Be a Superfan of Superflux

Today I talk to Adam Henderson, co-founder of the super popular Superflux Beer.  He tells us how his hobby grew into a booming business.

ORIGIN STORY:
Somehow, they recalled that they both liked the  Delorean with the flux capacitor in “Back to the Future” way back when. 
Somewhere, Matt and Adam mentioned it to each other,  probably while making beer.
One day,  the thought came up again as they were searching for their company name.
Turns out,  SUPERFLUX  was the only word they both kinda liked.

REVIEWS:
Casual & Cool
Colourful  + Courageous
Creative and Clever
Most importantly, Canadian.

CREDITS:
www.superfluxbeer.com
www.glosays.com

TOP 25 BUSINESS PODCASTS IN CANADA

Transcript

GLO 0:17
Welcome back everyone to another episode of Glo Says and my guest today is Adam Henderson who's one half of this superduo who leads the breakout and spectacular success at superflux and who opened their doors during COVID.  His partner is Matt Kohlen so welcome to the show it's great to meet you here, Hi!

ADAM  0:39
thank you thanks for having me

GLO  0:41
i'm very excited because one i don't know much about beer which i admitted to adam but two i cannot help but notice your beer because it's so beautiful i hope all my listeners go take a look at Superflux beer

GLO 1:03
and i also get to talk to him today because we have a mutual friend in common my friend and his employee ashton lim

ADAM 1:12
so thank you ashton for connecting us

GLO 1:17
here thank you ashton

GLO 1:25
i also love your space i think your space is excellent it's just so spacious and comfortable but can i tell you what i think you're missing in that space

ADAM 1:34
absolutely

GLO 1:35
i think you're missing ice cream i know that sounds random and weird but i really think it's just that kind of vibe or cotton candy i went to this place in kyoto and their vibe is not dissimilar than yours i know this sounds weird it sounds like i'm going off in like lala land but really it reminded me of your space and they had these cool swirls a rainbow cotton candy being made and i'm like man that would be so cool to have a cotton candy thing going on or ice cream at this place

ADAM 2:07
that is pretty cool i would be lying if i said we had not investigated ice cream in the past so oh we opened in august for our retail stores we can have two components we have a retail section where you can come in you can buy cans to go and then we also have a section where you can come and you can you can sit in the space and they're they're effectively two separate spaces they're a little bit divided by a big wall that runs through the brewery you know you've been there because we ended up opening the other area in october ice cream wasn't as fine but we were actually looking around trying to buy some ice cream machines and they're extremely expensive so but we're we're looking into it and we were when we first opened just the retail store it was quite hot and we had some lineups outside and we were giving people popsicles and stuff and that was great so people really enjoyed that and that kind of fits our brand and they were very colorful as you mentioned so exactly we wouldn't be in the doing something like that there's definitely a possibility for it in the future

GLO 3:09
well maybe i can do a plug then for one of the local entrepreneurs since this show is about you know local supporting locals but alison brohm up in Squamish they told me just last week that they bought another bowler which is apparently this trailer thing and i guess it's very colorful they can pull it over and do a little pop up thing for you maybe.

ADAM 3:28
amazing that'd be great yeah i like the cotton candy idea too

GLO 3:33
oh i'll have to show you what this place is i just i don't know when i walked into your space that was immediately what i thought of this place outside the bamboo forest in kyoto japan i don't know five years ago

ADAM 3:46
yeah

GLO 3:48
it's very cool but anyway okay poor Adam we've totally got a different direction but i just can't help but be inspired when i look at his beer cans because i also don't know the inspiration for that is it japanese and trendy or is it like i don't know just super cool i don't know it's too cool for me so maybe you tell me what's the inspiration there what's going on

ADAM 4:08
it's a number of things so my business partner matt is the designer of almost all of our labels

