Brian Thomas Brett Baker and Mike Morgan - Book - Tanked in Cincinnati

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You say thirty nine on a Friday, and a very happy one too.
You know me love my Fridays herein the Morning Show, and I always
like to end on a positive andhappy note and not a whole lot much
more positive and happy in my worldthan really good craft beer and joining the
figyback kerc Morning Show this morning.Authors of Tanked in Cincinnati, Fortune and
Calamity in the Beer Business, MikeMorgan and Brett Coleman Baker. Brett is

(00:21):
one of the co owners of UrbanArtifact, America's largest fruit breweries. Also
the United States Brewery Ambassador for LasVirgo's boy Ron. Michael D. Morgan
teaches beer courses and oversees the BrewingInstitute or Industry Certificate program at the University
of Cincinnati by Alma Mater. Authorof Over the Rne, When Beer Was
King and Cincinnati Beer Together. BakerMorgan co hosts Something You Should Look For

(00:47):
brew Sky's Happy Hour podcast, whichis an extensive ongoing history of American craft
beer. They also host Bruce Sky'sBooze News, which is a YouTube show
where they provide a weekly recap ofnews from the alcoholic beverage industry. Welcome
to the Morning Show. Guys,it's a real pleasure to have you on
to talk about your book Tank inCincinnati. Good morning, Thanks for having
us. What a fun job.I'm jealous and envious. We drink on

(01:12):
the job a lot more than youdo. I bet you do. All
right, let me ask you this, because you've probably heard it before.
Everybody you know gets, oh,I'd love to own a restaurant. I
love I love to cook. Wouldn'tit be great to own a restaurant?
And then the practical reality of owninga restaurant is, oh my god,
it's a train wreck. How muchdo I buy? How much spoilage is
are going to be? How doI accommodate this and the employees and stealing

(01:34):
and next thing? You know thatthe idea of owning a restaurant bad idea.
I think. You know. We'reowning a micro brewery and experimenting and
creating wonderful beers. It sounds likean awesome, awesome job, but it's
got to be a hell of alot more complex than the outside observer like
me might might expect. Yeah,it's not as romantic as you would think.

(01:56):
You know, you can't have aparty every day because at that point
in time, you just turn intoan alcohol and yeah, she'll die at
the age of forty two. Soit's it is more manufacturing than it is
just hanging out. But it isextremely rewarding. It is a lot of
fun coming up with new recipes,and you know, it's a heck lot
stressful than a restaurant, that's forsure. Well, and I guess the
other component of that, you know, and I'm always late to observe that,

(02:19):
you know, because I'm not anindependent business guy. I've always been
a W two employee. I justdon't have it in me to be creative
and do a startup. But asI stare out over the landscape, and
I absolutely love and adore the beerrenaissance that's going on, particularly in the
greater Cincinnati area. What there arelike sixty micro brewers, like with close
to the two seventy five Beltway orthereabouts. I mean, it seems like

(02:40):
there's one cropping up every day,which means you have competition, but it
also illustrates that there's clearly a demandout there for these micro breweries. Yeah,
I mean, first of all,just on the numbers, you know,
there was a period of time whereI felt that I was expect to
go to all of them. AndI you know, now, like somebody

(03:05):
will ask me about a brewery andI've never even heard of it. Yeah,
and so I don't know, youknow, the marketplace. It's gonna
be weird to see how it actuallyplays out, you know, whether we
can support all of these or not. But it gives us fantastic options as
drinkers, it sure does. I'ma big fan of I Pas and you

(03:27):
always had these conversations. You tellsomebody you love I Pas and the reactions,
oh me too, or oh god, I can't stand him. But
you know, every every day Iwake up, there's another five or six
different I Pas to sample and try. I've lost track of how many I've
tried over the years. And Ijust again view that as a wonderful thing.
In terms of Jim Cook of BostonBeer, he has this, you

(03:49):
know, Sam Adams Brewery right amajor US brewery. He was instrumental in
helping some of these small breweries getoff the ground, so he actually helped
financially support competition. He has acrazy experience, you know. He you
know the old saying pioneers get thearrow settlers get the land. Well,

(04:11):
somehow he was able to do both. You know, in the nineteen nineties
he was getting all the arrows fromAnheuser, Bush and Budweiser trying to take
down craft beer and discredit the movement. He survived that by taking the brun
of it. And then in theearly aughts, when the hop market was
imploding on itself and craft brewers couldn'tget hops, he opened up his hop
vault and supplied any brewer in thecountry that needed hops. You just reached

(04:33):
out to him and he gave youhops. He has been the single greatest
modern steward to craft beer while maintaininghis independence, while also having a public
company. It's what he's been ableto do is is truly amazing. Well.
One of the things he demonstrated,and I'm at fifty eight years old,
I'm old enough to remember when youdidn't have options. The most you

(04:57):
know, the most exotic beer orunique beer you could get was like Heineken
or something. Oh my god,he bought all of bats. It's like,
oh, it's it's and it's terrible. He brought out a great beer
that Sam Adams Lagger was an outstandingsuperior product to any of the national brands
you could find. It was aninspiration for small breweries to get started.

