controls or accesses everything you see out there so hundreds of temperature sensors pressure sensors those switches pumps it's all right here and we can step through the whole process from start to finish it's a very visual system so I should not just randomly match the keyboard and click on things I would love it if you didn't okay all right all right now this is this is a very interesting brewery because I mean you all are you're not brewing your own beer you have other people's beer that you all brew for them how does this whole contract brewery thing work well let me explain first and foremost we do brew our own beer and that's that is absolutely our focus here are two rows of our own brands we launched our brands and open the brewery in December of 2012 started with our brands and then as we got to know the equipment and got the bugs worked out we we brought on brewing partners or contract partners whose be reproduced for them under license here are two roads this is my 25th year in craft brewing and through a good part of my career OHS and the other side of that equation where I was out brewing our beers at other facilities all right now how much of this is being controlled by robots right now this particular process this whole process is controlled from the computer yeah then we can trust them to make our beer here we actually have a beer in process they do in their beer I can't even describe it it's like a whirlpool of beer of hot beer I think the best way to describe to roaster is as the next generation of craft brewing rather than starting off really small we're starting off fairly big for a craft beer in the way that we get to do this is by brewing other people's brands as well as our own and this gives us the luxury of starting off really fairly small and allowing our own brand to grow organically kind of outwardly from Connecticut and outward interests and why don't more breweries use this method I think most breweries have taken the the kind of the most obvious path of you know we're gonna start off small with equipment that we can afford and then have a good level of success and then kind of make the next step to the next level and then and you know steps as they go whereas we're kind of the new guy in craft brewing we can start big because we know that the demand is there and will eventually fill that capacity okay so this is this is where it really spends most most of its time the work gets down to this stage we cool it down to make it the ideal temperature for the East and fermentation cause East is a living thing different yeast create different flavors at different temperatures and they're all controlled again through the computer so we can do specific temperature curves you needed to make precise adjustments whatever that's all happening from that main room we're in just have the computer part of the job all right South gotta keep tasting beer yeah folks over two roads have a pretty awesome brewery and they brew a pretty awesome beer but we're here in exotic Williamsburg Brooklyn in order to meet with an actual gypsy brewer his name is yep Bay and he's known for Brewing beers that were inspired by things like baby poop and we're gonna find out what his experience has been like with two runs I am originally from Denmark I moved to Brooklyn two and a half years ago I own evil twin brewing and I'm the brewer and the in-between brewing is not a physical brew it's so called they call it gypsy brewery or contact early so I rent space from from other Brewers so what does being a gypsy Brewer versus a traditional Brewer mean for the kind of like freedom and creativity you might have I mean it means that you know I don't have a big investment I don't have a lot of money out for a brewery that I have to make backs the first year evil swing was really operating we did about 40 different beers which is a lot but never start you know I came from a home where background to it having done a lot of different beers there was a lot of things I wanted to test out on a bigger scale and some of them worked out really well and we still do the knowledge who rules at like 300 valve answers but some of them just didn't work out so we just never did them again and that's you know that's definitely a freedom that I like because again you know I don't have to make it we'd be able to sell scooter I don't have to make certain payroll because it sells good I can do whatever I want I can make crazy peers you know I sell one patch and if it sells slow which is the given how much craft beer has boomed in the States in the last couple of decades and and how there are so many more craft brewers what does it mean for an upstart craft brewer to know you know they can come to two roads they don't have to build an entire facility they can come to you all and get that kind of production that's that's huge and I think that's why we've got guys beating a path to our door you know we we thought that we'd be successful but we really have exceeded our own expectations and and that's why we're growing at the rate that we are at a sustainable rate but a very fast-paced growth here I mean we've more than doubled production every year that I've been here you know my staff went from fill our brewmaster and myself to now we have eight guys and you know we're looking ahead more so it's it's been a whirlwind it's been every day's an adventure in a good way so once the fermentation is complete we separate the beer in the separator or the centrifuge here which literally spins all the particulate out and this is really unique in that we have a Hayes reader on the input and the output so we have the technology to pretty much dial in the level Wow there's like a slider somewhere for the amount of haze you want you know so what was it about two roads that made it so compelling I just realized that for me to be able to build evil twin as a brand we had to get bigger and cheaper production and when I met the tools guys before we moved we had a meeting with them even before I moved to the states and we heard about the setup and what they were gonna do and we gave them some recipes and make a bag of fries if you like holy shit I mean if we can get in a two rolls and start production here we can take evil twin to the next level so that's you know it's pretty simple we just knew we needed tools and to Rosalee the people I got they need you know punch bag fools I wanted to use the system and it's working out really well I think we are the biggest customer now for two ropes and filmer coughs people to hit the brewmaster is one of my big heroes you know he wrote the book about farmhouse ale in the early 2000s and has been doing a lot of obvious in his early days that I just you know known for the best summer best views of amazed you know I knew they're gonna do good and I believe in it and we have no back since I mean it's crazy how fast people now or how good are you so the initial thrust was brewing your own beer and in the back of your head you there might be a market for this or when you first launched two roads was the thinking gonna be that it also be this this kind of craft contracting as well it was from the get-go again to tailor to roads we knew were gonna do our own brands and who were gonna do other brands and what made us different from a lot of startup craft breweries is that we wanted to do it once we wanted to build a big facility that we would never outgrow and rather grow into it both with our volumes and our customers volumes you know although we have a hundred year old plus facility that we're housed in our equipment is is