Episode 54 - w/ Jon Sanchez of Native Son Brewery - The Taproom Podcast

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Music.

(00:26):
All right, and we're back. This
is episode 54. Yeah, 54 of the Taproom Podcast, and I'm your host, Mike.
Got a good one this week. I have John Sanchez from Native Son over in LA,
and they also have a location over in Orange County.
Really good dude, really, and a really cool brewery. I mean,
we talk about it on the show, I mean, during the interview,

(00:47):
so I don't want to get too far into it, but we do talk about them opening up,
you know, taking over the old Modern Times building in downtown LA,
but it was a, it was a really run.
I can't talk, obviously a really fun conversation.
So I'm looking forward to you guys hearing that the timestamp will be in the description.
Yeah. Let's see. Don't really have a ton of headlines.

(01:08):
And I, you know, I know you guys always look forward to hearing the beer cracking,
but I was filming some footage for a reel and I realized I cracked,
I mean, I didn't think about it. I cracked the beer during the reel.
Yeah. So, but I do have, this is the Brute Squad from my buddy Nadav at Long Beach Beer Lab.
This is the you know i waited a whole year for this one
to come out but the cool thing is they did

(01:29):
two different versions so they did a single and a
double but brute squad is a brute double ipa with experimental iqh-1320 and
simcoe hops coming in at nine percent and i love this beer because it was a
playoff of princess bride which is something i'm tying into the reel i gotta
see I may have to reshoot some stuff,

(01:51):
but I'm pretty excited so far.
It looks kind of cool the way I'm going to do it because I have this old school
30th anniversary edition of The Princess Bride.
And it has gold lettering on it on the cover.
And it's just really cool. And there's really cool illustrations within the book.
But yeah, so this beer, I'm just going to have a drink of it here.
So just pretend you hear the crack in there. There we go. Oh yeah, it's good stuff.

(02:15):
It has, obviously being a brewed IPA, it has that. dry, really dry finish.
And I love it. Like it is like, they, they kill it every time and they do it
every year around Valentine's day for the princess bride.
And I want to say they usually walk, like to have it on, like they put it on
like over at the long beach location.

(02:37):
So if you haven't been yet, I mean, I know I've talked up Nadav a bunch.
You definitely need to go.
That's a really cool spot and they have phenomenal pizza.
They have pastries, and all this other stuff as well but definitely
check it out this one is nine percent even i'm
going to give it a solid nine i love this beer
um i wait like i said i wait every year for it and then yeah now i'm uh i'm

(02:59):
excited and i have a few stocked up i'm gonna probably have to go pick up some
more so i can make it last but yeah so definitely check this one out the other
one i want to say is either i think it's a 6.9 i'll post a picture of it later on but solid solid beer.
Didn't really have any headlines to talk about when it comes sports-wise this week.
I mean, I know the NFL did expand their salary cap.

(03:22):
It went up to like $250 million, which obviously makes sense because of all
the money that they spend on quarterbacks.
I know everybody's saying that Dak's going to get like $60 million a year.
So that should be pretty crazy. Don't know if he's entirely worth it.
Not trying to piss off any Cowboys fans. It's just my opinion.
But yeah. Yeah. But the, what else? the NBA All-Star game was on.

(03:45):
Honestly, I only watched the NBA during the playoffs.
Just not really my bag. My bulls are an absolute dumpster fire.
But it is what it is. Teams go through ebbs and flows.
But yeah, my birthday was on Wednesday, the 21st. I'm recording this on a Friday

(04:05):
because I'm going down to San Diego.
So when this releases, it'll be technically Sunday. But yeah,
I'm recording this on a Friday. So I'm going to sit down to San Diego Saturday morning.
I'm going to hit up some, we have some good breweries lined up.
I'm excited for that. Not taking my equipment, just taking a couple of lapel mics.
And that should be pretty fun because I'm going to try to do like a maybe five, five to 10 minutes.

(04:29):
I mean, depending on, on the brewery, but five to 10 minutes segment per brewery
to kind of talk about the beers there, you know, have a good time and then piece
together, you know, just an episode for next week.
And then the week after that is going to be the hardy hood episode.
So that should be pretty fun. Obviously, Steve and Mike are awesome.
I'm sorry, Steven, Tim, my bad.
So that should be fun. Looking forward to that one.

(04:52):
Yeah, so I don't want to really tie this in. You know what? I'll talk about
the breweries I'm going to go to. We'll do that.
So I'm going to go to Seek, Pure North Park, also Goal, but probably going to
hit up a few more along the way and then on the way back.
So hopefully anywhere between like six to ten breweries between tomorrow and

(05:12):
Sunday when this gets released.
But yeah, so I hope you guys enjoyed the episode with John. Like I said,
really great guy, and if you can get out there and support. port.
Shout out to LA Brew Life, my bud, yeah, for actually setting out that whole interview up for me.
Really appreciate it, man. So shout out to him. Make sure you follow him,
LA Brew Life on Instagram.
All right. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed the interview and stay tuned for the outro.

(05:37):
All right, guys, we're back in the tap room. I'm your host, Mike.
I have a very special guest on today. It's John Sanchez from Native Son. How's it going?
Doing great, man. Thank you for having me. Oh, glad you, glad we could make
this happen. And thank you.
Shout out to Art Castellanos, us la brew life on instagram
for setting this up so we're here in native
sun in downtown la but pretty much like right where all the
skyscrapers are and all that stuff and this is my first brewery

(06:00):
recording down in downtown la so great well
welcome yeah we are we love being downtown we tell people all the time just
go to the skyscrapers you'll find us right by right by fit them but there are
a few of us down here like the arts district has a few breweries high def brewings
down the the street just changed their name to audiograph okay yeah i remember hearing about that but.

(06:22):
So there's a few of us. It's, it's,
it's an adventure being a brewery in a downtown as big as downtown LA.
It's got its ups and downs, but it's a lot of fun. Yeah. And I'm sure that cause
you guys got, obviously there's like a ton of parking lots around.
So I'm sure that, you know, I, cause I think maybe sometimes people like,
oh, I want to, don't want to necessarily go to downtown LA because they're worried
about the parking situation, but there's so many different spots over here.

(06:42):
So that's great. Well, and we have customers.
I had a USC professor bike in the other day that lives in Irvine that takes the train up.
And so there's a lot of people that get here by all different means.
But yeah, parking in any downtown is going to be a challenge.
But yeah, we do have a paid lot next to us and a parking garage up the street.
Yeah, it's fun. fun it's cool yeah

(07:05):
and i've only like because i had never been to native sun but i
heard nothing but great things from art about it but i
i had been in this building back when it was the modern times building yeah
and that was yeah i think it was what for like a i went to like a braves dodger
game or something like that sure stop by for a beer but i've always
i've always loved the inside of it like it just the way
it looks like that almost like what's the right word

(07:25):
the like i love seeing like the exposed beams and stuff like
that totally it's gorgeous yeah for those who have
never been here it is an old historic building three
stories tall we have two floors of apartments above us it
was a golf store before it was modern times oh
wow and modern times did an
incredible renovation to make it into a brew pub and it's got brick walls it

(07:47):
does have a million columns because it's an old building which is a little bit
challenging when you're trying to move beer around oh i bet yeah but yeah like
the it's long and skinny it definitely feels like an old school downtown restaurant, bar,
brewery would feel like if you were in like any old school downtown like New York City or.
Man, it's cool because like, you know, like all the, with all the modern stuff,

(08:10):
like on the outside, like the skyscrapers and all that stuff.
And you get to come in here and see something like this with the brick and the
columns and all of that. It just kind of takes you back. Totally.
And it was part of the city saying that it had to stay because the next door
to us here is the tallest residential skyscraper on the West Coast.
And this was meant to be part of that.
But the city was like, you can't tear this down. And so our landlord was like,

(08:32):
what are we going to do with it?
And Modern Times was able to scoop it up and start that transition and then
hand the ball off to us. And we've been running.
That's awesome. And when did you guys take over? over about two
years ago we it was february 2022 when modern times announced that they were
shutting it down okay and i'd been close with the modern times team since they

(08:54):
opened they opened about nine months to a year before we opened our location
in santa ana 10 years ago yeah and.
Being a customer of theirs and friends of theirs i kind of knew who to call
to the call so i called up and i said hey what's the plan for these locations
because they announced at that time that they were closing Oakland,
Santa Barbara, LA, Portland.

(09:15):
And so we were kind of in the market to expand our business into producing a product.
We'd been a beer bar and huge craft beer fans for so long, eight years plus at that point in time.
And so the opportunity to be
able to make our own product was high on our priority list as a company.
And to buy a company from friends was was kind of too good to be true.

(09:39):
Like we were able to come in here.
They gave us all their data from every basically day that they've been open the entire time.
And we were able to kind of take that and digest it and say,
would this be a good fit for us?
And then we made it happen. So we bought it. We bought the assets from Modern
Times two years ago. And then we worked out a deal with our landlord.

(10:00):
And then we opened in November of 2022.
Wow. Yeah. That's cool. I mean, and like, yeah,
like you said, being able to get like do that with people that are your
buddies like being able to get that from them is you know i'm
sure that just made it way more gratifying than just you know getting it from
some random person totally i mean we still have little homages to it uh throughout
our company like our spinner van that delivers our beer for self distros named

(10:22):
rob after rob andrews who is the modern times liaison for us to buy it and we
were able to kind of use those relationships to keep JP,
the brewer that was here, on our team.
So we didn't have to even look beyond what was already being produced.
JP is an amazing brewer and he was here and as he started consulting with us,

(10:44):
the initial thought was he would help us find a brewer and train him up.
And he was like, hey, you guys are cool, let's do this. And so his consistency.
Being here and brewing here for years before we came along
has really enabled us to kind of like hit the ground
running without having to dial in a new brewer
to an older system of course yeah so that's been that's been a great like transition

(11:08):
as well of how we were able to like know who was selling yeah before we bought
it yeah because you get to get you just keep the ball rolling at that point
since you already knew he was dialed into everything that's you know not not
many you know So new breweries are able to have that kind of thing.
So, I mean, I'm sure it was obviously super beneficial for you guys.
And he's been a good guide to us because we are essentially an Orange County company.

