School is officially back in session here at the BrewDeck Podcast. I am Toby Tucker hosting today alongside Heather Jared. This is part two of our Live from Hop & Brew School recordings here in Yakima, Washington.

(00:23)
If you haven’t listened to part one yet, go back and check it out. We busted the biggest hop myths with our friends from Yakima Chief Hops. Brief recap of Hop & Brew School, really, really awesome tours and some great sessions and some really unique beers that they’ve been serving as well.

(00:42)
So today, we’re chatting with Marcus Baskerville from Weathered Souls Brewing in San Antonio. Marcus gave an incredible speech here at Hop & Brew School and we just had to share it with all of you.

And it’s good to be here out in Yakima, Washington.

Excited again to have this crew on today and I’m glad they were willing to peel off little bit of time to come join us because it is beer 30 really and food. And I saw Marcus got a little bit before he came over, but Zach and Billy here, I guess. You dying? No.

A little bit breakfast. I’m good.

They had breakfast. I didn’t.

No. So, I haven’t been nervous for a lot of these. I talk too much and Hailey over there, our marketing girl keeps us on track here. She’s usually like, “Oh, you talk too much. You talk too much.” But I was nervous because Marcus, it had a presentation earlier today and it really tore me up a bit. I mean, it was super motivating and we do a lot of talking on the show, but Marcus has actually put his mouth… What’s the old phrase?

Put some money [inaudible 00:01:54].

Put the money where the mouth is on, I should take an action on something. And so, really cool to have a Marcus Baskerville on along with Zach Holt and Billy Garza, Weathered Souls. And we’ll get into to Zach and Billy, what you guys are doing for Marcus and with the organization, but not about me anymore, it’s about these guys. And we wanted to have Marcus on specifically to talk a little bit more about what he presented today and then talk a little bit about what’s going on with y’all in the future in toss around what’s going on here at Hop & Brew School. So welcome.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Yeah. So let’s start off number one. Tell me a little bit about your brewery, how many barrels you’re brewing, a little bit about your brewing philosophy, and then we’ll get into the meat of things on your project you’ve been working?

Yeah, so Weather Souls Brewing Company. We’re in San Antonio, Texas. We’re actually working on a second location now in Charlotte, North Carolina, that will open a little bit later this winter. But for us, we’ve been open since 2016, opened in November.

(03:03)
And let’s see, we do a ton of fun stuff. We’re across the board stylistically. Currently, we probably have about four or five loggers on tap, especially because that’s the San Antonio community. There’s still within the range of the old styles and things like that, but-

There’s nothing wrong with those styles.

No. Not at all. But for what we do. We were the first brewery in San Antonio to produce Hazy IPAs. First brewery in San Antonio to do the fruited sours first brewery in San Antonio to do the heavily adjunct stouts and all of that fun stuff.

(03:40)
So, when it comes to my brewing philosophy, it’s not necessarily anything in particular that I wouldn’t brew outside of smoke beer because I hate smoke beers. Any smoke beer to me taste like a barbecue pit and I just refuse to make them. It’s literally scraping the greats off of barbecue pit and throwing in a logger. I just can’t do it.

That’s fair. We did do a podcast episode on smoke beers. Okay. We did it a two quarter.

Yeah. So-

I don’t know if we change your mind.

I doubt it. But outside of that, I try to keep things that I enjoy, things that I like, especially the lighter loggers West Coast IPAs, but then also the barrel-aged stouts, which obviously is what we’re known for. And the fun adjunct stouts where my whole thing is about balance of flavors.

(04:30)
So, even if you have a stout with coconut, vanilla, marshmallows, coconut and what else? Cacao nibs and maple syrup.

[inaudible 00:04:41].

Yeah. You’re going to be able to differentiate every single one of those flavors within that beer. Whatever we say is within one of our products, you’re going to be able to taste that and experience those flavors.

(04:53)
Another thing that we like doing is doing that with natural ingredients and not going into the whole extracts and fake artificial flavors and different things like that.

(05:04)
And so our whole thing is creating experiences, people to be able to drink beer and let it resonate in their mind of something that they’ve had in the past or when they were in their childhood or even adulthood. So, that’s what we’ve gravitated to beer wise, anyway.

It’s a pretty awesome philosophy. So I guess, what a lot of people do know whether tools for worldwide is the Black Is Beautiful initiative. Can you tell us anything and everything about it?

Yeah, so Black Is Beautiful. That was something that happened in 2020. We talked about in the speech earlier, it was something that was completely organic. We’re in the height of COVID. The height of civil unrest and all of these different things that are going on in 2020.