(05:17):
It really was. And it hadhistory because he found that recipe that was
his grandparents' recipe in his attic andhe was inspired to, you know,
start this brewery. And I mean, he's got Ivy League education in business.
He could have done anything. Sogetting into into craft beer, supporting
the legacy, inspiring all the peoplelike you did, is I mean.
And that beer is an award winningIt has won Best Beer in the Country

(05:40):
multiple times at the Great American BeerFestival, no question about it. Well,
Brett, you are with Coe ofthe coners of Urban Artifact again described
as the largest fruit brewery. Fruitbrewery you rely on fruits to help make
your brewise that that actually very verysuccessful endeavor. They don't always work out

(06:00):
really successfully these ideas. I tellme about some of the dumpster fires that
you reference in the book Tank inCincinnati. Well as far as like actual
beers go, a couple stand out. Our worst rated beer we've ever made
is a beer that I made.It was supposed to be like a sasparilla
soda, and it was. Itwas an abomination. It did extremely poorly.

(06:23):
We got more complaints about that thanany other beer. Thankfully we only
made a couple kegs of it.The other one that was the most divisive
was Durian, which, if you'renot familiar with Durian, it is the
world's stinkiest fruit. It's banned onsubways in Southeast Asia. Most hotels won't
allow you to bring it in.It is just it smells like diesel,

(06:43):
burning diapers and garlic. But itkind of tastes like banana custard, so
it's not a great fruit. Andwhen we make it every year for Halloween
because I like to do weird stuffand mess with people, the bartenders have
a horrible time with it, butcustomers seem to it. It's a good
fun joke. So yeah, thatDurian or Sasparilla were probably my two most

(07:04):
disappointing. If you hold your noseto drink the dury in it's actually a
pretty good beer, but my god, it smells disgusting, like the Limburger
cheese of beer or something. Yes. Oh lord, Well, the freedom
and flexibility you get, I mean, you just illustrated. I mean two
things, like, who in thehell ever would have thought of making a

(07:26):
beer out of the Durian fruit.But here you are. You do it.
You've done it, and you've gotthe freedom to do it. The
other thing I love about these microbruce they can issue and they regularly issue
special event bruise. It's like youhave your own tailored brew for a special
event. How can they do that? A national brand could never do that,
And yet there you go. Youwalk down the aisle of the store,
there's a special event brew right waitingfor you. I mean, the

(07:50):
city basically has a festival about that. I mean that's what Bockfest is.
Back wasn't even existent when Mike helpedget it going. Yeah, and we
now do a festival every year calledMissing Link. That's first weekend of June.
So it just passed. But thatwhole festival. We found this yeast
strain in a pre prohibition loggering seller, so we actually gave the yeast back

(08:16):
to the city of Cincinnati. Itis a city holiday and we invite fifteen
twenty different breweries to come in andall make whatever they want to make with
this funky pre prohibition yeast we found. That's wild, so you know,
it's a blast So who you wrotethe book, Tankton, Cincinnati, Fortune
and calamity in the beer business.Who's your target market for this? Folks

(08:39):
like me just really enjoy beer.Is it a history everything in all the
above? Yeah, I mean it'sfor in part beer geeks, but beyond
that, the thing that we reallylike about doing this book is that it
is very personal stories of the peacepeople that helped mold the industry here locally.

(09:03):
And so it's stories, as thetitle implies, of both great success
and things that went terribly wrong.So you know, it's everybody from Jim
Cook, who was just so incrediblynice to interview, but Jim Cook and
Bryant from Ryan Geist, you know, are definitely examples of great success.

(09:26):
And I don't know if you rememberOldenberg from back in the late eighties.
Yes, but you know, thoseguys were on the cusp of completely changing
the industry when they collapsed, youknow, the wheels totally fell off.
So we have the stories on bothends of things, the people that were
wildly successful and the ones that shouldhave been but something went wrong. So

(09:50):
it's very personal stories and they're kindof broader lessons of both business and life.
So you don't really have to bea beer to like the book.
Michael Morgan and Brett Coleman Baker authorsA Tandon, Cincinnati Fortune and Clamenty in
the beer business. Guys, it'son my web page at fifty five krs
dot com a links the folks canget the book. It's I'm staring at

(10:11):
it on Amazon's page. Daniell hookthat up so everybody can get a copy.
I appreciate the time you spoke mylisteners to me today and ended a
Friday on a real positive note.I'm looking forward to diving on into the
book, and you guys have awonderful weekend, and keep up the great
work and making these fantastic beers weall love. Thanks you too, come
on down. We'll buy you abeer. I'll take you up on that,

(10:31):
my friend. Thank you for theinvite. Have a wonderful weekend.
Eight fifty folks fifty five k see