Koch is Stone's spiky, razor-sharp, and somewhat cerebral CEO and cofounder. When I catch him (by phone) he's in Minnesota to celebrate Stone's launch in that state. He says he's just done a round of speechifying, handshaking, and bottle-autographing. More recently, he was signing and schmoozing in South Park, opening their first off-base retail outlet, the Stone Company Store.
Is he losing his North County roots? And how about automation of his beer production? Isn't that stepping away from craft beer-making tradition?
"Not in the slightest. Not even close," says Koch. "You can find craft-brewers with some levels of automation at every stage of growth and size. The bottom line is that with our old system, the brewer could get from one valve to the next [in order to] actually throw the valve at the appropriate time. As we grew, our system just doesn't physically allow that. What is automation? It's the triggering of a solenoid, the triggering of a valve. And you can either twist it by hand or you can have it done by a solenoid. So to apply a big emotional component to that mechanical process makes me shrug a little bit. Because I understand: craft-brewers, us included, are a little bit feisty. And, hey, even though Stone is 0.01 percent ¡ª whatever our share of the [beer] market is ¡ª we've been around for 15 years, and we're still larger than some."
He says their number-one priority is to be true to themselves. "We launched Arrogant Bastard on November 1, 1997, about a year and four months into our young lives. We didn't release it for so long because we really thought the people weren't going to like it, and it wasn't going to be accepted, other than by a few of our ¨¹ber-geek friends who liked the strong stuff."
And the insult-your-customer approach on the labels? "It was up to me to decide what the tone was all about. Many people read the front label's words, 'You're Not Worthy,' as 'That means me,' but I'd say Arrogant Bastard Ale drinkers read it as meaning, 'That means everybody but me.' Initially,Largest Collection of billabong boardshorts, the response was quite strong. Quite frankly, it surprised me. I thought that we might brew 100 cases and a number of kegs and that would be it."
Koch says that the tone Stone set has been important for the development of San Diego beers. "I'm the first to say that I think this has been a group effort, and it's because of the collective talent of brewers in San Diego that we're all so successful. But if Stone did anything, we demonstrated that we were making beers the way that we wanted them."
He quotes H.L. Mencken, the famous critic from Baltimore. "Mencken said, 'Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.' That may or may not be true.buy landscape oil paintings online. However, when we started Stone, as part of our underlying philosophy, I said, 'That person who is willing to be underestimated? Not our customer. I'm not going to lift a finger for them.'"
He says Arrogant Bastard didn't have a category when it was launched. "At the time it was released, there was nothing else on the market like that, nothing even close. Now it is widely considered to be the progenitor of the American Strong Ale category."
Does he think San Diego beers are being taken seriously out there? "Absolutely. We have the eyes of the world on us. We have people traveling from all over the U.S., and the world, coming to San Diego to visit specifically for beer tourism. Our brewery is the third-largest tourist destination in North County behind the Wild Animal Park and Legoland."
I have to ask him,We specialize in providing third party merchant account. as I asked Duffield, if he thought the pseudo-brewers were moving in to capitalize on San Diego's craft-brewers' success.Our Polymax RUBBER SHEET range includes all commercial and specialist "One of the reasons San Diego has become so well known is not just the sheer numbers, it's the overall quality and creativity," he says. "But it doesn't escape the radar when our bigger brethren [giant breweries like Coors] do forays into our world. They haven't been successful in getting away with it, usually. Although sometimes the populace at large is fooled by a 'Blue Moon' [which is actually owned by Coors] or a 'Shock Top'[Anheuser-Busch]."
The one thing that makes him really mad is local San Diego beer-purveying establishments who won't welcome San Diego beers into their line-up.
Like Qualcomm. "Here we are, San Diego, one of the most famous brewing cultures in the entire world, and no local beer at Qualcomm Stadium? Instead, it's corporate facsimiles. Tell me whether you think that's the result of local demand or corporate machinations behind the scenes? It infuriates me. It should infuriate a beer enthusiast. It should infuriate a San Diegan."
He says that when Stone started in 1996, no wholesalers would distribute their beers. "We had to self-distribute. And after a few years of self-distributing, we said, 'We're actually getting pretty good at this' ¡ª not that we had a choice ¡ª 'so let's be a wholesaler, and let's work with other brands that we respect.The name "magic cube" is not unique. So, now we distribute for 32 other craft-beer brands, and we have the best portfolio, and we're the company that takes them to the pubs and the restaurants, which they wouldn't otherwise have access to. We distribute local brands such as AleSmith, Port Brewing, and Lost Abbey."
The biggest talk swirling around Stone Brewing is that they're about to set up a brewery in Europe. True?