(11:32):
I mean, we started in downtown Santa Ana 10 years ago. I live in Orange County.
And using him and his L.A.
Knowledge to have relationships with other brewers and other breweries around
town to get us assimilated faster was really great as well.
You're drinking Stacy's Lot, which is a collaboration.
With his old boss the guy that got him trained up in the brewery world is colin

(11:56):
up in that's that wagon wheel brewery wagon wheel brewery in oxnard is a newer
brewery and but colin was a head brewer here when jp got hired trained him up
and so it was really fun to see them,
on their old same system collabing together to make that double west coast that's
gets delicious what's the percentage on it i mean okay yeah nice nice jump in

(12:19):
one more time it's really good Yeah, it's got mosaic, cashmere, mosaic cryo.
A lot of fun hops in that one. One of my buddies would always say cashmere is
the sexiest of the hops. I know.
Well, there's this whole like discussion about cheater hops,
right? Like they say galaxy is like a cheater hop. Put galaxy in anything,
it's going to taste amazing.
Yeah. And as we get better and better at making new varieties of hops,

(12:41):
it's only going to make a brewer's life easier.
Oh, for sure. To satisfy the hop heads out there. Oh, yeah. And one of my favorite,
well, well stuff that I've been to into a lot lately is any,
so anytime I see a place that has is like anything New Zealand,
like the Rilako or like, sure. Okay. Like that stuff, like.
If it's done right it's killer totally yeah yeah and that
that's that we we have a little quiz that we give new

(13:03):
hires about like beer knowledge and that's one of the one of
the good questions to them is talking about hops
and talking about how awesome it is that we have southern hemisphere hops that
we get in our fall and we have northern hemisphere hops that we get in our spring
and like the the beautiful thing about the world being round is that we get
hops twice a year yeah for sure and you know what's crazy too about the like

(13:24):
everything when it comes like to hops like when And, you know,
them being in different,
you know, like chemistries or like just being in different states or like you
can have like certain weather,
obviously, in different states, like places like Washington. Right. Yeah.
And like you can grow one hop there and it'll taste, you know, a certain way.
But then you go at it, you know, that same hop in another region and it's just
completely different notes you get from it.

(13:46):
Totally. Yeah. Yeah, we were talking with the guys at Common Space.
They were up at Hop Selection and talking about how there has been a drift in
like the perfect area to grow hops north because of like climate change.
Yeah. And so there is like an angst among hop growers to be like,
we have all these fields.

(14:07):
What are we going to do if we can't grow hops here?
Yeah. I mean, hopefully it doesn't come to that by bad. It's just crazy to me.
But the so you mentioned like you you guys had
the was it just a beer bar or over in santa ana
is that how it started so in santa ana it was started as just
a craft beer bar and we were just huge
fans and we wanted to essentially make like a san diego craft beer bar in orange

(14:30):
county awesome and i think we were pretty successful doing that i think our
our selection there for years and years was top notch in orange county and then
we expanded to ranch kookamonga we have We have a second location out at Haven City Market.
It's a food hall in Rancho Cucamonga. Okay.
And with that one, we started to dabble. That was 2019. We started to say, okay,

(14:50):
You can only have so many bourbon barrel-aged stouts without people wanting to order some bourbon.
So like, can we actually successfully have a craft beer bar program and a craft
cocktail program and will one overtake the other?
Will our history of being a craft beer bar make it so that it doesn't make any
sense to have full liquor or will full liquor just be like, we'll just sell

(15:12):
a million vodka sodas and never get someone to try a double IPA?
Yeah. Yeah. So we experimented with there and we were shocked that it was very like 50-50 sales.
So we decided to bring a full liquor license to our place in Santa Ana.
And so now we have our beer and guest beers on tap there and a full cocktail program.

(15:32):
And yeah, it's actually helped us in our brewery world. It's helped us with our seltzer program.
Having the cocktail-minded bartenders at our other locations.
Yeah. JP will brew up a 13% neutral seltzer, so unflavored, and we'll ship out
Sixtals to the shops and say, make a cocktail with this.

(15:55):
And so utilizing things that we can get here. So we're not allowed to have full
liquor here at the brewery.
But we have this seltzer. So like on our menu right now, we have a Paloma.
We have this like blood orange cocktail called Blood Oath that's on the menu.
You and so yeah like it provides people the
opportunity to walk in here a lot of our customers

(16:16):
here in downtown are people traveling and
people from all over and some will
walk in and see how cool this interior is but the brewery is tucked away in
the back yeah so you can't tell right away that we're a brewery yeah so they're
like is this a bar is this what is this and we're like well we're a brewery
yeah and let's get you into trying something new and adventurous yeah with With

(16:39):
utilizing our strengths at all the locations,
the cocktail people and the brewing side, and not just being fixed to a keg
of a seltzer that's flavored like in the bright tank or the fermenter,
but that we can actually add syrups and juice and things to a seltzer base,
served it over ice with a garnish,

(17:00):
and it looks great. Yeah. And it's technically a seltzer.
Yeah. And I know people like love that too. To anything that's, you know, photogenic.
Like you can, you know, take a picture of it. They're going to want it.
And they're going to buy the crap out of it.
It is really crazy how the beer industry has gone this way.
Like just to, I mean, none of us would have thought.

(17:21):
But before the summer of Seltzer, before the White Claw truly summered,
that this would be this way.
Or even before people started brewing hazy IPAs.
The way the industry has kind of moved so rapidly over the last five years to
kind of force you as a brewery to be more creative and get more different products

(17:43):
in front of people and kind of test it. See, are you good at this? Are you not?
It's interesting. Yeah, it's crazy. and like you mentioned
like well like the haze craze but i mean like you go
back to like you know even to like
when stone was like you know one of the big boys or paul strauss and all
that sort of stuff i mean stone's still one of the big ones but i mean before
something happened yeah they like it was all like what's the dankiest thing

(18:06):
you could brew totally that was like the thing like it didn't matter if i mean
some of them were great some of them were okay but it was always what's the
dankest you can brew and then i feel like yeah like the way when that when the
of haze craze happened. Then you have, like you said, the seltzers.
And then I feel like some of the stuff that I love, like, like West coast and
like Pilsner's loggers and stuff like that, that we can know those,

(18:27):
I feel like have kind of made their way back.
And you're even starting to see like black IPAs on menus again,
and you're starting to see reds on menus again.
And for a long time, because it was like, how many hazies can you have?
How many different hazies can you make? Right. Or now like, you know,
even now seltzers are still really popular, but I feel You're like,
yeah, like, you know, you've got to be able to get somebody in the door.
And especially if it's someone that's just like, like you said,

(18:48):
walking in and out the street, they're not really sure what this,
what the place was initially.
And they come in, they try that, they're going to tell their friends and,
you know, word of mouth happens. And then more and more people start coming.
And like they find, and I probably mentioned, people could probably get sick
of me saying it, but I've mentioned it on a lot of episodes.
It's like them finding their gateway drug into craft beer.
Totally. Yeah. And I think that hazies are that. I think that the reason why

(19:11):
they became so popular was because it was a gateway to get into hops.
Like, I remember when I was trying to get my dad into drinking craft beer,
I would try pale ales and IPAs, and he'd be like, no, no, no.
And then I got him into craft beer through sours. That was his gateway.
He's a wine guy, so he was like, let's go through sours. And then now he drinks everything, right?

(19:33):
And now you have that fully kind of formed beer lover after you find your way in.
Yep. And I think Hazy's have gotten a lot of people in, but it is interesting how...
How still pervasive they are. Like our, our single hazy half day is our number one seller here.
Yeah. And I'm a huge West coast guy. And so we have these discussions internally,
me, Alexa and JP, the brewery team about, do you go the old school mentality

(19:58):
of we brew what we like to drink?
Yeah. Or do you, or do you do like, we decided to go to like the,
like the Hollywood mentality of one for us, one for them. Yep. Right.
So it's like, we, we do brew what we are. This menu is chock full of beers that
i love there are some beers on there that i drink less of yeah but people love
them too so like it's as a business you have to you have to be flexible but

(20:21):
it is funny how back in the day,
ibus were everything oh yeah right now no one you never hear it it's not on any can.
Yeah it really is rare to see it on a can nowadays like
i mean you'll like i say maybe one out of every
like well when i do like you know intros for this
show and like stuff like that i always look to see if it's on there but maybe one
out of every 10 cans has something then sure and even then a lot of

(20:42):
times are low but yeah i mean i still do
appreciate some of the the danky ones totally i
don't drink them as often anymore because i'm like you know getting older need to
drink something lighter but right you know and i think that's been a weird life
cycle of craft beer as well i think there is a there's like a positive side
of it i think there's like there's like somewhat of like nefarious side of it

(21:04):
which is like the positive side of it is that that craft beer should not be
limited to just like IPA lovers, right?
Like the old stone mantra of fizzy yellow beers for wussies is a,
was this, was something that they needed at the time to get more people to try
beers that were more flavorful.
But then a lot of breweries found out, Hey, you know, we can make great lagers too. Oh yeah.

(21:28):
The issue with that, though, is that you're putting yourself into a category,
even though we make so many lagers here, you're putting yourself into a category
that's very difficult to compete as you grow.
And that's why I think most people, like breweries that have really blown up,
have been blown up over IPAs and hazy IPAs.
Oh, for sure. Because you're not competing against gigantic multinational corporations

(21:51):
when you're brewing a lager.
Yeah but yeah i think
that we've seen through the different
eras of craft beer when you had like the ogs in
the in the early days then you had all the
buyouts of those ogs and then you had a lot of people come into the industry
thinking i can make a ton of money i can make a billion dollars like ballast

(22:13):
point if i if i start and a lot of those purchases that were made made during
the buyout times have kind of lulled people to sleep,
I think, in the general public of that, like,
oh, these beers are still craft,
but those companies have completely different pricing models than we do.

(22:34):
And I think that those purchases, what is kind of unseen over time that is actually
hurting the industry in general is that for such a long time before,
from the OG's perspective, they were trying to get beer out of...
The mental pricing model that people had of beer and get
it into something more like the brewery in placentia did a great job

(22:56):
of this where they were like this black tuesday bottle is this
price and people would be like for beer and yeah yes for
beer like we're getting beer out of just a commodity price
range and we're bringing it up yeah but i think a lot of the
the craft beer buyouts and having
those breweries still be distributing their beer on a wide range with their

(23:17):
economic economies of scale they can they can keep prices down and they can
actually keep people saying oh well beer should be cheap yeah and as long as
people think beer should be cheap,
then the big guys have all the advantage oh for sure yeah and even just going
back a little what you said a little bit a little bit ago about what you said

(23:37):
about like you know that do we brew what we want or do we brew what the people
want i remember that when i first down sat down with with Mike over at Unsung for episode one.
We talked about, he's just like, he's like, yeah, I didn't want to do that.
He's like, I didn't want to, like, he's like, I didn't want to brew hazies.
I didn't want to brew this or brew that.
And he's all, he's all, but dude, he's all, I'm a business owner.
He's like, I got to do what I got to do.

(23:57):
And then like, you know, the more and more he got into it and delved into,
you know, those areas, he was like, man, that's pretty fucking good. You know?
So, I mean, I feel like sometimes like we, we have hesitation sometimes,
but we like also like know that like, you know, You got to draw people in, right?
Totally. I think there's great things to learn on both sides.