(05:52)
And I was at a place of not feeling right about what was going on. We sat there and looked at what happened with Brianna Taylor and George Floyd and all of the protests and things that were going on. And honestly, Peak COVID, I wasn’t going out to a protest, but even then, I guess I’m becoming out of my shell more and more, as time goes by, but I’m really the introverted kind of spectrum and I wasn’t going in a large crowd, especially like a protest.

(06:22)
And so, it reached one of those points where I became disappointed in myself. You’re not taking action, you’re not doing anything. And we’re at such a pivotal point. So, yeah. I was having a conversation with Jeffrey Stuffings from Jester King that weekend, and we were talking about family, Trump, religion, all the things that were going on at that time. And that conversation kind of set in the back of my mind.

(06:49)
And then on the way up to Dallas, I was listening to the Breakfast Club and heard Brianna Taylor’s mom speak and she spoke about the course of action of her finding out her daughter was murdered. And it was one of those conversations that hit you. It brought me to tears. I’m over here driving my big Weathered Souls [inaudible 00:07:08], going to Dallas and I’m over here wiping the tears off the corner of my face just based off of that conversation. But it hit me, especially because I have two young daughters, I have a younger sister.

(07:19)
All of those things that can occur in the back of your mind. And I’ve been somebody that’s been through issues with the police. And I’ll give the short term version because it’s pretty long story, but pretty much me and my cousin relative of mine, went to a party, huge fight, breaks out, guns go off, all that type of stuff. And everybody disperses. When we go to the car, we realize, “Hey, we had other friends that were at this party, we might want to go check on them.”

(07:47)
So we backtrack, go make sure everybody’s okay. One of the people that was with some of our friends had ended up getting stabbed. Now, in your youth you have some friends that all don’t go down the right path and that type of thing. And so they couldn’t take this individual to the hospital. So we offered to do so.

(08:08)
So we’re driving 9,000 miles per hour down the freeway. My cousins is a backseat applying pressure. Those guys bleeding over my brand new Mustang and we’re just trying to save this man’s life. So we get to the hospital and they pull him out of the car, get him inside of emergency, and literally the nurse tells us, “If you had arrived five minutes later, this person probably would’ve bled out.

(08:31)
And so, we’re proud of ourselves. We did the right thing, helped somebody out, got them to the hospital, saved their life. You should be proud of that situation. But the police didn’t let us be proud of that situation. It was one of those things when the police ended up coming, they treated us like suspects, ended up taking us in the back of the police car, putting us into a cell overnight. Never booking us or anything along those lines.

(08:54)
But the fact we were what, 1920 at that time and being treated like that, we didn’t know any different at the time. But to look back at that situation, I couldn’t have made it home. You never even know. Yeah. Exactly. We didn’t know where we were going or anything else. And to be through that type of experience and see some of the things that have gone on with the police lately, frankly, it’s ridiculous.

(09:20)
And so, I felt like I was in a position with weather souls to at least do something minimal. We have at that point a, at least a national brand name. And I wanted to do something locally. And so we were going to release a beer locally and name it Black Is Beautiful and then donate proceeds to a local charity within the course of that weekend because of the conversation I had with Jeff went ahead and sent him that label and Jeff was like, “I would understand if you don’t want to, but you should probably turn this into a collaboration.”

(09:55)
And I was like, “You know what Jeff? You’re right.” And so, then I was stuck with that weekend trying to figure out, “Hey, I’m in a industry that is 99.9% Caucasian. How am I going to ask them to brew a beer called Black is Beautiful and then donate that money into local charities, foundations that support equality and inclusion and minorities. And the brew industry showed up for sure.

(10:22)
We had over 1400 breweries participate, made over 4 million in support of these initiatives. But you also have to look at the other end of it. There’s 9,000 breweries in the United States and we only had 14 participate. 14 participate.

(10:36)
So, definitely a large number. But we also could have probably penetrated more of that market and had more people participate. Now we were in the peak session of COVID and that’s understandable, but I will pressure people now. There was never a time limit on Black Is Beautiful and you can still show up, you can still show up, you can still brew it and you can definitely still support.

(10:58)
And so what that initiative ended up being or still is, was a recipe of a stout that was created at Weathered Souls Brewing Company, that I sat on my barrel at home and made in. And it was something that we’re more known for pastry stouts, adjunct stouts or barrel-aged stouts. And we do so much more than that.