"Hopefully," Koch says, cautiously. "We have visited 75 sites in 9 countries and narrowed it down to two: Berlin, in Germany, or Bruges, in Belgium. Actually, nobody's asking for us in Germany. But nobody was asking for Arrogant Bastard in San Diego in 1997."
And buyouts? Isn't Stone Brewing becoming a tempting target for acquisition by someone like Anheuser-Busch? "Someone tweeted me on Monday asking what would we say to a buy-out offer, and my polite answer there is somewhere between 'No' and 'Hell, no.'"
Tom Nickel reckons that whatever happens, "San Diego, Beer City U.S.A." is on the launch pad. "There's a lot of respect in town, and out of town. We're being added to the list of great beer-brewing cities. You think about Munich, London, Portland, Antwerp. San Diego is going to be on that list now."
The rest of my journey through Beer City is a blur. Not because of the beers I met along the way, but because there was so much, so soon. Like, I wanted to know how difficult it was to make beer.
SDSU student Tim Sexton brews in his parents' Coronado condo overlooking San Diego Bay.
SDSU student Tim Sexton ...
I called up Tim Sexton. He's a student at SDSU, bike-rider, bus-catcher, beer-brewer. Met him at Critical Mass. He was riding in his "Beer Man" superhero tunic. Said he brewed at home "all the time."
His "brewery" turns out to be various crannies in the condo he lives in with his parents near the bayfront in Coronado. On a balcony with a million-dollar harbor view, he shows me stainless steel "mash tuns" and "brew kettles" and tubes and siphons and thermometers and barley mash and "sparge" (the rinse-off of the last sugars to be soaked from the barley mash) and "wort" (the unfermented beer juice) and the 17 pounds of British pale barley malt he's going to cook up in the next batch in the tun. He's got spirals of copper-tubing heat exchanger to cool his wort down and, hidden in bedroom closets he exposes carboys (big, watercooler-sized glass bottles where the beer ferments for up to a month). I suddenly realize that what we have here is a form of cooking. Following an exact recipe, exact temperatures, pretty exact timing. We're using grains (barley), weeds (hops), and live fungi (yeast) in a slow dance of creation. I pity Tim's parents. Actually, he says, his parents are pretty grateful, once he's cleaned up his messes. "Dad used to have MGD [Miller Genuine Draft] in the fridge. But I started working on them, and by the time I was 16, I'd changed them over to good beer. Now Dad drinks IPAs, Mom likes stouts. They wouldn't touch an MGD now."
Brothers Ron and Rick Chapman of Coronado Brewing Company
Is he losing his North County roots? And how about automation of his beer production? Isn't that stepping away from craft beer-making tradition?
"Not in the slightest. Not even close," says Koch. "You can find craft-brewers with some levels of automation at every stage of growth and size. The bottom line is that with our old system, the brewer could get from one valve to the next [in order to] actually throw the valve at the appropriate time. As we grew, our system just doesn't physically allow that. What is automation? It's the triggering of a solenoid, the triggering of a valve. And you can either twist it by hand or you can have it done by a solenoid. So to apply a big emotional component to that mechanical process makes me shrug a little bit. Because I understand: craft-brewers, us included, are a little bit feisty. And, hey, even though Stone is 0.01 percent ¡ª whatever our share of the [beer] market is ¡ª we've been around for 15 years, and we're still larger than some."
He says their number-one priority is to be true to themselves. "We launched Arrogant Bastard on November 1, 1997, about a year and four months into our young lives. We didn't release it for so long because we really thought the people weren't going to like it, and it wasn't going to be accepted, other than by a few of our ¨¹ber-geek friends who liked the strong stuff."
And the insult-your-customer approach on the labels? "It was up to me to decide what the tone was all about. Many people read the front label's words, 'You're Not Worthy,' as 'That means me,' but I'd say Arrogant Bastard Ale drinkers read it as meaning, 'That means everybody but me.' Initially,Largest Collection of billabong boardshorts, the response was quite strong. Quite frankly, it surprised me. I thought that we might brew 100 cases and a number of kegs and that would be it."
Koch says that the tone Stone set has been important for the development of San Diego beers. "I'm the first to say that I think this has been a group effort, and it's because of the collective talent of brewers in San Diego that we're all so successful. But if Stone did anything, we demonstrated that we were making beers the way that we wanted them."
He quotes H.L. Mencken, the famous critic from Baltimore. "Mencken said, 'Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.' That may or may not be true.buy landscape oil paintings online. However, when we started Stone, as part of our underlying philosophy, I said, 'That person who is willing to be underestimated? Not our customer. I'm not going to lift a finger for them.'"