GLO 4:14
really

ADAM 4:15
yeah so he has i think anything recent he's definitely done all of them and then he's in the past we've had like one or two other designers make some of the more mix some of the components so we've had we did one and we only ever done one that had like an illustration on it i guess like a hand drawn sort of illustration and that was done by another artist and we've now we've otherwise kind of done them all in house and matt has done them so matt's focus now is largely on all of our design and merchandise and and our branding components which is great because it's a big thing that it's a big expense for a brewery too if you're you know one of the things breweries do is they put out a lot of new products and every time you make a new label to pay a designer is rather expensive so yeah we've but again we've we've just been doing that and has been the inspiration for a lot of them like four years ago we started making beer so we won't even open in this location for a little while but we started making beer under this brand a long time ago and we had ideas of what we wanted to see in the brand and in the labels and we wanted it to be very much like it it is yep and we we had some difficulty communicating that with designers we'd kind of get things back that were probably accurate to what we asked for but not what we wanted because we've determined we're not very good at communicating that which is another reason why we just do it ourselves but it was it was mostly to be just different from what a lot of breweries were doing at the time and i mean now i i still think our standard we have our own aesthetic to it and i can't really put my finger on exactly how i would describe it but there's a lot more stuff now that's more kind of esoteric and abstract and colorful and we're definitely in that realm at the time like four or five years ago there was this like phase of sort of heritage based hipster branding

ADAM 6:19
every brewery had like a drawing of hops and grain on their label and not to knock anyone who does that because those are the main ingredients and beer but like we just didn't want to do that and we wanted to do something that was different and we didn't want to name our place after part of town or a mountain or river bridge or you know which is also super common because a lot of the you know the brewing renaissance lately is it's been about locality and just being part of your community which we still want to be but we just you know we're in strathcona and there's a brewery called strathcona who is which is where we brewed before we came here so it's a very good idea it's just we don't want to do that we wanted to you know just be different so

GLO 7:03
yeah one thing i say can say just getting to know adam a bit three's company is that adam and matt are different they definitely stand out against the grain against the hops whatever you want to call it but definitely they're tall slender cans their design is it's instagram worthy i mean it's swoonworthy there it's really cool you definitely have different in spades and you started a big business during COVID you definitely got that part covered actually why don't i use that to segue into your background who are you guys where are you guys from how did this all get started

ADAM 7:39
yeah so we my partner matt has done a lot of different things when he and i met he was bartending in vancouver at a at an account that we sold i sold beer too and i was selling beer for i have another business that i'm less involved with today but i still own a portion of it and it's like we were an importer so we would bring in beer from excuse me all over the place mostly belgium in the us and we would sell it in bc and alberta and so i was selling some beer into that account and matt was there and then we just kind of struck up a friendship he knew the beer i was bringing in which totally surprised me because it was relatively obscure at the time and he was a call of that beer and then we just ended up chatting started a friendship so you know matt's done a whole bunch of other things in his you know life and career and he's he's a very lucky he can be very singularly focused so he will just decide he wants to do something and he'll go do it so you know he was playing golf professionally for a while he wasn't on like the pga tour but he was you know his living was playing golf and was extremely hard but so he lived all over doing that and addy and stuff like that so he yeah he did that in the us for a little while and then fine part of that

GLO 9:03
design or interior design was that in his arsenal 

ADAM 9:06
no so he had one business prior to prior to superflux that he was doing with a partner and that was selling some products online and he would do some basic graphic work and website design and stuff like that but i mean he's he's literally the kind of person who could figure out how to do like just about anything so yeah he's he's really capable in that way which is awesome and he can figure out how to do stuff really really well like he's extremely detail focused and detail oriented and that's not really my strong suit i try to get better at it but i'm a little bit more scattered and i kind of just push my way through stuff so we joke that we joke but i say that i like to be the one who makes things happen and possible and he's the one who makes them really good

GLO  9:59
yeah it's perfect for a partnership or relationship, he's like your day spouse I guess.

ADAM 10:04
Yeah. Work wife his work life. Yeah. Good one too.

GLO 10:09
Yeah, that's awesome.

ADAM 10:11
People also call him my boyfriend or my beer husband. So it's it can be any of those things.

GLO 10:17
I love it. I love it. That's what you need for a business partnership to write for work? Well,

ADAM 10:22
yeah. So yeah. And it's good to know what those things are, I'd say is pretty critical. I don't have a ton of experience with partners. I've always kind of been do it myself kind of guide as well. And I just would be like, oh, I'll make this happen. I want to do it my way. And I know Matt and I are both quite stubborn. But we are a little Venn diagram of stubbornness has some overlap. And we, we find the right parts that you know, and that's that's, like that overlap is literally what super flex is, if we see stuff, and it's like, what do you think it's like, I love this. He's like, I hate that. And I'm like, Okay, I'm not doing that. And vice versa. And then if he gives me some, and he's like, what do you think I'm like, yeah, it's awesome, then that's like, I mean, that's pretty much the decision making right there.