(11:19)
And I wanted to get back to the basics. And so this recipe was more of that traditional American style stout that we haven’t seen for years. The old Fremont would brew and Firestones and stuff like that. And that style was more to anode of what they used to do and what got me into stouts and what got me into beer in the first place.

(11:42)
But brew the stout and then donate a 100% of those proceeds to organizations, charities, foundations that support equality, inclusion and that type of stuff. And so like I said, I mean the industry showed up and we’ve made history. I mean what other social platform can you say is in the beverage or food industry? There’s raised 4 million in support of social justice reform.

(12:03)
Yeah. The brewing industry did that, which is absolutely insane. But dealing with that over the course of the last two years, things kind of spiraled out. So we’re doing all these podcasts and interviews and TV shows and all of these things speaking about Black Is Beautiful. And at some point I kind of grew complacent. The stuff started dwindling down, Not as many people kind of supported the initiative, not as spending people we’re donating and different things like that. And so I had to think about what was next.

(12:36)
And so we got a little bit into that today with the Harriet Baskerville Incubation Program. And for those that are unfamiliar, we announced it at CBC with our partnership with Rahr, where they donated $100,000 dollars towards the program. But today we’re announcing our new partner in Yakima Chief.

(13:00)
And them supporting the brand, creating an educational program. They’re going to run sensory, they’re doing a financial backing as well and becoming a huge support factor within this initiative. And what we’re going to do is create a pretty much a brewing school for minorities and women that are in planning of opening a brewery to come in and kind of fast track themselves to reach a point of, Hey, I can open this brewery and here I have all of this support resources and all of these things that this incubation program has provided to get us to where we need to be.

(13:37)
Like I was saying in the speech earlier today, you look at if we had the 12 participants go through a year and four of those participants ended up participating, remember we only have about 60, 65 black owned breweries, minority owned breweries in the United States currently. So that four breweries is already creating a little over a 55% increase in the amount of now minority owned breweries within the country.

(14:04)
And so those are real kind of tangible changes that make differences. You can always have all of the tap room employees, you can always have all of the brewers, you can always have all those type of settlements and different things like that. But at the end of the day, we know that the only change comes from those that are making decisions, those that have power and those that are having the creativity to do what they need to do within their fields.

(14:30)
And so, okay. And we have five Black taproom employees, but is that really changing the scene? Is that really growing anything within our industry? No. And so, this is one of those avenues that individuals can take to actually start making some real tangible change within our industry.

Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned the 4 million raised and obviously there’s still an opportunity for people to get involved, right Marcus? So how would one of our listeners that owns a brewery inside Nebraska, or how do they get involved? How can they…

Brew the beer?

Yeah.

Go to The blackisbeautiful.beer website, download the recipe. I’m pretty sure you could probably contact some of the original partners even then and probably still get some of the discounts associated with it for ingredients and things like that. If you let them know what they’re doing, brew the beer and donate the money to somebody locally easy enough, somebody that supports equality and inclusion dive in deeply into your local market.

(15:28)
One of the things that we talked about with Black Is Beautiful was supporting your local scene, supporting your local community, and taking it a step further. The donations were one aspect of it, but the long term goals and effects of what we do after that are what’s going to actually make those changes. The money was the initial support, but it’s what we do after that. That’s actually what’s going to help us grow. Yeah.

Oh that’s great. And yeah, we encourage everybody to get involved where you can if you haven’t already. It’s a great initiative and they’re obviously doing some great things. So, I would be remiss to talk about hops because we are in the Lion hops area. So, let’s go back to the actual Black Is Beautiful beer, and correct me if I’m wrong, Marcus, but from what I’m seeing is 100 cascade in a beer.

Yes. So we use Cascade hops for that beer, something American traditional, but even then, it’s for a stout pretty neutral. It’s not something that’s going to impart too much of that aroma character, too much flavor character. Most of the hops for it went into those kind of beginning stages of the boil.

(16:39)
So more so, contributing to the actual just bitterness and base of the beer, the more so the flavors when it comes to stouts, I like your malts to shine, your specialty malts to shine. Those are those flavors that you want to be able to taste within your style products.

(16:56)
And so yes, obviously, hops are an important factor to any beer, but for this particular recipe, I wanted the kind of hop character to take a backseat outside of some of the traditional bitterness that you would get in American IPAs that you haven’t seen in some of these newer stouts where it’s like where are the hops? So getting back to that of old type of recipe and bringing some of that bitterness kind of back to the base beer and letting it shine that way with complimenting the actual malt character.