(24:18):
Oh, for sure. For other people or for other brewery owners to think about stories
of people pivoting in that way and being like, hey, you know what,
I have a lot of people that work for me, then I can't constrain them.
And put this business out of business just because I don't want to brew something.
Yeah. Even though I have the full capability of doing so. But I do think there is a,

(24:41):
like a, a nostalgic feeling when you see like a brewery like Trumer who like,
they only brew one beer and they, they, they brewed it, you know,
during times when it wasn't super popular.
And now that Pilsners are so popular, it's just like everywhere,
like 19, two cans everywhere.
And then they're, they're reaping the benefits of like staying strong.

(25:02):
Wrong but i think that you have to you do
have to have like a a substantial base market to
be able to make those those decisions like if you're if you're
a small tiny independent brewery right now yeah you
should be throwing everything against the wall to see what you can make that
would differentiate yourself from other people yeah see what sticks yeah one
thing i was and i mentioned this a lot on the show too is because i love pilsners

(25:25):
and lagers but the reason why is because i will always try those most of the
time i'll try those sorts today i'm doing i went straight for For the West Coast,
I was like, I'm going to dive right in.
But most of the time I order those because, like, you can't hide behind anything.
True. Like, there's nothing, like, and if it's good, like, you have my business for life.
Like, I will come back to try to have that same lager or St. Pilsner again.

(25:48):
But I love their creativity, like, when it comes to, like, the breweries and
stuff like that. Because even if it's something that I'm not the biggest fan
of, I'm not the biggest, I mean, I love stouts.
But I'm more like the, I love that, like, you know, the, like,
the nitro stouts and stuff like that.
But barrel aged like I I enjoy like I can't drink a whole one by myself right
I'm like I'll have like a taster and I'll share it with my brother or something

(26:09):
but it's a huge market what do you think of this like people like,
I hear from other breweries we've we actually never have brewed a stout in our
in our year that we've been brewing,
we've we have a Baltic Porter on right now which is which is which is like a
little mini stout where I try to like tell new people like just give it give
it a shot it's got all the it's got all the flavors with just 5% alcohol.

(26:31):
We have intentions to brew some stouts. And when I talk to other breweries,
I feel the same way as you.
If I have like five stouts at home in my beer fridge, it's going to take me
a while. Oh, those are aging for sure.
Right? Yeah. But they always tell me whenever we release this stout,
like I was just down at Gold Brewing with Derek, and he was like,

(26:53):
I'm releasing this Valentine stout, and it will sell out immediately.
So the sales velocity on stouts
is super high but the consumption velocity is
so low like i don't meet anyone who's just like dude i'm
putting down imperial stouts every night yeah like i knocked
out knocked back 10 of them last night yeah so like it that
seems to be a funny part of our industry that also allows for this duality of

(27:18):
incredibly big beer fans and really really silly really beer styles like putting
cake and donuts in the mash of some of these pastry stouts and then.
Normally like the the beer fan would be like oh well that's
ridiculous yeah but then but when it comes to stouts it's literally like anything
goes like oh for sure to me it blows my mind as far i haven't been able to like

(27:41):
wrap my mind around it but it's in our future so we'll we'll see if it if it
works for us we will just like mike and unsung be like great yeah like we'll sell it But yeah,
it is a unique part of our industry right now, especially when it comes to consumption.
Yeah, even like, yeah, when it comes to stouts for me too, like I,
you know, Art knows because Art's just sitting over here.

(28:04):
But when he like listeners of the show, like they're like, oh,
you drink a lot of like West Coast and all this stuff like that.
Like I'll throw in like a hazy and stuff like other stuff, maybe like a sour.
But like when it comes to stouts, I do stouts giving and I do that once a year.
I do a stouts giving episode. What is stouts giving? So I just like,
I have an episode where I just do stouts and where I just like,
you know, like talk about, or review stouts like from different places and stuff

(28:26):
like that and talk about what you're thankful for through the year.
But it's always the week of Thanksgiving when that comes out. Oh, cool.
But yeah, it's the only time of year. Well, it does seem to be a wintry beverage, right?
Historically it was. And now we're getting them released all the time.
Yeah, that's, that's fascinating.
I think of when Kyle at Horace, he won our bracketed beer competition.

(28:49):
We do every year in Santa Ana called Thursday Thursday.
Okay. And the winner gets two permanent handles. Oh, nice. At that location.
And so he comes to us. He's like, hey, I'm not that kind of brewery.
Like, I can't provide you two permanent handles all year long.
Yeah. And we're like, okay, well, what should we do?
And he's like, well, what if we did like a collab or something?

(29:09):
Like a whole batch collab. Yeah. And I was like, we were like,
yeah, let's talk about it.
So we don't hear from him for like two months.
And then he hits me up and he's like, It's ready.
All man 40 sixtles of
it is ready come pick them up and we're like oh my goodness so
we did have horace beer horace stout goss

(29:31):
hawks son on tap for an entire year which was awesome but it's just interesting
and people came in people came in for it yeah right like there is a huge demand
for stouts oh 100 and i feel like it's even like all like i mean even though
stouts like when i I think of Souths, I think of like, yeah, they're like,
you know, fall, winter kind of months.

(29:52):
But I mean, some people enjoy them all year round. Yeah.
And it's crazy to me. Like, I mean, I know Guinness obviously is,
you know, one of the big boys, but I mean, I still, I'll crush a Guinness during the summer.
Just because we're, actually, I like Murphy's a little bit more than Guinness.
But yeah, I'm still, I'm still a stout guy.
I just, I just can't do some of the heavy stuff. It's like, I get all jacked up.

(30:12):
Well, we, we went to Ireland. My wife and I went to Ireland a couple of years
ago, a couple of summers ago, and I think the funniest part of the Guinness
culture there, which we don't really have as much here.
Is, people would say, that bar over there, they have the best Guinness.
And we're in Dublin, and in the breweries right there, we're like,
how can they have the best?

(30:33):
Like, isn't it, isn't everybody getting the same? And they would refer to the
poor, the poor of the Guinness. They do it the best.
And we'd be like, really? Like, there's a, like, there's a difference?
And so, we went to it. The Guinness was great. I don't know if it was that much
better than everywhere else.
But I think this is becoming a thing. Like, I know we were at Bierstadt Lagerhaus in,

(30:54):
in denver and they do
a slow pour pills all the time
and you could and you're waiting for it yeah right
you're waiting for the whole process to go down and we've seen more and more
of these like side pull handles at different bars and breweries of like to try
to push the lager worlds like kind of bring to america what think what how things

(31:19):
have been done in europe for so so many years. Yeah. Yeah.
That's yeah. Which is great. Great for logger boys like us. Well, yeah, definitely.
So I wanted to talk about a little bit more about Santa Ana.
Like, so when you guys opened up native son over there, was it like,
I know you said like, you guys were just really big fans.
Was there like, like, when did it, like, when did you guys think like,

(31:40):
Hey man, we could do this? Like what, like what kind of happened there?
So my, my intention when I left my corporate job that I got out of school,
worked for them for for five years.
And then I was living in San Francisco.
I'm from down here. I'm from Whittier. Oh, okay. And I, I, I,
well, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you. I was just saying like, I, do you ever go to 6740?
I haven't been yet. No. Okay. Well, it's been open for a long time,

(32:02):
but I like, I pretty much, I grew up in up, like grew up like near uptown.
Okay, cool. Yeah. I love uptown. Yeah. Yeah.
So I, I wanted to start my own business. That was like one of my like career goals.
And I had a buddy of mine that was home brewer in San Diego.
Okay. And so he and I set out to start our own brewery and it didn't work out.
But, but during that time I wrote the business plan.

(32:25):
I got the investors and as things weren't working out, I was like,
okay, well I'm in San Diego trying to start this.
Let's go to, let's go back home.
And so I came up to, back to Orange County, was looking around,
hadn't been home in five years because I'd been living throughout the United
States at that time with my old job.

(32:46):
And some of my buddies said, hey, have you ever been to this restaurant called
The Playground in downtown Santa Ana? It's this awesome restaurant. And I was like, oh, wow.
And they're like, Santa Ana is like super up and coming. So we went there, checked it out.
I found this rooftop office space. It was like a building that had this big
patio for no reason on the second floor with office space on the interior.

(33:07):
And the landlord there was like, can you convert it?
And I had never been in construction. I was like, yes, we can.
We'll do it. And so now we have this rooftop bar in Santa Ana pouring 27 taps of craft beer.
And I'm trying to figure out how to run that business and survive.

(33:28):
And downtown Santa Ana is still in like the up and coming stage,
but probably like even at that point in time, pre up and coming,
like, like I was super optimistic, but now it's changed so much downtown.
There are so many bars and restaurants that have come in after us.
And then obviously us after playground.

(33:50):
And then we have a food hall downtown. We have a brand new apartment structure
for this being built like two blocks from us.
I would highly recommend anyone to go to downtown Santa Ana just for a night
out and check it out. It's really great.
Yeah. What year was that when you guys, well, sort of wanted to start the brewery
and then, you know, pivoted to?
Yeah, so I left in February of 2013.

(34:13):
Okay. And then started by May of 2013, had pivoted to Santa Ana.
And then by July of 2014, 2014, that's how long it took us to convert that space. We opened.
10 years ago this summer and like did you guys
have to do a lot of that stuff your guys sells or did you guys oh
it was very very bootstrapped i mean we did we did like i

(34:35):
i recruited so many friends and friends of friends to
help like do demo and i did most
of the like general contracting myself like hiring subs and
and figuring that a lot it was it was a great learning experience i'm
sure i i wasted probably so much
investor money in my ignorance and my own but
i think we've we've been able to use all those learnings

(34:57):
from kind of not just farming out
all the work exactly into all our other construction endeavors
i think we've we've probably like saved it
all back by this point but like at this point like we would
never pay for someone to build our draft
system like we have we have spreadsheets and
like there is there is a science behind building a draft system it's not easy

(35:19):
but we but we now know too much to not do it ourselves of course so like that's
that's like the the fun part about being in business longer and longer as you
learn more and more yeah but man the early days are tough right for anybody
out there wanting to start a bar restaurant.
Or even a brewery yet you really have to you
have to be ready to have a mentality of this isn't i'm not going to let this

(35:44):
fail like of course you if you have any quit in you at all it it'll it'll bring
it out of you oh yeah and we've seen it right we've seen it the last couple
years that we've had a contraction in our industry.
And I think there's plenty of people that were like, this is a lot harder than I thought it would be.
Oh, for sure, because it's the first year in I don't know how many years now

(36:04):
where it's like, where it wasn't, like there wasn't that influx more,
where it was more like it was reduced a little bit.
Like kudos to you guys though, for willing to, you know, to put in that work
and, you know, like you said, not just farm out everything because sometimes
you have to, to learn as you go.
And I feel like that, it makes the, it makes like when you finally get to that
destination, it makes the journey all that more worth it. Totally.