GLO 11:04
Right. Cool. So okay, that's great. Um, what do you bring to the table? Then he brings all this sort of, you know, mixed bag in his arsenal? How about you, I was like, you were ready in beer kind of in the beer game.

ADAM 11:17
Yeah, so that was my main contribution, I think initially, and still, I guess, to this day, so because I had a network of people who bought and, you know, knew that I was a purveyor of really high quality beer. When I started making my own beer. I do think to some degree, before they even tasted it, they thought that, you know, I was granted that it would be good. And I think that helped a lot. The beer was really good. And initially, Matt and I, for the first year, we we operated under a different name called machine, L's. And we did that at callister, which is a small brewery. And it's literally the closest brewery to our current brewery. It's like a block away at Clark and Hastings, basically on Franklin Street. And so we both brewed, we do one day, like, one week, I would brew next week, he would brew or whatever we did, we brew twice a month, but we just rotate. And the beer that he made was always more popular than the beer that I made. So I would joke that I made the beer that kept us from running out of beer. But we, we quickly figured out that what he was on to like people like my beer, but they his his was just it brought a little more falling. And it was kind of that hazy IPA style that we are really known for now. So when we started brewing full time, he quit his bartending job. And then he did all the brewing. And so I would focus on the sales, and I would just do, you know, primarily the sales, but then where I said, You know, I kind of make things happen, I remember looking at him and saying, we're going to open a brewery, I'm going to, I'm going to get us a brewery. And so, you know, I went out and I figured out how to find and raise the money. Because Yeah, we're not, you know, we spent a lot of money on building this brewery, and we both did not have that to bring. So we had to find, you know, investors and lenders and construct, you know, write various agreements, and put put that all together, which was great. And through, you know, some of my network and people I've met over the years, I was able to do that, which was awesome. And then today, I, you know, I sort of function, we don't really have titles, but I function, sort of more like a, I don't know, we're very small companies, they would have like a president. But I, my goal is to integrate the various different business functions now. So making sure sales and production know how to work together. In general, I oversee sales and marketing. And I'm responsible for revenue and finance, but I don't, you know, I don't make the beer I get, I get some saying to what we make and because I have good feedback, or I've a good way of determining what's going to sell and I know what, you know, right? sense out there, and how the last thing went and all that. But we try to do most of that as a team now. And it's great that we have a bigger team than just Matt Nye. So yeah. Yeah.

GLO 14:18
Great way to the top. You've worked your way up the company. Up in the ladder.

ADAM 14:23
Yeah, from being two people. And yeah. But yeah, I mean, we still make we make all the big decisions together. So if there's anything really important that we see, but we have, you know, you mentioned you hinted at one of your other questions, which is well, we will be when we grow up and I'm, yeah, happy to do that if you want an hour later, but, you know, we get to focus on some of the things more long term that we want to do as well, right?

GLO 14:51
Yeah. No, I'm sure I'm actually looking forward to hear about that evolution or where you hope to go. But I do want to touch a little bit. On to you. no adam is a sort of beer expert so and i've heard him talk on other beer podcasts and give interviews about beer but i don't think my listeners know as much about beer so i just want to touch a little bit on the things that you've brought up like machine sales to now superflex for example the change in name brewing out of another brewery for example like is it like a is it like a commissary kitchen where you can go rent a space and make your own beer and then just sell it you know you figure out the packaging a commissary but what i mean by that is like you know baker's baker's base yeah like a kitchen or ghost kitchen this type of thing