Yeah, that was great. And also it’d be remiss to ask on one of our typical co-host, and unfortunately, he didn’t get the invite to come out. Grant Lawrence, he was so upset that he couldn’t join and talk to y’all. But hey Grant, what’s up? Anyways, he wanted to know with a maltodextrin that you’re using in the recipe when you use it, is there a finishing gravity specifically that you’re looking for that beer?

So maltodextrin, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Maltodextrin. I think, most people have. When I first got into producing stouts, I was using quite a bit of maltodextrin. Probably 10%, 15%… 10%, 12% maltodextrin recipes, building up that base body. But one of the things that I recognize that I really didn’t like within doing that is the finishing gravity.

(18:20)
They tend to stay a little bit sweeter on that profile. Yes, obviously the viscosity gets to where you want it to go to, but it really, for me, I wanted to get back to having a very viscous but drier beer. And so, when we do add maltodextrin, we still look for a finishing gravity within that, at this point, high 20, mid 30 Play-Doh range.

(18:54)
But unfortunately for Billy, I’ve gotten completely out of maltodextrin and he’s had the experience of doing 24, 27 hour boils with a double mash now because I’ve taken out that maltodextrin and we still need to account for that viscosity within our product and high gravity, but I’m not brewing those beers anymore, so it doesn’t affect me too much. So, we have actually gotten out of using maltodextrin in about 98% of our stouts that we do now, especially if they’re going into barrels.

Well he mentioned Billy and these guys have been real patient. They’re over here just pounding beers and having a grand old time. But yeah, I want to get to your two gentlemen here that are on the team. Billy Garza, who’s the brewer down in the San Antonio location, and Zach Holt who is going to be brewing up in Charlotte. And we’ll talk a little bit more about what’s going on with that location in Charlotte. And I want to dive in a little bit more about the Harriet basketball because you had a story about was your great grandma and I was very interested to hear it.

So my grandma, she brew during prohibition and it’s interesting because my grandma has been very anti-alcohol our entire life. I have some older relatives, older cousins, my brother’s seven years older than me and so she’s always been in the back of their ears. You don’t need to be drinking and you don’t need to be indulging in alcohol and that type of stuff.

(20:29)
And so, a couple of years, I think it was one after my first accolades with the brewery, we got best of San Antonio or something like that. I ended up getting the actual story and it turns out that my grandma used to brew during prohibition and she brewed from about the age seven, eight years old to about 13, 14. And the story is that this individual kept kind of harassing her for some hooch, right? Oh, I want to try it, blah, blah, blah, blah.

(20:59)
And so she grew spiteful of this gentleman that kept asking her for some of the product. So she gave him some of the concentrated match and this person was doing construction, was on the roof and ended up falling off of that set roof so you could mind imagine how fearful a 13, 14 year old Black girl is in Topeka, Kansas of all places.

(21:21)
And this white man falls off of your roof for drinking alcohol during prohibition. So she prayed to the Lord that the police wouldn’t come take her away and the police never came. And she stopped brewing and stopped distilling as of that day and never had anything to do with alcohol ever since. My grandma was about to be 94 years old next month.

(21:41)
So, we got that whole story, but to kind of see for me, because I was not much of a beer fan in my early twenties and I didn’t get into beer until I was introduced to it by my brother and another relative. And so to kind of see this full circle thing happen and see where I’m at currently in the industry and the things that we’re doing within San Antonio and some of the accolades, I felt like this was a full circle situation. And that’s what made me want to honor my grandma as far as naming the incubation program after her with the Harriet Baskerville Incubation.

That’s awesome. I keep grabbing Billy’s mic because we’re limited to four right now. Man, I just got the wheels turning. But yeah, going back to when you say indulging, isn’t it funny like grandparents, it’s not drinking, it’s indulging. No more indulging in,

But you didn’t know that story about your grandmother until after you opened the brewery, right?

Nope. No. My own dad didn’t even know that story, which is crazy. That’s crazy. Yeah, we didn’t get that story until after I physically opened a actual brewery. The only person that knew that my grandma had brewing history was I have another cousin, Terrance Green up in California and he used to brew back in the day for a hair ticket and a couple other breweries. And I guess she gave him this story when he got into the brewing industry. But it was one of those things where you better never speak about this again. Yeah.

Well you mentioned up in Charlotte, the Harriet Baskerville program that you guys are putting together. But it’s interesting you got a couple of gentlemen sitting next to us that I’m curious to know how you guys got into the industry and got your shot and what you’re doing now. It’s pretty cool. And yeah, I guess we’ll start with Billy out in San Antonio.