(36:27):
At 10 years, I used to tell my team, no one knows we exist.
If we surveyed 100 random people in Orange County, maybe one has heard of us
in the first three years. Yeah.
But now it is it is interesting in our industry about how especially like in
the restaurant bar world, if you can survive,

(36:49):
the longer you survive this snowball rolling down the hill of more people have
visited you and more people have been to downtown and you start becoming like
a fixture in your city. And that's super fun.
Like we, our plans for our 10 year anniversary this year are like reflective
of the history of like how,
you know, downtown has, has, has built itself up into this awesome nightlife

(37:12):
place and, and how grateful we are for being kind of one of the early businesses that were there.
Yeah, because even during that time, like, was it, you said it was 2013 when
you guys first bought the boat, first, like, started getting all that together. Yep.
Even that, I mean, I would still say, even during that time,
like, craft beer was in its infancy still. Oh, yeah.
Even going, like, when I was 21, that was, how old, what year was I born? 87.

(37:37):
So, I would have been 21 in 2008.
Like, I remember, like, Stone was pretty much it. So, like, it was,
like, at least the closest one, like, Escondido.
Yeah. But yeah, they even, you know, you go four or five years,
but from like that time when you guys started doing that and then opening up and you said 2014.
You could, you see like the explosion happened. So like, it was like almost

(37:57):
like perfect timing for you guys.
It was, I mean, it's for a beer bar that wanted to serve the most interesting
craft beer lists in Orange County.
It was awesome. I mean, like, especially when it comes to like Orange County breweries. Of course.
Like the, the explosion of San Diego breweries was kind of already happening.
And sometimes I go look back at old pictures of our original

(38:19):
beer menu in the very early early days and just
kind of laugh at the brewery names on
the board and the selection that we could get at that time what
the styles were like in the
early years we were we were monkish's number one
orange county account oh but this is all pre-ipa
yeah this is like feminist roses hips crux

(38:40):
like all the old the belgian styles that that they would produce back then and
but we could tell like hey they make great beer like we're gonna prioritize
them and that was the interesting part Part of it at that time was that you
could have a lot of fun being a beer fan and owning a beer bar and kind of parsing
out what was good, what was not,
because it was it was a little bit more dramatic back then.

(39:02):
Now it's it's it's much more competitive because we have this proliferation of brewers.
Yeah. Like back in those days, the people starting breweries were home brewers. Yeah. Right.
Patrick and Tyler started the brewery as home. They were in a home brew club. Yeah.
Right, together. That was the funnel of people getting into starting breweries.

(39:26):
And nowadays, it might be declining now, but after all the buyouts,
there was the way to start a brewery was to be an assistant brewer somewhere
and find a person with a lot of money. And then you can start a brewery easier.
So I think that will change over the next decade. I think as...

(39:49):
As prices go up over time, people will start to see the benefits of homebrewing. Yeah.
And then we might see more of like the OG style brewery startup founders come
back to the fold in like 10 years or so.
Because I think we are going to see somewhat of an increased consolidation.

(40:11):
I'm looking at your cheeky sticker on your computer here.
Oh, yeah. And my buddies, Brian and Evan, just purchased Bagby in Oceanside.
So even if we're keeping the same people in the industry, like Jeff Bagby is
still staying on with them, the amount of companies are shrinking,
which I think is probably necessary.
But what that outgrowth will be in 10 to 15 years and what the industry will

(40:35):
look like then, I'm hopeful that we're going to see a lot more people that are
self-motivated to get into the industry from scratch.
Yeah. And it's crazy, like what you said about the, like how,
like, you know, they were all homebrewers. Like I, when I, when you say that
at the first people I think of right away is like Jason and Derek over at Lahara in Norwalk.

(40:55):
Like they were Long Beach, you know, beer club and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
And like home brewing and all that. And it's like, it's crazy though.
Like, well, throughout this whole thing for me, you know, in doing interviews
and talking to brewers and stuff like that, it's crazy how everybody's,
you know, I always say like the destination is the same, but everybody's journey
is obviously different.
Yeah. But like you have some people who are like, oh no, I just worked at this,

(41:16):
at this brewery and they just let me, you know, let me watch and let me kind
of, you know, shadow and do that sort of stuff.
And then they be, you know, some other brewery snatches them up.
Yep. And it's like, it's crazy how like, you know, all that.
Just kind of plays out and how like people can be like, you never really,
you might not like really set out to do something like that.
But then once you kind of get in, you're like, oh, I need this.

(41:39):
Like, this is something I, you know, I can't live without.
Like you said, your corporate job before. And now then you started drinking
craft beer and then it was just like, you know, all bets were off.
Well, I think, I think what has helped the, the brewery proliferation we've
seen over the last decade is the,
the little cottage industries that have have popped up throughout
like like i think i believe the story goes that

(42:01):
ken grossman at sierra nevada would wanted
would would have wanted to have canned his product but
he had to bottle it because the only
canning lines available were like canning lines
the size that like coca-cola yeah and like budweiser
would buy there were no wild gooses or
like other types that you could could have like

(42:24):
a four or five head filler and just be like oh okay well
i can start from here and build my way up there was
there was no yeah entry level and i
think i was at a i was at wagon wheel dropping off our collab up in oxnard and
they have a single head filler canny life like it's 26 000 which is which is

(42:44):
the maybe a little bit prohibitive but it's all for people but But it's crazy
that we've gone from in the 80s,
you can only get the absolute top of the line.
Largest millions of dollars.
And now you can go all the way down to just one can at a time and everywhere in between.
And so I think that's gonna be an interesting, that brewing equipment,

(43:07):
all these different cottage industries.
Sprouted up because of the proliferation of breweries. If we do see a contraction,
what will happen to those industries?
And then that's going to make life even more interesting for people that want
to start a brewery in like a decade.
Oh, for sure. I mean, like, just kind of crazy, just to even try to fathom like
what the industry is going to look like in 10 years or like,

(43:29):
you know, stuff like that. It's crazy.
But I mean, like you said, even though there's like a little bit of a lull this year,
I mean, I feel like it's like people are going to
separate themselves out you know from from the pack and
because like you said there's sometimes where people just want to throw money
at something and they don't necessarily care about
like we'll put that love and care into a product and but if you're actually

(43:50):
like if you're doing things the right way and you have the right people people
are going to find your stuff i agree i think i think that beverage the beverage
industry in general is way harder than people think because it is like a tangible
product that you can like walk around and say try this do you you like it?
Oh, you like it? That's great.
Well then how do we get it to as many people as possible?
Like water is super heavy, right? Like, so I know this, I'm delivery boy for the brewery here.

(44:14):
And so like lifting kegs and moving kegs around and like, it's,
it's challenging, right?
And it's, it's hard work, but there is an extreme satisfaction when you get
to serve someone a beer that you made that they really like. Yeah.
That's, you get to have kind of like the whole business
product life cycle in like one

(44:37):
small interact it's all your hard work and
you see like and you if you see that person enjoying it you're like
fuck yeah like i did it totally yeah totally and it's like for me with this
show like if one one person tells me like hey man i really love the show like
all right i did my job right right it's good going back to like just a little
one more question about santa anna when you guys opened it because obviously

(44:59):
you guys are craft beer fans,
was there a beer that made you like, man, this is like, you know.
Like this is the one that kind of got me. Because you mentioned Sierra Nevada.
That was one of mine. I used to stay with my dad's when I was a kid. Sure.
Sure. You know, but that was the only one he would have in the fridge or Newcastle,
I guess, back in the day. I think for my craft beer journey,
I think Stone played a huge part.
Like you said, they were the big players at the time when we were coming of age. Yeah.

(45:24):
I remember going to the World Bistro and walking in and being like, wow, this is amazing.
I cannot believe a local brewery to
me has a place like this and is
like investing this much into like this community when i
started moving around the country i would try to
seek out places that i could grab beer from back
home yeah like uh flying saucer was like a chain of beer bars where i lived

(45:48):
in charlotte north carolina that i could go there i knew they would have ruination
on bottles there you go and i was like great like at least i know i can get
a little flavor back home when i'm yeah and then when i moved to san fran that's
when i was really starting starting to become a big craft beer fan.
And I still get teased by my teams at our different locations about my love

(46:08):
and affinity for Lagunitas.
Okay. A Lagunitas IPA in San Francisco at that time was everywhere.
It was at every dive bar. It was at every fancy restaurant.
It was at every golf course. The ubiquity of that beer and it being an awesome
craft beer beer was so cool to see.

(46:30):
It was like as Lagunitas was really scaling up at that time,
they did not neglect their hometown.
That whole area was just saturated with that beer. And so, of course, I drank it so much.
And then being able to be close enough to drive up to Petaluma,
go to the brewery, kind of experience their like rapid growth.

(46:52):
Like I was there during the time when they created Lagunita Sucks. Okay.
And Lagunita Sucks was this, I believe it was a single IPA. It could be,
correct me if I'm wrong, listeners.
It was an IPA that they made in the wintertime when they would have made brown
sugar, their seasonal beer, but they couldn't produce it because they had a brewery upgrade issue.

(47:17):
And what happened was they were bringing in a new brew house from Germany,
which they had to ship through the Panama Canal and up to Petaluma.
And the mash tun on this new
brewery was so wide oh excuse
me the lauder time was so wide that it had to sit
on top of this container ship it wouldn't be it wouldn't fit
inside any containment and during

(47:40):
a storm as it was shipping a crane on the boat broke
loose and gashed a gigantic hole in
this lauder time oh so we got it got up to san
francisco they had to send it back and because of
this situation they couldn't create they couldn't produce their
like this seasonal beer that everybody loved wow and
so they created an ipa instead and before anyone could tell them they said don't

(48:03):
worry we know we suck and i have a picture of moving into san francisco to a
new to a new place and my fridge is completely empty except for two bottles
of Pliny the Elder and a six-pack of Lagunitas sucks.
When I think about what really got me to jump,
to get into this industry the most, it was probably that experience in San Francisco

(48:27):
and my treks up to Petaluma and to Russian River in Santa Rosa.
Experiencing that culture and being like, man, I got it. I got to be a part of this.
Yeah. And, and it's crazy too, like how you, like you can, something like that,
or like going to different places can kind of, you know, like almost just trying
to find those little, like you're going on little adventures,

(48:49):
trying to find what's almost like a, what do you want to call it?
What's the, what's the thing called when you're a scavenger hunt?
Like you're trying to find those different beers and like, because you like,
oh, I heard this place has this.
So you're trying to go and, you know, find those places to go to,
to be able to try the different from beer well alexa signed us up for this
hot passport thing and i was like i have no i saw
that the other day yeah i saw it i came up on my instagram feed i think

(49:11):
but i haven't like you know yeah i hadn't heard about it at all
and she was like i just need your approval i
was like yeah do it and i'm opening the tasty room a few weeks ago and this
guy walks in from arizona yeah and he was in town i think he was in like el
monte visiting family for like post new year's and he He drove all the way here

(49:33):
with the passport because he had the passport.
I love that. And as far as I know, the, you get a state based passport and the
breweries that, that are in States adjacent to you, they basically randomize.
They don't put them all in. They don't put all of California in the Arizona one.
They just kind of randomize it. So he literally had us in his Arizona passport.