He says Arrogant Bastard didn't have a category when it was launched. "At the time it was released, there was nothing else on the market like that, nothing even close. Now it is widely considered to be the progenitor of the American Strong Ale category."
Does he think San Diego beers are being taken seriously out there? "Absolutely. We have the eyes of the world on us. We have people traveling from all over the U.S., and the world, coming to San Diego to visit specifically for beer tourism. Our brewery is the third-largest tourist destination in North County behind the Wild Animal Park and Legoland."
I have to ask him,We specialize in providing third party merchant account. as I asked Duffield, if he thought the pseudo-brewers were moving in to capitalize on San Diego's craft-brewers' success.Our Polymax RUBBER SHEET range includes all commercial and specialist "One of the reasons San Diego has become so well known is not just the sheer numbers, it's the overall quality and creativity," he says. "But it doesn't escape the radar when our bigger brethren [giant breweries like Coors] do forays into our world. They haven't been successful in getting away with it, usually. Although sometimes the populace at large is fooled by a 'Blue Moon' [which is actually owned by Coors] or a 'Shock Top'[Anheuser-Busch]."
The one thing that makes him really mad is local San Diego beer-purveying establishments who won't welcome San Diego beers into their line-up.
Like Qualcomm. "Here we are, San Diego, one of the most famous brewing cultures in the entire world, and no local beer at Qualcomm Stadium? Instead, it's corporate facsimiles. Tell me whether you think that's the result of local demand or corporate machinations behind the scenes? It infuriates me. It should infuriate a beer enthusiast. It should infuriate a San Diegan."
He says that when Stone started in 1996, no wholesalers would distribute their beers. "We had to self-distribute. And after a few years of self-distributing, we said, 'We're actually getting pretty good at this' ¡ª not that we had a choice ¡ª 'so let's be a wholesaler, and let's work with other brands that we respect.The name "magic cube" is not unique. So, now we distribute for 32 other craft-beer brands, and we have the best portfolio, and we're the company that takes them to the pubs and the restaurants, which they wouldn't otherwise have access to. We distribute local brands such as AleSmith, Port Brewing, and Lost Abbey."
The biggest talk swirling around Stone Brewing is that they're about to set up a brewery in Europe. True?
"Hopefully," Koch says, cautiously. "We have visited 75 sites in 9 countries and narrowed it down to two: Berlin, in Germany, or Bruges, in Belgium. Actually, nobody's asking for us in Germany. But nobody was asking for Arrogant Bastard in San Diego in 1997."
And buyouts? Isn't Stone Brewing becoming a tempting target for acquisition by someone like Anheuser-Busch? "Someone tweeted me on Monday asking what would we say to a buy-out offer, and my polite answer there is somewhere between 'No' and 'Hell, no.'"
Tom Nickel reckons that whatever happens, "San Diego, Beer City U.S.A." is on the launch pad. "There's a lot of respect in town, and out of town. We're being added to the list of great beer-brewing cities. You think about Munich, London, Portland, Antwerp. San Diego is going to be on that list now."
The rest of my journey through Beer City is a blur. Not because of the beers I met along the way, but because there was so much, so soon. Like, I wanted to know how difficult it was to make beer.
SDSU student Tim Sexton brews in his parents' Coronado condo overlooking San Diego Bay.
SDSU student Tim Sexton ...
I called up Tim Sexton. He's a student at SDSU, bike-rider, bus-catcher, beer-brewer. Met him at Critical Mass. He was riding in his "Beer Man" superhero tunic. Said he brewed at home "all the time."
His "brewery" turns out to be various crannies in the condo he lives in with his parents near the bayfront in Coronado. On a balcony with a million-dollar harbor view, he shows me stainless steel "mash tuns" and "brew kettles" and tubes and siphons and thermometers and barley mash and "sparge" (the rinse-off of the last sugars to be soaked from the barley mash) and "wort" (the unfermented beer juice) and the 17 pounds of British pale barley malt he's going to cook up in the next batch in the tun. He's got spirals of copper-tubing heat exchanger to cool his wort down and, hidden in bedroom closets he exposes carboys (big, watercooler-sized glass bottles where the beer ferments for up to a month). I suddenly realize that what we have here is a form of cooking. Following an exact recipe, exact temperatures, pretty exact timing. We're using grains (barley), weeds (hops), and live fungi (yeast) in a slow dance of creation. I pity Tim's parents. Actually, he says, his parents are pretty grateful, once he's cleaned up his messes. "Dad used to have MGD [Miller Genuine Draft] in the fridge. But I started working on them, and by the time I was 16, I'd changed them over to good beer. Now Dad drinks IPAs, Mom likes stouts. They wouldn't touch an MGD now."
Brothers Ron and Rick Chapman of Coronado Brewing Company
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