So initially how I got into beer was kind of unexpected. I grew up, didn’t like beer, I grew up in skateboarding. So in the hardcore scene I was like straight edge. So we didn’t drink, do drugs or anything like that.

(23:43)
And then I found myself going into the Navy and found myself stationed in San Diego where IPAs and West Coast were huge. So tried dabbling in the craft scene, fell in love with it, got out, worked out liquor store, started drinking more craft beer, figured I could do this. It seems fun. People were nice.

(24:06)
Me and my friend bought a kit, started brewing at home and then I found a job in a pack called a brewery, brought one of my home brews to them one day. They liked it a lot, so they made me a brewer. Then I got an opportunity to work with Marcus at Weathered Souls and that’s where I’m at right now.

How long have you been with Weathered Souls?

A year. Yesterday.

This is his year anniversary.

Oh, happy anniversary. And they brought you to Yakima?

Right.

And that is a really good anniversary.

I didn’t get to have a year anniversary like that.

That was very nice.

Oh, he might expect this every year.

Now he’s at the bar.

Where are you taking me next year?

They’ve been a little bit spoiled for sure. Oh no, that’s great. Yeah, good to have it. Congrats. So we talked about the beer earlier, how much of that you brew? Okay, I don’t think you ever answered a question about how many barrels are you guys doing out of San Antonio and what percentage of that, I’m assuming you’re still brewing?

Yeah. So last year we did about 1800 barrels and this year I know we were recently told we’re doing about an extra a hundred barrels a month. So we should end up around the hope. My goal this year is 3000 barrels. We might follow a little bit short, but we’re pretty close to this year. Billy at this point is brewing about 85% of that. [inaudible 00:25:38] it’s like it’s we’re passing mics around here. No.

Can we do this at home? And like [inaudible 00:25:43]-

Right. No. No.

I never faced it [inaudible 00:25:45].

You’re making us really warm. It’s nice. No, it’s like sitting in, I enjoy it. It’s nice. No, so this leads us into and what you got going on in Charlotte, which is, it’s really cool. Want to learn a little bit more about the location there when it’ll be open, some plugs there. But moving on to Zach.

(26:05)
So, you’re going to be the head brewer out there or you are the head brewer out there in Charlotte. Tell me how you got in the industry and how you got involved and what, see what your vision is for Charlotte and what you’re doing up there.

Yeah, grew up in more middle class neighborhood. I’m biracial myself. My father Mike, who is the co-owner with Marcus is white and my mom is African American. So just had a lot of open mind, open-mindness as a kid. Had a lot of opportunity to see, see things kind of from both sides of a coin.

(26:45)
And as I got into the later stages of high school, started messing around with torpedo and shock tops, samplers and me. And they were introducing me to these beers that I had no idea about. My dad didn’t really drink growing up. And so playing golf with him over the years, I would just bring these little bottles out and he would try them and tell me which ones he liked and which one he didn’t.

(27:10)
And he’s living in San Antonio. I’m born and raised in Charlotte, I still live there, so about 21. And my dad has called me and said, Hey Zach, I want to open a brewery. And I was kind of in between jobs at the time. And so I said, Well that sounds kind of interesting. Can I just come down there and work? I’ve worked for my dad and he has another company. So done that.

(27:41)
And he asked, Marcus was like, Hey, :6his is probably the most annoying question I could ask you, but could my son come, Marcus, come bother you as you’re trying to get things started? And Marcus said, “Yeah. I really…” Marcus is the introduction for beer for me. He created the passion, he ignited the flame for what beer is for me, and gave me a really tangible model to follow after seeing somebody who looks like me, likes the same things that I like. We play basketball, we have a lot of similarities, more so that I don’t really align with a lot in the beer industry.

(28:32)
So he really showed me that if you want to do it, you can do it. And over these last two years, he’s also shown me that you can be really good at it too. You can stand out and as long as you’re true to yourself and true to your passions, people will respect that.

(28:55)
People will gravitate towards that. So after doing probably a month worth of work in their first year, I moved back to Charlotte and there was a brewery called Resident Culture and they were opening up about a half a mile away from my house. And so I put an application in the manager at the time, Becca called Marcus the next hour. Then she called me back and was like, “Hey, we’re not looking to hire anybody else, but this guy has really good things to say about you. Do you want to be part of the team?”

(29:24)
And from that moment on, I stayed with resident culture until last Friday and now I’m a part of the Weathered Souls team, going to be the brewer at the Charlotte location. Things have kind of come full circle.

Congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you.

And representation matters. That is-

A 100% percent. Yeah. One of the big things.