(49:57):
How cool is that? And it drove him to drive here. And he literally,
like, he had a couple of beers, we chatted a bunch, he took some to go,
and I was like, this is the scavenger hunt of people that love beer.
I mean, and like, you know, like it's something, it could be something as that,
but then, you know, when he goes back to Arizona, he'd be like,
Hey man, I went out to native son.
You got to check that place out. If you guys ever go out there or his friends

(50:20):
or anything like that. And we did this in Santa Ana.
In Santa Ana, we were so young and naive in starting that place that we didn't know.
At the time, advertising is so weird nowadays.
Your social media is so much of your advertising.
Oh, it totally is. And you don't have the traditional channels.
Like we're not, as a startup, little craft beer bar, we're not going to get

(50:42):
a billboard on the freeway.
So you have limited channels to advertise.
And so when you have limited channels, you use them, but you don't think about
like what is my marketing strategy as much as like other larger companies.
So word of mouth was gigantic for us. Oh, for sure. Right.
And, and not being like, I tell my team, even to this day, I talked to the team

(51:06):
about, we're not order takers.
When someone walks up and they ask you for Stacy's lot, double IPA,
it's not, okay, here you go.
It's, hey, have you been here before? Yeah. Where are you from?
Like, like when I get the question a lot about what, what does our name mean? Yeah.
And. Yeah, that was what I was going to ask you that too. Yeah,

(51:28):
so native son is a newspaper term for who's from what kind of hometown.
Oh, yeah. I never thought about that. Yeah, you could read like an article that
says like, Michael Phelps wins gold at the Olympics, native son of Baltimore, Maryland.
Yeah. Right? Something like that. And so this where you're from...
This origination of the name is still part of our culture today because you

(51:52):
could imagine if you belly up at a bar anywhere in the world,
eventually the bartender, if they're good at their job, is going to say,
where are you from? Oh, exactly.
And so that's kind of like our ethos is as I was coming back home and thinking
about a name that would symbolize like coming home.
Yeah, it's like the mantra for the brewery. Yes. And so like,
and, and yeah, if we're not, if we're not having those discussions with people,

(52:14):
we may not, we may not even know to have the opportunity to say this person's from out of town.
They're, they're here for a brief amount of time. Oh, you know where you should go.
You should definitely check this spot, this spot, this spot out.
And then when, when you give that knowledge to people to increase their scavenger
hunt for more, you also endear yourself to them and, and, and make a fan.

(52:35):
In yeah i mean in word of mouth art to
me like you know like dude have you ever been a native so i was
like i mean because i've the only i think the only like kind of
towards la was like the brew yard sure yeah
oh gosh what was his name is it josh i think i
can't remember if that was his name exactly but like
you know he you know told me he's like dude you got to check this place out

(52:56):
i was like all right i'm in like let me know when let's do it yeah and we have
we're a part of the la brewers guild and as orange county people that's funny
to us right because Because I remember when pre-COVID that the LA Beer Week
was like this huge thing.
And there was Battle of the Bands and there was all this stuff.
And we Orange County beer people were like, how can we sit in between San Diego and LA?

(53:21):
And they're both like seemingly accelerating faster than we are.
And we're kind of like this like in between.
And so we would come up to LA Beer Week stuff. We'd go down to San Diego all
the time. and so it's fun to now be a part of that community oh yeah for sure
i mean like just to be able to.
Be like kind of like you said like in being in the in-between but like being

(53:43):
a part of obviously being in the orange county but also being a part of la county
as well now with with this location,
like that's i'm sure that's super beneficial because
i mean i was gonna ask you guys in both guilds because i've
thought about it because we'd be allowed to join oc as
like a associate membership okay and and maybe
this year we will yeah because but we have so many friends in that

(54:05):
that area because we've been customers of theirs for
so long of course yeah yeah even you said mentioned going.
Back to monkish like feminist and all that stuff so it's like i haven't heard that
and i will i feel like i haven't heard the term like when it comes
to monkish in a long time it's true i mean
i mean they i them and like
their their their meteoric rise is kind

(54:26):
of similar to like i think what's happening right now with north park like i
i knew back when i was going to start my brewery
in san diego yeah when it was when that business was
falling apart that partnership was falling apart i i
reached out to kelsey because i knew kelsey was starting north park at
the same time it didn't work out for us to partner up
but we stayed friends and like they had

(54:47):
their own kind of like monkish story where they had
their hard years they were figuring stuff stuff out they
were trying to build that
brand yeah and now it's like boom oh
yeah north park is what i mean they're well my
birthday's in a couple weeks so we i usually go down to.
San diego but that's one of the ones we always hit and what

(55:09):
they the stuff that they put out and they've you know
not put out now but like been putting out is just like you
know it's out of this world yeah yeah and kelsey's an
amazing brewer he won the stone home brew competition back in the
day yeah and put him them on the map and and
i'm super happy for them yeah it's just like but it's that
perfectionist mentality and i have it

(55:29):
for this like i always want to try to find different
people to talk to and be able to because you know like i
said earlier like the destination is the same but the journey is different for
everybody so you're not going to always get the same story true each week true
and i want to i want to put out the best quality product just like i'm sure
you guys and every you know like a lot of breweries out there want to put out

(55:51):
the best product they can for the customer.
Mm-hmm. And because that's going to keep them coming back.
Right. Yeah. And I, if there are any brewery owners that are listening that
their brand is going crazy and awesome, I want them to make more.
Yeah. Like, I think it's, I think a lot of beer fans like me love.
Breweries like monkish and north park and these places that we

(56:14):
love but we have to go seek it out yeah we want them
to make more make more but as a
brewery owner now i do know what that
means yeah right and how diff how how much
of a sacrifice that like
when i look back now on like the like the really like the og guys
like the stone guys the lagunitas guys like these guys that

(56:35):
built breweries into gigantic manufacturing facilities
that debt load and
the stress of we are
growing at this clip per year and we could
stop the growth yeah and
harvest cash for ourselves or we

(56:56):
can double down and build
this thing up there are more of our fans and if
we're if we're successful awesome if we're not successful then
literally this all might be for nothing yeah
like the the stress that goes into like
the even as your business grows larger especially in this industry your your

(57:20):
expected risk is also increasing oh for sure let's take that leap of faith because
you're not only you're not only buying more equipment and financing things in
certain ways with banks that you're having to sign on the dotted line.
You're also foregoing the opportunity cost of just not doing it and keep producing
what you're producing, reap all the profits and not reinvest,

(57:44):
and then you're better off,
but your brand might start to decline, but that's a decision you have to make.
I always, as a beer fan, want those guys that are making amazing beer to get
as big as they possibly can.
It's just, I know now how, how big of an ask that's, that is to something, right?

(58:05):
But I still want it. As a craft beer fan, if you're listening, grow.
Of course. Get bigger, produce beer for more people. Yeah.
You know, you gotta like, even in life, you gotta, you gotta grow a little every
day, you know, and we, we get older, but we, as long as we're learning from whatever,
either whether they're mistakes from our past or something that maybe we want
to like, you know, something that got overlooked. We got to keep growing every day. Yeah.

(58:28):
But could you imagine, could you imagine getting to go into like a golf course?
Yeah. And like in anywhere in California and some of these breweries we're talking
about, Green Cheek, North Park, like it's just on tap. Yeah. It'd be awesome.
Yeah. That's the world I want to live in. Oh yeah.
And I'd probably go golfing because I'm not, I'm a horrible golfer,
but I mean, I have a good short game, but that's about it.

(58:49):
But imagine i'd be golfing and it'd be like after i had you
know depending on how many green cheeks or north parks i had i'd be
like all right well this is a fun day yeah maybe you're loosened
up maybe you're even better yeah well yeah that's probably true i
probably do need to loosen up because the only thing the only when it
comes to golf the only thing i'm good at is like mario golf from back in the day so
oh there we go or we golf i we golf was fun

(59:09):
as shit yes yeah those were the days you were
in north carolina or you said charlotte right i was what were
you out there there for were you just like for work so so i know so i worked
i worked for nestle so i went to school here at usc okay got
a job and got a job and i'm tatted on my back oh yeah yeah so
fight on to all the trojans out there there you go and i i got a job with nestle

(59:31):
and i got into this management program that basically you signed away where
you wanted to live and you would get you would get you would get promoted way
faster but you could not you didn't get your shoes yeah so i got sent to new jersey Where's he?
I got sent to Charlotte, North Carolina, and then to San Francisco over five
years. Oh, wow. Yeah. The only reason I asked about North Carolina is because
my sister used to live in Fayetteville.

(59:51):
Okay. Yeah. So I think they call it like Fayette-nom now.
So she used to live out there because my brother-in-law was in the military.
But I would go to places like B4 Brady's because they always had,
when I would go visit, because I knew they had craft beer on tap. Sure.
Sure. So that was the one place of like, all right, well, let's go here.
Because if you go to like Buffalo Wild Wings, because I mean,
Buffalo Wild Wings is the same kind of everywhere.

(01:00:12):
But i would always try to seek out those
like smaller wing places and like and if they had draft beers like
yeah let's go there well and this is what we need we need to
promote this on the podcast yeah places that are regional chains
yeah need to promote regional beer like
make it easier oh for sure well like we are we are super excited to be on tap

(01:00:32):
at ellie live at lazy dog uh starting this month oh awesome yeah pasta water
is going to be on and but it's It's funny working with these big corporate chains where it's like,
they're asking us for like, for stuff where we're like,
do you know how tiny we are?
Well, like, you know what it takes to send this stuff out? Like they're like,

(01:00:53):
they're asking for basically systems to, for payments and everything.
And we're just like, Hey guys, like we're your local tiny brewery.
Yeah. Pump the brakes. Yeah.
Let's, that, that's all great. That's all good for Bud Miller Coors.
Great. But for us, let's have a little gateway for more small breweries that
make great product to get in. Oh, yeah.

(01:01:14):
And there is that kind of a weird dynamic these days when it comes to us selling
beer to people where we also...
I love selling beer to people that seem like me back in the day in Santa Ana.
When I walk into an account and they're super stoked on craft beer,
this is their only spot. Oh, yeah. It's to die for.
And then you have the chains where you're just kind of like...