absolutely state-of-the-art what was the history of this building before you all moved in this was the it was called the u.s. baird corporation it's a company that existed from the turn of the 19th century it was a company that made machinery for bending and forming metals at its heyday it employed over 500 people around the clock so this thing this facility has facility it was a big part of this community it was a big employer part of the town's identity walk me through the last few decades of history here in Stratford all the way up to the present now with two roads yeah I mean I'm no history buff but I I know what I know from growing up here and it's kind of Strafford as a sleepy little town lots of potential right on the water close to major cities and in the last few years with withdrew roads now leading the way we've seen a lot of a lot of growth in town a lot of things coming back and it really amazes me every Friday night Saturday night or even weeknights for that matter in our tasting room here we get a really really good crowd could that be an extra benefit of this craft brewing sort of revolution now we don't have a Town Square anymore are these becoming the new town squares I sure would like to think so it really is it's a meeting place for people you know it's we have our Oktoberfest and we get a couple thousand people out we of our race on the Stratford Beach and it's amazing the turnout that we get for these events everywhere I go and tons people are talking about what what two roads is is doing ahead of time what what does it mean to you to have this company based here in Stratford well it means a lot three of the four founding partners there are two roads we're from Connecticut it's our home state you know for my childhood I grew up in a town that was an industrial factory town and it's no longer what it was when I was growing up so you know being able to bring back some of the industrial glory that you know once was Connecticut still is Connecticut was was very important to us so to be back here our home state brewing beer is is a dream come true for me so I'm in a very special part of the to Rhodes brewery right now this is the vault and I'm surrounded by delicious limited-run beer which is brewed once a year just to honor Igor Sikorsky now his helicopter factory used to be the economic engine of Stratford Connecticut and although two roads isn't necessarily gonna employ as many people as sikorsky's factory once did what it is doing aside from creating jobs and a community hub here is it's providing a way for Brewers all over the region to get started without needing to build a brewery alright so when you were choosing or when you chose two roads obviously the price was good and presumably the beer was good - yeah I mean that's you know you never know that before we actually get the final product but again Phil McAllister has a very good name the bluing well as I knew that you know the brewer was good I knew the system it's a rolling system which is like the highest in system you get and we do 14 different styles now and they're all a scooter stick indeed you know if they're not good enough it's my fault that my recipes nothing than that it definitely doesn't have to do with the system or the PA now let's say I want to start my own beer because I do I'd love to I don't know anything about brewing should I start with home brewing should i what's what's the right approach there's two ways to do is start with overthrow to brewing school or whatever ruins class a lot of rural schools in the States I never needed it I mean a lot of the best chefs in the world have never been to cooking school you know we do stuff that on paper it's not a good idea like dumping thousands I want to ensure to appear as a dry helping kind of thing I mean they would never teach with out of the house and donuts we have a be aware with for every batch we make we put you know stride hawk with donuts so we put a thousand dollars it's gonna take like liquid donor when it comes out and it's just it's a fun way to do things and no one I so Matt can do it so you know that's what I'm doing yeah what I love is that there is a machine with sole purpose in life is doing this specific pattern and it's so perfectly suited for that job and yeah right there hypnotic go I it's real today the sense of technology technology and beer what a great couple very famous Robert Frost code up there on the wall I think I know where you got your inspiration from for the name tell me in your words how did frost inspire too late for my point of view as the brewmaster it is about how we craft our beers we'd like to take a slight departure from a typical beer style and put our own spin on it you know for example dry hoppin a traditional German Pilsner is something at German Brewer would never ever do because it's not traditional to them however we're are an American brewery and we're two roads and we do things our own way to make our products different so that's how we apply the road less traveled to our brewing philosophy every MEP I make I made for myself and again being a teacher do I have the freedom to do that if I want to say something like beer and it's not made I have to make myself you know and that's just that's my approach to it and that's why I keep doing that swai I can't stop I get new the whole time on my end we need to make this would this success have been possible if you needed to like start your own brewery from scratch it's difficult to say I mean it we would have have have had success no matter what I think but it just made it a lot easier we didn't have to go God and I love which a million dollars to build a brewery means you know they can give us the capacity and the prices that you needed so yeah I'll say it definitely helped a lot so what's the future gonna hold domination global domination does not interest us we want to be we want to be a regional craft based in Connecticut first and foremost known in Connecticut and from that point our wildest ambitious missions have us you know selling beer throughout the Northeast and growing into a true regional beer and a place that people can visit the brewery can experience the brewery will have beers on tap here in our tap room that you can only get here at the brewery so so there's always going to be reason to for people to visit we just want to make good beer and make people happy I'm here at tourists which is Yepes bar in Greenpoint Brooklyn trying rowdy beer including the evil twin cowboy if two roads can keep making great beer and also empower Brewers all over to be able to make great beer at scale without having to build a brewery and let a dude like ya pay continue to make awesome beer that pushes the envelope for what brewing can do cheers to them to Rhodes brewery built a space that was bigger than they may have needed at first but they knew it would allow them to continue growing without having to stop production to expand when moving into a new space even just going beyond your home office thoughts like room for expansion are really important to consider when looking for an office location consider what kind of business you are and then find a location convenient for your customers you should also be able to consider all costs including insurance and trash picking finally to keep with customer demand whether in the office or on the go look for great mobility services that can grow with you and your business for more business advice be sure to visit a TNT's business circle just want to take a second to say hi editors you're doing a great job all right mm-hmm sorry okay