And I spoke to Zach because I’m pretty sure he was nervous about coming to work for his dad.

More so than that, I was nervous about coming to work for you.

But my whole thing for him was we have to be about the things that we speak about. And if I’m opening a location in Charlotte and it’s going to have the incubation program, I want the individual that is going to represent this [inaudible 00:30:09] within that brewery to be exactly what we’ve been talking about.

(30:12)
And Zach exemplifies that. And so to have him come over, especially with him spending the last few years at resident culture and me having to send a text to tropes, I’m sorry I had to take it because it’s been, No, it’s been really hard to find employees within the Brewering industry currently.

(30:31)
It’s really hard to find brewers and it’s really hard to find people that are committed to your brand and have the same visions as you and have the pride to want to do the same things that you do. It’s hard. And so the fact that I have one in San Antonio and one in Charlotte, I have the best of both world worlds currently. And so yeah, I mean it definitely works out for the long run.

Yeah, that’s great. So tell us about the Charlotte location. And now you mentioned what? Later this year It’ll be open up or what?

Fingers crossed with.

So, my business partner has been emailing me this week saying that the opening is going to be the week of October 21st. Which is what, right [inaudible 00:31:16] corner. 40, 50 days away.

As my daughter would say, 50 sleeps.

I still say that.

That’s right.

Have you had a lot of Weathered Soul, sorry?

No, I mean, well I’m up in Dallas, right? So what’s crazy about Texas too, people think everything in Texas is like when you talk San Antonio and Dallas, it’s not like you drive down the block. What’s in the state?

[inaudible 00:31:41] give me a break. I don’t know what to…

No, you’re right, You’re right. How far things are.

That’s a good four and a half hours.

It’s a good ways, right? So that said, and I’m going to get two kids and I’m like, hold up in an office downstairs. Unfortunately, no, but I’m going to go tear.

We start Dallas distribution soon, so now you’re not going to have any excuses to try our product.

Start Canadian distribution.

That is going to be within the next few weeks actually.

Canadian?

No. Canadian. [inaudible 00:32:09].

So, I know. We are on. We just recently went to British Columbia where I’m going to have to look up that afterwards.

Please send it to immediately.

We literally just entered the UK and DC.

I live in DC.

So, yes. This one here. So yes, watch out. And they have a whole bunch of our more popular stock products and a couple of our loggers recently.

Oh yeah. Shoot me the list of where I can find immediately got I’m going to need it.

So we did-

For Saturday when I get home.

So we’ve, over the course of the last year or so, kind of been expanding. We recently just went into the UK, DC, Japan, and then a couple other states and whatnot. We’ve been fortunate enough to build a relationship with the Hyatt brand.

Oh, great.

And the Hyatt brand has offered us all 646 locations nationwide. Now, I can’t do that distribution wise right now. BUT Billy’s over here sweating bullets [inaudible 00:33:09]. A few other states that we weren’t in before to be able to do this and a few other cities and stuff like that. And I know Dallas is going to be one of them for the eye but with Charlotte.

(33:21)
So, yeah. I mean, San Antonio’s interesting city. They’ve supported us wonderfully. Right? Over the last six years we’ve been open. We’ve been best brewery in San Antonio, five of that, multiple accolades and all of that fun stuff. Or in over 200 locations in the city, although I feel like it should be more. But we have fun there and the city supports us. But one of the things about San Antonio is it’s still behind on beer, very much still the Dos Equis City and big beer.

(33:55)
And we go back and forth with our distributor all the time. I mean, you go into a location and one of our beers is taken off for Carbo or Bud Light and it’s like, Ooh, what’s going on? Oh, I forgot Bud Light offers you guys a vacation at the end of the month if you sell more of that type of thing. And so-

Play to play?

Right. We’ve dealt with a lot of that situation. And so we looked at what could we do next? And so, the next best fit for us was the Charlotte location, especially because my business partner spent so many years there. Zach is there, his sister is still there, and that type of thing.

(34:34)
And so, it was home for my business partner. And we originally had actually toyed with opening a Charlotte location for the first location, but neither of us were moving at that time. I know I wasn’t moving at that time, but now we’re in a position to be able to manage it from afar. And so we have this opportunity to open there.

(34:50)
And Charlotte’s an amazing city with a very prominent craft beer scene that has been doing some amazing things lately. And they’ve been very open arm with the fact that we’re opening there. I know that they don’t always accept outsiders. And it’s been very welcoming for us to experience trying to get into the Charlotte market, even from the guild, the city and other brewers and things like that. But we’re putting ourselves in a position to be able to extend our program, extend our beer and who we are.