(01:01:35):
It's going to take six months for me to try to make this sale happen.
But if we do, it could help the company, like, immensely.
But I think that the mom-and-pop shops, when it comes to this industry,
when I'm down in San Diego, I see a lot of them.
And I didn't see it in Orange County, which is why I started Native Son.
And I just want more. I want more of those, like, mom-and-pop places that just love this industry.

(01:02:01):
And the bummer is that
like i wish our state government also
wanted that like it's so like it's so so
much easier to run a giant chain
restaurant than it is to run a single place
oh yeah and i like like our our great friends our great friends at hollings

(01:02:23):
head deli in in orange okay they were like they've been a business for 50 years
single location family-owned deli craft beer fans since the beginning they were
one of the they sold vinny chalurzo's beer,
when he was at blind pig before he
even started russian river wow and so like they they were they are that og yeah

(01:02:45):
but i mean if mike was here with me my calling said he'd tell he'd tell us just
like i know that it it's it's so hard in california to run a single location
place yeah And so like, I just wish it was easier for,
because I want more of them. I want more people to do it.
But like in the city of LA, if you go and look up the different rules,

(01:03:07):
the different labor laws that we have here just in the city of LA than anywhere
else in California, it's, you need a team. You need an HR team.
We have it now. Yeah. At Native Sun, we have three locations,
but I just want, I want it to be easier for people to just open a passion project.
Yeah, to have their business.
Yeah. It's like, I like to joke with people about,

(01:03:33):
when it comes to business, people, people view businesses like they are like
printing money, every single one.
They view businesses like, like it's not hard.
Like, oh, you're the business owner. Like no one feels bad for you.
And there is a degree that that can be the case if you have a really successful business.
But like I knew Henry from Monkish pre IPA. Yeah. Stress out of his mind.

(01:03:53):
Oh, I can imagine. Right. And no one would say to him, oh, you're so lucky you own this business.
No one feels bad for you yeah now people can say that about him we we joke with
him all the time about the same thing about like oh you know printing money
yeah but but there is a difference and i think there's a i want i want people
listening to know like it's super rewarding.

(01:04:16):
Mentally yeah always yeah right even people that i know that have started something and shut it down,
they would say wouldn't trade it for the world but they shut it down and went
into bankruptcy bankruptcy right like it's like there are huge risks to doing
it but there are huge advantages like mentally and financially if you can make
it work i just want more people to do it oh for sure.

(01:04:39):
Yeah even like when you asked me before you started recording you asked how
long i'd been doing this it was you know three and a half years but most of
it was when it was our well an old show that i had with my buddy and my brother
and my cousin and then they all quit so i was like all right well i gotta do
this i wanted i still want to keep this going so i'll do it on my own Yeah.
I mean, and some of the, I mean, I haven't monetized it yet and I don't want

(01:05:01):
to do that until later on, maybe, maybe sometime down the road, but I, I love doing this.
Like I, this, this is my passion project. I get to sit here and I get to talk
with someone like you, or I get to, I've talked with art,
you know, and talking to different people about like how much they love craft
beer and what it like, you know, the kind of, you know, what it's done for them.

(01:05:22):
Like, you know, as like, well, being, even just being a part of the craft beer
community for that matter and what that means to, to them and what it means
to, you know, other people around, you know, whether it's the world or in a
different state and, you know, all that sort of stuff. Yeah.
And I just want to keep being to keep evangelizing this thought process to people that like, hey, like,
small businesses should be given a chance that big businesses should support

(01:05:48):
essentially, like, why is my effective corporate tax rate the same as Apple in the same state?
That's right. And I can't store any cash in Ireland.
Yeah. Right. So it's like, like, there is a degree that like,
if we if we would say as a society that, you know.
We already have a blended tax rate. Like there are people that pay zero,
there are people that pay 50, right?

(01:06:10):
And then everywhere in between, and when it comes to our income tax,
we do not have a blended tax rate when it comes to businesses. That's crazy.
Why would someone not be able to start up a company?
There's so much to go into, let's say a craft beer bar.
There's so much to go into if you walk into a space that's empty to build it
out, all this investment that you're gonna need to make it happen.

(01:06:30):
Your first year, you're not gonna make a ton of money.
Yeah. Why would you even be paying sales tax during that year?
Why even take your eye off the ball for a second to be like,
oh, I need to record to the state exactly what we sold.
It's like, give these people a chance to go. Give them some leeway.
Give them the zero effective tax rate for a period of time so that they can grow.

(01:06:51):
And it doesn't exist that way. There's so much that goes into all the rules
of what you have to do or else someone's going to come in and slap you on the wrist and fine you.
You yeah, so not only are you not making any money, but they're gonna charge
the government's gonna be like you well You you didn't do X Y or Z.
Yeah, those like I I feel for,

(01:07:12):
For people that are so passionate that they're doing it no matter what because
that was me but I wish that we as a society and and people that vote would say
I want more of this and therefore I want less of.
Of an opportunity to decrease this, right? Like I don't want our rules to only

(01:07:32):
benefit people with a team of 15 people in the office.
Yeah. I literally want the guy that owns this place to be bartending.
Yeah. Give him a shot. Yeah.
Oh, exactly. And too, like even like when we talk about like,
you know, the smaller, like, you know, craft beer bars, like a place like in
Uptown, 6740, that's been there for, I don't know how many, 20 plus years or

(01:07:53):
a place like Kaskenhammer in La Habra.
Uh-huh. Yeah. You know, stuff like that. When you see, like,
when they go to those places and they see like your beer on tap,
that's going to make them think, oh shit, where is the, where,
where, where are they at?
Like they, I had this really good, you know, West Coast and like,
where can I find them? They Google you, they look it up. They're like,
oh, they have a location downtown.
They have a location in Santa Ana. They have, you know, these different locations.

(01:08:14):
They're going to seek you out.
And I mean, that's important because it's not like they don't necessarily have
to go to, you know, just one brewery, but when they do find that it'll make
them seek out your brewery. Yeah.
I think, I think there's, there's two, there's two sides of that,
which are, which are interesting.
Like, I do think that breweries being able to have up to six tasting rooms in

(01:08:35):
California has hurt independent craft beer bars from opening. Yeah. Yeah.
Because if, if it back in, back in the old days, you had to go to Stone World Bistro. Yeah.
To get the beer from the place, or you could just get it from your local places
that were curating what they had.
But once you're allowed to proliferate as a brewery, all these different, essentially tap rooms.

(01:08:59):
Yeah. Like there are some tasting rooms out there that are like just a cold
box and taps. Yeah. It's like those little micro, micro breweries.
Yeah. Yeah. And so like there, there is a, there's a give and take there when
it comes, like that's why I think that there are fewer awesome little independent beer bars.
Once they changed the rules to go from three tasting rooms to six tasting rooms

(01:09:21):
for breweries, that definitely helped breweries. Mm-hmm.
It kind of forces the customer to say, well, now, instead of going to a native
son that someone created in like Montebello, I'm now going to just pop around
to the breweries, tasting rooms around me.
So like there's always a give and take. I feel like that the lobbying effort

(01:09:45):
when it comes to craft beer, even though it helps me, has hurt the other industry,
which is much harder, which is like the bar restaurant business.
That makes sense. If they want to focus just on craft beer.
That's why I think before we knew we were going to start this brewery,
that we had to pivot to beer and cocktails because we had to differentiate ourselves

(01:10:07):
from just all the brewery tasting rooms that were now popping up around us. Yeah.
Do you mind if we grab one more beer? Yeah, let's do it. I'm going to hit pause. So we'll be right back.
All right. And we're back. Had to get a fresh brewski. This one's a Pilsner. Pasta water.
Pasta water. Italian Pilsner. I can see why. Yep.
And, oh yeah, I mean, who doesn't love pasta, right? Let's jump in.

(01:10:31):
Yeah, that beer's been a fun one for us.
Oh, it's good. Yeah. Sales-wise, I mean, we use.
Traditional european malts for that one and and
some really like fun techniques
that jp was like i'm not gonna skimp on this yeah and and
so he was super excited to make that beer and then
it's just it's been able to resonate with

(01:10:53):
people primarily because of the name so we naming
beer conventions is like pet peeve
of mine yeah i i planning the
elder did it for everybody right pre-planning the
elder for those that are new to craft beer this
is how the naming convention used to go it would
be native son pilsner it would

(01:11:14):
be native son ipa yeah it would be native son
porter yeah right and once pliny blew up everyone was like okay yeah my beer
needs to have its own brand on every single oh every every single one so you
literally go on untapped and there are a A million names for a million different beers. Yeah.

(01:11:36):
And my point of view, that there is no beer czar to tell this to,
is that there are a lot of beers that are not great beers.
Yeah. That have great names. Oh, yeah. And great can artwork.
Yes. It's like, come on. Can we just say, if your beer is not 3.75 as generous

(01:11:56):
or 4 on untapped, that it's got to be old naming convention.
Native Sun Pale Ale. Yeah. leave sierra
nevada like when they would yeah when they would do it back in the day yes of course
that was the that was brewery name
style brewery name style now it's like if
someone told you the name of the beer you would most likely have no idea yeah

(01:12:18):
what's 100 yes and at least pint of the elder if i'm if i'm remembering correctly
pint of the elder i think gave the hop its latin name Mm-hmm like there's something
hop related to his involvement,
which is why the restroom of her team was like let's name it after this guy Yeah.
It's so funny. It's so funny how it's gone all the way to the complete other

(01:12:42):
side of the spectrum where people are using puns and sexual references and who
knows what's going to happen. And even like nostalgia too, like anything nostalgic.
That's why anytime I see something, anything Lord of the Rings,
I'm picking it up. Sure. Yeah. Sure. Because I'm a hardcore nerd for like that or Star Wars stuff too.
But it has to be like a style. I don't want to just buy like some random thing.

(01:13:06):
Sure. but yeah like but pasta water i mean this is this
is our even though i'm i'm saying all this i
still am a brewery owner that participates in the world that
we live in yeah and this name gets people
to notice it yeah well because it's yeah that's different
like i've never heard anybody like name something like something
like that but when you like when you look at it because

(01:13:28):
you still like you know like you get that it's a
pilsner but you get almost like a little bit of a murk there it
looks yeah like like you get that pasta water
vibe so i i had an account that told me
they hated the name yeah they were like it sold crate yeah i
hate the name yeah and and he was like you
throw the pasta water out yeah and i was oh not in every day yes i was like

(01:13:49):
wait a second no no no if you ever made carbonara or something like that or
something you need a ladle it's the secret ingredient yeah that's that's my
sales pitch to the world sorry no that's perfect because Because you're 100% right.
Because I don't, I mean, sometimes I throw out the pasta water,
but I mean, if I'm making cacio e pepe or something like that,
I'm using the pasta water. Absolutely. Yeah.