(35:28)
And we felt like Charlotte was a great market for that but within Charlotte, originally we were going to open up without equipment and that kind of set with me the wrong way. Oh, okay. Is this going to be a retail location? Yeah, but that’s not really fun. Kind of more of a prideful thing for me. I’m saying I’m opening a second brewery. This isn’t the second brewery.

(35:51)
So, I reached out to Deutsche. Deutsche Beverages is one of our official partners for the incubation program. And they were gracious enough to give us a very heavy discount on a Tim Barrel system for the location. And that system will be used for the incubation program within itself, but also producing some wonderful Charlotte beers that Zach will get to start running soon.

Lot of pressure, Zach. A lot of pressure. But you look like the type, You’re good with it. Yeah, we’re in Charlotte. We’re playing with the big boys now, right?

No, it’s all good. And so dealing with this location, Charlotte’s going to be amazing for this incubation program. One of the things that again, listening to the speech earlier, it hit me when I was on a Peloton ride and I was listening to Tune day and she was talking about passion and purpose, and purpose and passion.

(36:41)
And it made me realize that, okay, I’ve put myself in a position to do things that other people aren’t able to physically currently do or have the resources to do. So asking for Deutsche for a discount, asking I can achieve to be an official partner, the person that advised me was like, Ask them something that’s going to make them sweat. So having those opportunities and being able to do that and having the support of so many major and incredible brands in the industry, not everybody can do that.

(37:13)
And I’ve realized that I’ve put myself in a purpose situation as to where if I can do this, then it might not be my passion to want to do it. But it’s definitely what I’m here for to do within the industry and what I’m here for as far as progression and growth within the industry. And so this incubation program is going to take hopefully the first year about 12 participants.

(37:37)
These participants are going to go through, we’ll say a medium fast tracked program. Currently right now, I think, I have it mapped at 28 to 31 days. Where you come in and you’re going through education from Rahr, you’re going through education and sensory and hops farms and all of that fun stuff through Yakima. Yakima. I don’t know why I say Yakima. Yakima. And then going through sensory propagation and all of that fun stuff through white labs.

(38:10)
We’ve also involved working with SBA loan officers. So one of the major disparities within brewing right, is having that financial backing, having the resources to even find out how to get that financial backing. And so we’re going to try to alleviate some of that pairing these individuals with SBA loan officers, pairing these individuals with people within their community that can help them with grant processes and learning how to get money and learning how to get the financial backings to be able to open the brewery.

(38:38)
One of the other important things is once you open a brewery, how do you stay open? How do you market the sustainability aspects? We’re going to teach that, but then you’re going to come on the brew floor and learn SOPs and safety. You’re going to need recipe formulation. You’re going to be able to brew your beer and release it to the public and take that money and put it towards your brewery.

(39:01)
And all of these fun things we’ve even talked about going into externships. And once these individuals are done going to breweries within their respected areas and working further, and we’re also going to be bringing in other brewers and experts within the communities to teach classes and talk. Having the Derrick gals come in and talk about stouts, having the Jeffrey Stuffings coming in, talking about farm health sales, having the [inaudible 00:39:29] come in and talk about IPAs and doing all of this different fun stuff that we generally wouldn’t have the availability to do as a person of color or even as a woman within the industry.

(39:41)
The ultimate goal is to bridge these gaps and get rid of some of these disparities that we have and build these resources and bridges for these individuals to be able to succeed in the industry. One of the things that have really hit from me, have resonated with me lately is somebody had a, I’m not going to say any names, somebody had a critique about Black Is Beautiful and how unorganized it was.

(40:08)
And I come back and look at Black Is Beautiful and what it did and where we’re at and different things. Yeah. I mean, I guess you could say it was disorganized in a sense, but this was something that was built completely organic on feeling and emotion within how I felt at that personal time.

(40:28)
And you look at how we’ve had other individuals within the industry and them being happy, being the only one or being happy, being in the place that they’re in and sitting in the industry for 20, 25 years and then finally realizing, “Hey, I’m in a position to do something. No, I’ve been in a position position to do something since the day I entered the industry. And I’ve been about that life since the day that I’ve entered this industry. And I’m going to continue to do that until I’m out of the industry,” which I don’t see happening anytime soon.

(41:06)
So it’s all about growing minorities, it’s all about growing women within the scene. It’s all about making a more diverse, equitable place for the industry that I’ve kind of grown the love.