(01:14:10):
And that's what makes it even better. Exactly. It's got all the starch in there.
Now this beer, no starch.
Yeah. Okay. So beer's on tap? Yeah. Okay. So we do make a lot of lagers here,
which was something that I do love to drink lagers, but I don't think I anticipated it.
I probably thought we would be like way more IPA heavy. Mm-hmm.

(01:14:31):
So, lagers on tap right now. We have El Dojo, our Mexican lager. Nice.
Mexican lager was always the number one seller of our Santa Ana location,
no matter who we were selling.
Yeah. So, we knew right away that that was a beer we wanted to make.
And the funny part about, the funny story about that beer is that pre-COVID,
our, maybe it was the year of COVID, 2020, our Rancho Cucamonga spot was turning one year old.

(01:14:57):
And previously our san anna
spot we wouldn't we didn't own a brewery at the time we
didn't make any beer of our own but every year we
would pick a brewery that we loved and we would hit them up
and say can we do a collab for our anniversary beer oh that's cool so we did
these anniversary beers throughout the years and our rancho team was like do

(01:15:17):
we get to do one too since it's our anniversary coming up and i was like yeah
sure let's do it and so they what's going on they hit up Modern times.
Okay. To brew a Mexican lager.
And it turned out that it was JP and the team here that developed this Mexican
lager recipe with Jeff. Yeah. Jeff Kwan out in our ranch location.

(01:15:40):
And they brewed it for their first anniversary. And sure enough,
you never know what's going to happen in the future.
We end up owning this spot. Yeah. And JP is our brewer. And our first beer that
we ever made was let's make that beer again.
Yeah. And so we've been making this Mexican lager.
Which is essentially our number one seller internally.

(01:16:00):
That's number one on the board. Then we have a blonde, Lil, which is named after
our head of business development, Lillian.
And we have a Kolsch, a Citizen Crisp.
Then we have, well, let's go lagers. Kolsch is not a lager, but we'll do lagers.
So we have El Dojo. We have Pasta Water, Italian Pilsner.

(01:16:21):
We made a Munich lager called Whistling Saint with some friends of ours.
And then we also have Totally Goth, which is our Baltic porter.
We also made a cold IPA with JP's brother.
So JP's brother worked at Modern Times in San Diego, then worked at Tired Hands,

(01:16:41):
and then left with a buddy at Tired Hands to start a brewery in Philly called Carbon Copy.
Nice. So when he was out here, we made a cold IPA with him. So those are our lagers.
So we have the ales, Lil, Blonde, the Kolsch.
We have IPAs. So we have a single hazy called half day.
Okay. We have a double hazy called Xanadu We have Stacy's lot the double west coast.

(01:17:05):
We are almost ready to package our Single West Coast called circle boy will be on tap soon.
We have two seltzers We have a pomegranate seltzer called scream queen that
we made for like winter Halloween time there you go.
We have a little bit left and then we have a a watermelon seltzer called Fuchsia City. Oh, Pokemon.

(01:17:27):
Pokemon. There you go. Love it.
Yeah. And then our seltzer cocktails. So like we have, we have a food vendor
that comes in on Sundays to do brunch. Nice.
And we have a mimosa seltzer cocktail.
Like that. And then we have Paloma made with real kind of yellow grapefruit
juice and, and Blood Oath, which is a blood or a blood orange seltzer cocktail.

(01:17:51):
So that's the tap list. Sounds amazing.
And it's amazing that you could remember all that stuff just like off the top
of your head. I, I, one thing, one thing that I can, I can recommend to people
that are thinking about starting a brewery is you, you have to,
you have to sleep under your desk.
Like I, I've learned, I've learned this past year that I need to be here a lot.

(01:18:12):
Even though I'm commuting from Orange, I need to be here a lot. I need to bartend.
I need to see how people observe the beer, see how we do things.
And so, yeah, like just in the amount of time of recommending beers to potential customers,
customers yeah i can just kind of like close my eyes and see the
beer menu in my head oh i bet i
mean and that's one that's a good thing too when it comes to like like the beer

(01:18:34):
education kind of aspect especially because when you have beer tenders like
if you can have someone that can recommend you something because you can ask
that person that comes in like hey well what do you what like well they're like
oh what would you recommend like oh what do you like yeah and you can have that
because then that creates that you know that connection immediately the second
they they walk up and they ask like, oh, that person knew what I liked before,

(01:18:55):
they'll probably know what I'll like next time. Totally. Yeah.
We learned this in the craft beer bar days.
Man, 10 years ago, you were really trying to convert people with very little knowledge.
I remember one of my favorite stories is that in the very, very early days,
probably the first few months of being open in Santa Ana, I had a family come in.

(01:19:17):
They asked, which is very, very classic in Santa Ana, do you have Modelo?
Yeah. And we didn't. Mm-hmm.
And, but I told them, I was like, hey, we have this lager.
Oh, no, I think I sold them on Avery White Rascal. Oh, nice.
I was like, let's try it. I sampled them on a couple.
They liked the Avery White Rascal. They took it.
They came back and they were like, we'll have another round of those.

(01:19:42):
And I was like, no, no, no. You don't want another round of those.
You got to try something different. Yes.
Let's do, we had on the tab, we had Logsden Killywit, which was like a more
aggressive version of Avery White Rascal.
I knew it would be like a good bump up for them. Yeah. So they took it.
They come back and they're like, we'll do another round of those.
And I was like, no, no, no. No. And so I got them a Brett Saison.

(01:20:05):
Oh, okay. And they loved it. And I was like, I can't believe we went from Modelo
to Brett Saison in an afternoon.
And you have to have that mentality of, I know my menu and I know the interconnectedness of those beers.
And if I can start you here and work you somewhere else, then I'm just helping you along your journey.

(01:20:26):
Oh, for sure. And those people are probably like, the son of a bitch got us again.
In because they're going to come back and they're going to
ask for that next thing right you know like what's your next recommendation
that is true and i think that's sometimes the tough part about
moving someone along because then they'll come back in and be like that last
beer i had yeah like it again and at a rotating beer bar you're like we don't

(01:20:46):
have it anymore yeah so let's talk again right and that but that brings them
back because then you make you make that human well that genuine human kind
of connection right i can trust this person yeah yes and you build that that trust in people.
And that's like with breweries. Like I always say like, like with breweries,
when we talk about like North Park, like, you know, they have my trust or pure,
like they, like, it doesn't matter what can I see there.

(01:21:09):
I'm going to get it because I build that trust that's been built over the years.
Right. And when you find those breweries or you find those places where you
have people that can recommend certain things or be able to just like, oh, you know what?
I know you liked this last time, but try this like, like you did.
And it just like, it builds that, you know.
Human it gives it that human element to like you know it's not just

(01:21:31):
a business it's about because you care about the patrons you care about what
like you're serving them and then you want to make sure that they're enjoying
their experience while they're there right and i think that's when i think of
the difference in our business of like cocktails and beer is that beer has to have a menu,
right in most cocktail bars there is no menu you look at the cocktail bartender

(01:21:53):
like what do you you want and there is like it's not as it can be like i've
had wonderful cocktail bartenders that have walked me through like i'm like
well i don't know i'm thinking this or that but when you have,
that menu and you can walk someone through it like all right these are these
beers these are this this is what it would taste like if yeah a lot of times

(01:22:14):
i ask someone when they walk in here
how many beers are you going to have yeah because i want to know what my strategy
is as someone that's recommending.
Of course. And by asking them how many beers are they going to have,
you're assuming that they're not going to have the same beer over again. Yeah.
Right? So you're already starting this... Rapport.
Yes, this rapport and this conversation of we are definitely going to be having an adventure today.

(01:22:38):
Oh, for sure. So I would say it's integral.
It's completely integral to developing fans of your product and developing the
trust that you're talking about.
Yeah. I mean, cause you had one, we have one to my right over here that,
you know, it's been over a hundred times.
I know. I love it. Yeah. The, the, your biggest fans, like we do this in Santa

(01:23:00):
Ana and we'll definitely be doing this here too in San, well,
I mean, in, in, in various ways.
One of the things we do in Santa Ana is, and this is another kind of like sleep
under your desk kind of recommendation to people that are, that might want to
start their own bar or brewery.
And when I say sleep under your desk, I mean like you, you are,
you're there all the time. You're thinking about your business all the time.

(01:23:22):
In our first year of being open in Santa Ana, we staffed up for Memorial Day.
So Memorial Day, start of summer, everyone's got the day off.
We were like, we're going to be packed. Yeah, party on, Wayne.
So we load up and it's slow.
We're like, okay. Then 4th of July comes along, everyone's got the day off.

(01:23:43):
And so we load up on labor, slow.
And then Labor Day at the end of the summer, we're like, all right. well
we've had two of these so far we load
up once again slow so we we go back to the drawing
board we're like what should we do then for these days off
in the summertime and some people said we should just shut down like there's
no point no one's coming in and i was like well why are they not coming yeah

(01:24:07):
for the most part on those days people have barbecue plans with family especially
especially like 4th of July,
people are having to get somewhere for fireworks,
right? There's all these plans on these summer days.
So then I was like, okay, team, like what if we made ourselves part of the earlier day.

(01:24:28):
Like in the same vein of you don't get to choose your family,
but you get to choose your friends.
Of course. Like maybe our fans would want to hang out with us,
but they can't on a normal basis. But if we made them plan to do it.
So we do in Santa Ana, we do these barbecues.
So it's only from 11 to 3 on both those days.

(01:24:50):
And it's all you can eat burgers and all you can drink, like select beers.
And people have an awesome time. And at three, they go off to wherever their
commitments are elsewhere.
But we send out invitations to come for free to our best customers.

(01:25:11):
Yeah. And you have to know that. Of course. You have to be there enough to know
who your biggest fans are. Who's your Norman Cliff.
Exactly. Yeah. And so for here, we have this parking lot next door.
Yeah. Yeah. And this parking lot next door gets rented out probably like 50
times a year or more for Hollywood productions.
Oh, wow. So when they're filming downtown, they'll rent these lots that are

(01:25:33):
kind of like adjacent here on the corner of 8th and Olive.
And they'll put all their food service vendors, they'll put all their like trailers
for getting ready for all the actors, and they'll load them up here.
And so one of our plans is to do some small,
like just this half of of the parking lot here some beer

(01:25:54):
festivals downtown that'd be cool and like some specific ones
like what like one that we have that we really are excited
to do is international pilsner yeah
festivals sponsored by pasta water there you go and bring
out because this is becoming such a big style that we know right like
bring out your german check whatever all international loggers
bring them out let's have people come in drink them up

(01:26:15):
yep promote breweries that that want to to make this style and that's those
are things in in our dna that we we just can't deny like we have we like we
want to do those kind of events if you guys have that like that logger festival
or pilsner festival i'm in great i'm just going to show up and my hashtag is going to be like.

(01:26:36):
No i'm not going to say that on the show so you
can put it all in my mouth but there we go that probably that would probably
be misconstrued so all the
zd and the angel hair all the pasta put all the
pasta yeah all the pasta no but this this one's
really really good so but i honestly think that that's really cool
and i just want to just go back a little bit about how

(01:26:57):
you were talking about where like everything kind of
coming full circle like with that mexican lager and then
end up being in this building yeah and it's
crazy like you don't hear that story the only other story i've ever
heard were you know something like that happens when i talked to ian over
at ism where he worked at that beachwood location yes
and then opened ism in that same spot like coming

(01:27:19):
back home essentially and like but like you like
you guys coming full circle with the mexican lager and
then being here now and being in downtown
la and it's just that i
don't know to me that like it tickles my heartstrings because it's
like it's you can see the the whole journey there totally and
and i think a lot of our modern times friends have reached

(01:27:39):
out and are like super excited that we're keeping this going yeah i think i
think the when they went through their hard times financially there was a lot
of people there that had put so much effort into these locations that they had
produced yeah you put your heart and soul into it and they They don't want to see them,
you know, become like a Ruth's Chris or something.

(01:28:00):
Right. And so like, I think sometimes we actually get, sometimes people tease
us and they say, oh, well, you really didn't do much to the space.
And we were like, what did we need to do? We loved it. We loved it.
Yeah. Like we, like, and I, and I think that when I mentioned earlier about
like, they passed the ball to us, right.
They, they, they gave it to us. We started, we, we kept running with it.

(01:28:22):
Yeah. And that's how we look at this space is that like this space.
Every location you walk into was something else before most likely
yeah and so we want to be able to carry
the dankness dojo forward right like
if if we if we weren't here it might not be this way exactly and so we we're

(01:28:45):
happy with keeping the booths the same like keeping the wallpaper on the columns
keeping the light bright going yeah i love that i had a light bright as a kid
so i love That's how that was like, I love it. Yes.
And that's something that people can enjoy when they come back in.
Like, obviously, we're going to be a different kind of brewery than Modern Times.

(01:29:06):
But we've actually maintained like a really strong relationship with them as well.
Like, I know Garrett, who's the CEO founder of Maui, who now owns Modern Times. Awesome guy.
And we do their league pickups. So, like, they ship us up their beer for their
league. and we have their LA people pick it up here.

(01:29:27):
And it's just something where we can kind of still maintain a connection to
them and a connection for the people in LA that still love modern times and
wish essentially that COVID didn't participate in their demise.
So I think it's, for me, like there is a lot of like zero-sum game when it comes to business.

(01:29:48):
But I think that the nature of craft beer is collaboration.
Oh, 100%. And by, by still keeping that going here, like their,
their essence and also like providing gear to their customers.
Is something that is a, is collaboration. It's, it's pain like homage,

(01:30:10):
but also, you know, differential, differentiating yourself as well.
Like, I mean, you have, like, you're still keeping, I mean, you still have like,
obviously like, you know, the bones there, but you're also like,
you know, promoting your own stuff.
And from what I've had today, you guys are, you guys are killing it.
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.

(01:30:31):
It's when it comes, when we go back to the naming conversation.
Sometimes we'll look up a name that we want to name something and like a little
brew pub in like Tallahassee has the same name and oftentimes we'll just name it.
One of my favorite craft beer stories is that Avery brewed a beer called Salvation

(01:30:52):
and Russian River brewed a beer called Salvation. Yeah.
And they made a beer together called Collaboration Not Litigation.
Yeah. And that is common among the people that have the mentality of the OGs in craft beer.
The litigation that has happened quite a bit over the last five years within

(01:31:16):
the craft beer community is mostly coming from people that started breweries from the,
I'm going to get rich. Oh, yeah. They're just throwing money at something.
And they're like, oh, that person is using our name?
Like well don't worry i have lawyers
that'll take care of it and like i
i think the my big mantra for

(01:31:39):
2024 is we got to get
back to the og mentality yeah
and and really really really focus on the beer and then also focus on building
relationships with people within the industry industry that have your same values
a hundred percent i mean when and when it comes to like you know like all the

(01:32:02):
that kind of the collaborations and stuff like that like i mean,
it's because people became from those home you know like the home brewing clubs
and stuff like that so they would call each other and i feel like you anytime
i talk to a brewer now they're always like oh like if i'm having a when they
open up their brew they're like i want to have this style but i i can't quite
dial it in so they call this person at this other brewery sure and there's all all that.

(01:32:26):
It's rare where I've found people where I've talked to them and they've been kind of.
I'm going to say jerks. Sure. Yeah. But I mean, like, but that's super rare.
Like it hasn't really, I haven't really dealt with that.
So, but I mean, there's other people that I've talked to that I've had to deal
with certain situations, but 99% of the time, if you make that call,
like, Hey, I can't dial in this Mexican lager.

(01:32:48):
He's like, Oh dude, we'll try it. Did you try this? And I'm like,
Oh shit, light bulb. And then, you know, they're able to get that done.
So I feel like it's because of that, you know,
that close knit community that the, the brewery like the
homebrewers guild or like the you know all the guys that
came from that like you said like the ogs they all kind
of were there for one another so there's what as those

(01:33:09):
people branch out and open up their own breweries or have
opened up their own breweries they have that collaboration there and they want
they just want each other to to succeed yes and i think that that difficulties
do like bind people together oh definitely right like if if we if 2024 is harder
on craft beer than 2023 was,

(01:33:32):
the people that are around in January of 2025 will be more bonded together.
Oh, definitely. Right? And this was the case in the 90s. Yeah.
There's countless stories of like Stone almost went under, almost went under. Mm-hmm.
And the people that were their customers, they were bonded with.

(01:33:52):
The people that were in it at the same time having the same difficulties,
they were bonded with. And it really...
Created this great dynamic that i i don't
want to see go away yeah right i i think that the brewers guilds do a great
job of it our friends over at common space i can't recommend to people common

(01:34:13):
space enough they're not going to drink my beer drink common space those guys
have been like absolutely the most gems of humans to us like literally like
of everyone in the brewers guilds.
Over and above being awesome to us
and friendly to us like i think one thing that
when people come into this location in downtown la and
they come and they get to check the brewery out it actually looks like an impressive

(01:34:37):
brewery because this this brewery here as far as a brew pub goes is a little
bit larger than you would make if you were just making a brew pub it's a 10
barrel system it has six 20 barrel fermenters we're talking if we make a pasta water we're getting.
Getting probably like almost 40 half
burrow kegs which is a lot to a lot of product to to move

(01:34:59):
through oh it's a it's a it's a good size brewery for
a brew pub but modern times built it
to not necessarily be a standalone brewery so
they never built it to be like oh well one day we can just sell the
unit to someone and they'll be they'll be ready to go of course
because it needed san diego and it needed anaheim to
maintain itself like for example we don't have a

(01:35:20):
keg washer sure we don't have a canning line or a bottling line
so the only way for us to package beer is kegging it but
we can't clean our kegs so what do we do well in
step our buddies at common space so like we literally
run dirty kegs from like uh picking them up
either at our own locations or at other bars and restaurants that serve our
beer run them to common space they clean them for us we run them back here in

(01:35:44):
the sprinter van fill them and then run them back out again yeah but But then
those guys also have been like super helpful with if they have yeast,
they'll just give it to us.
And, and just the advice that they have is, has been like super invaluable for us.
And so I think you do, if you're a startup brewery, you need that relationship

(01:36:06):
with somebody that's bigger than you.
I mean, they're 100%, they're so much bigger than us. And yet they,
they, they, they give us time.
They appreciate us. And I, I appreciate them.
Yeah. Well, I mean, like what you guys got going on, you know,
right now and with all the, obviously the really great beers,
like, I'm just, I just wanted you to know that I'm a really appreciative of

(01:36:28):
you like letting me come over here and talk to you and have a
couple beers with you and have a conversation and i'm really thankful for art
for setting this up absolutely able to talk to you but i i love like anytime
somebody talks passionately about something that they care about i am fully
1000 invested because it may like like you mentioned before like it may.

(01:36:50):
Motivate someone to like you know what i can do this yeah yeah and and if that's
the case if what But, you know, if one person does it, then there we go.
Totally. And I've had those little moments in my career, thankfully.
Like I've been able to sit down with Greg Cook from Stone and be like,
like you, without you never saying die and keeping this going,

(01:37:14):
it motivated me to do my own thing eventually.
Right. And so I think we all have those inspirations as we go along.
And even though I still think of our company as a little ragtag group of people
that are doing essentially what feels like a college project,
I do have to kind of realize over
time that there are people that can be inspired about what we've done.

(01:37:37):
And that's super humbling. Oh, for sure.
And I'll end the episode with a quote from Little Giants.
He says, you beat Kevin O'Shea down Cherry Hill? He's a one-time.
And he's like, they talk about the one-time.
And I just, like I said, I'm really grateful that you allowed me to come down

(01:37:57):
here and talk to you for a little while.
And this has been super fun. I can't wait to see the rest of it. Yeah, great to meet you.
Great to meet you, too. Do you guys have any events coming up besides maybe the Vlogafest?
Events coming up? Well, we have Thursday, Thursday in Santa Ana going until
March. So that's a bracketed beer competition.
Is that like March Madness? It's basically March Madness. Everywhere Brewing won it last year.

(01:38:20):
We have some really great breweries
in it this year, including our friends Crowns and Hops from here in LA.
Common Space, like all sorts of fun OC and LA breweries.
You know, we're, we are, we're grinding, we're grinding here in LA.
So if you see our beer out anywhere in Southern California, give us a try and
look forward to seeing you. Off of, is it Olive and 8th?

(01:38:43):
Between 8th and 9th on Olive. Yep. 8th and 9th on Olive. And come check out
the, the Light Bright because that's my childhood. So thanks again.
Really appreciate it, John. Cheers, everybody. Cheers, guys.
All right, guys. Well, like I said, I hope you guys enjoyed the interview with John.
You know, like I said, really great guy. I get out there and support,
you know, support the, you know, those local businesses and,
you know, support all the craft breweries out there, you know,

(01:39:05):
everybody, you know, everybody needs, uh, needs help.
And, you know, if you can, if we can get out there and support like your local,
you know, your local place, your local community, what's better than that.
All right. So I'm going to end the episode with a movie quote this week.
This one is from, since I mentioned the princess bride earlier,
this will be from the princess bride. and this one was Miracle Max from the Princess Bride.

(01:39:32):
The quote is, you rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
All right. Cheers, Tap Fam. Have a great week.

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Episode 54 - w/ Jon Sanchez of Native Son Brewery

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 54 - w/ Jon Sanchez of Native Son Brewery