I love that. I love you literally said earlier, you just wanted to do something small and you’re literally changing the entire industry. And it’s insane. It’s amazing.

No. It’s great. I think, Charlotte is a great city for an idea like this. They’re very open, they have great values as far as accepting people who are different. I’ve seen it firsthand and it’s going to work out really well. And I’m hoping that Charlotte will come out and support all the different things that we do.

(41:55)
It’s not just going to be all for black people or all for women. We’re going to try to make sure that everyone feels welcome in the tap room and just trying to create a safe place for people who are different to come in. And to get introduced to beer, it’s hard to get introduced to beer when you walk in and not everybody looks like you or people are rushing you because you don’t know what you want. You don’t even know the difference between an al and a lagr. Yeah. Somebody’s mad at you or criticizing you, making you feel silly. So, this is just going to be a really open [inaudible 00:42:28] environment.

I love it.

Yeah. And for those listeners out there, this is really… Again, it’s motivating for me to listening to Marcus in the story here about like he mentioned in his speech, but he didn’t want to look back 20 years from now, 30 years from now. And his kids say, “Hey dad, what did you do? What did you actually do? Don’t sit back.”

(42:50)
So all of us can contribute, we can all have a part of making change. And it all starts right here. I’m looking at all of us having beer sharing company. We had Kevin Smith on from company distilling prior to Jack Daniels and he named the business company distilling.

(43:08)
And that’s what I feel this beer and beverages and indulging going back to that is a good place for everybody to sit down and have open dialogue, open conversations, and really push for the things that change.

You said something in the well short that you did for Black is Beautiful and it was good beers for friends and great beers for everyone. And I love that. I absolutely love that. And I just feel like that just kind of resonates with everything.

Yeah, I mean it’s definitely something that we fill out the time you look at what beer originally was, and it was a community beverage, It was something that was brewed for everybody. And so we’ve gotten into a place where we’ve kind of gotten out of that and there’s been that mentality of being better then and different little things like that.

(44:04)
And it needs to get back to being more about the community and supporting each other and using beer as a conversation builder, just building friendship and all of that fun stuff. And that’s what I took it as. I mean, I got into beer, literally building a relationship with my brother and a couple of my relatives. My brother’s seven years older than me, and that’s one of my best friends. I was the best man at his wedding.

(44:30)
You wouldn’t see something like that with such a normally is such a huge age gap, age gap, age gap. But I talk to my brother and sister almost every day type of thing. And it’s one of those things that kind of build up that comradery, build up that friendship. And so that’s what I kind of try to exemplify when it comes to beer, since that’s what the original culture is, what brought me into it.

Yeah. Hey, I really appreciate y’all coming out. I know we’re taking your time away from [inaudible 00:44:57]-

For everybody run time.

Yeah. There’s a lot going on here at Hop & Brew School and we’re happy for the folks at YCH to let us take over their tap room. They probably shouldn’t because we’re just like…

Oh yeah, we just hijacked the beer [inaudible 00:45:09].

Yeah. We’re hijacking their, We’re looking over at this tap room just tearing it up. But no, I really appreciate it. And hey guys, I love what you’re doing and again, for those listeners, go out and support Brew the Beer.

Yeah. Brew the Beer. Seriously.

Brew it. Yeah. Absolutely.

You really don’t have any excuse to not brew the beer.

No excuses.

No excuses to not brew the beer.

No. That’s right. Yeah. In support. Yeah. I appreciate you all covering out some time during this awesome experience out here at YHC to join us. Billy Garza, out in San Antonio, Zach Holt. Marcus Baskerville, thank you guys so much. I really, really appreciate what you’re doing.

Thanks for having us.

Cheers.

Thank you very much.

Cheers.

Oh, you’re empty, Haley.

Special thanks again to Marcus Baskerville, Zach Holt and Billy Garza from Weathered Souls Brewing for jumping on with us this morning. Hey, we gave away a few tickets to hop in Brew School this year on our social media and at some specific events.

(46:00)
So formal, congrats to our ticket winners. [inaudible 00:46:04] of, I believe, San Antonio, Texas. Congrats. Griffin Brewing Pilot House up in Washington. And then, Cabin Brewing, our neighbors to the North up in Canada, who I believe, won an award over at the recent CBA Award. So congrats to Cabin Brewing.

(46:22)
Make sure you follow @Country Malt on all socials so you don’t miss future opportunities like this one coming up. Well, we’re gearing up for Pink Boots Blend pre-orders next month. Stay tuned for more information from us. And again, thanks for joining us and letting us in here today signing out from the Yakima. Cheers.