ADAM 15:38
you're exactly right that i mean that is what Callister’s model is except that you just because i mean beer takes a long time like most food you can make in a day i mean even sourdough you can make in two days or whatever but like you know beer takes a couple weeks usually so for for casters model what happens they may have changed this but when we signed on we were the first group they just opened when we started there we were there for a year so we committed to a year to be there and to make it and sell our beer out of that room so technically we we had a brand and they were the brewery okay so they you know in the eyes of the authorities and i mean you need a number of licenses to make beer excuse me federally and provincially so in the eyes of the government it was their beer not our beer would you know we would present it as if people make it and that's very very common even huge breweries like you mentioned some things like japanese things so sapporo i'm pretty confident like sapporo owns sleeman and okanogan springs and i'm i might be wrong on this but i'm pretty confident that there is a bunch of sapporo that is brewed here by those breweries and there was a point where there was guinness and bottles it was brewed by labatt siemens has always brewed beer for some other breweries it's so it's it's super common that that happens in the beer industry so it's it's very normal for you know a brand to be made at a different brewery

GLO 17:18
is that what you guys will do like will someone come to your brewery and brew eventually or no

ADAM 17:23
maybe probably not so which is a little weird because we wouldn't exist if other people didn't let us do that you know if we hadn't been given that opportunity we've discussed it in a few ways but there's we only have so much space and we we feel pretty confident that we'll be able to use it all for our own brands i see there's some other complexities to it the you know without getting really in the weeds the bc government and the liquor distribution branch which is responsible for all the liquor sales they've made some changes to the way that they handle markup so you know every time you buy beer the brewery has to pay some markup direct to them even if they don't really do anything and that is based upon how much beer you make annually and so if we added another brewery and depending on that brewery was that could increase our numbers so that our total markup goes way up it gets kind of complicated but there's a handful of reasons and there may be a time i mean you never know it what i would foresee is more likely as if we grew to a larger size we may look to make some more of our beer somewhere else because there are you know there'll be times where like as we grow before it makes sense to buy another building or right you know move the brewery it would probably make sense to add some of that production capacity by making the beer elsewhere okay all kinds of other issues oh cuz then you have to you have someone else potentially making your beer and your beer like we're very particular about how our beer is made so whatever it's yeah

GLO 19:05
okay okay and that actually that brings up a couple of questions for me i was wondering like so you mentioned like you are known for this hazy ipa type beer is that all you make and then i was going to ask also what i saw your space like it looks pretty big to me but is that considered like a small craft size are you like a full standard size brewery but anyway those are my two question

ADAM 19:29
yeah so i was on the beer style side it's not all that we make it ipa i would say which you know has meant a number of different things definitely over the last 1015 years that term has expanded i would say the number of things that could be considered an ipa we just call them all ipas we don't get too into specific distinctions at least in terms of how we put the product forward to the sumur internally we talked about them a little bit differently in terms of like what our goal or vision is but we yeah so most of those are this kind of hazy style i mean that's what we're most known for it's it's my opinion and i'm not i might be wrong on this i'm pretty sure when we were at callister we were the first brewery to ever make a beer like that in bc it was a style that was really highly popularized on the east coast of the us so you'll hear terms that are kind of mean the same thing as hazy ipa which are like northeast ipa vermont ipa east coast ipa yeah so people will say that and so most of what we do i would say probably over ipa 70% is that one of our main beers called happiness is a more like clear ipa difference for somebody who's listening that maybe doesn't know that much about beer you know you can get a beer that looks very cloudy like a half a vitamin and or beer that looks very clear like a molson canadian or labatt blue or coors light and so you know that's essentially the difference are hazy ipas look more like a half of ice and like you literally yeah they're they're opaque for lack of a better word they're they're very excuse me kind of sunny yellow maybe with a little bit of orange in them and then you have the clear beers they're they're made with a different yeast the two different beers and what generally happens with yeast and beer is it there's a term called flocculation and it just means settling out so you know you can picture if you took a bunch of dirt and put it in water and you shook it up it would take 10 minutes and it would be probably pretty clear and all the dirt settles to the bottom yeast basically does the same thing well it's alive and active it tends to cloud up the beer and then when it starts doesn't really die but when it goes dormant it settles out to the bottom of the beer when we make the hazy ipas there's a technique that it's called dry hopping so we had a whole bunch of our hops which are the green you know when they're come off the pines or vines they look like pine cones we buy them in pout and pallets that look like rabbit food we had those and we had a lot of them and then they go into the beer and they kind of do this thing that's called bio transformation which is they have all these different oils in them and the hops kind of like latch on to those and then they stay in suspension in the beer

GLO  22:40
oh okay so is that control the taste is by hops i mean that's how you control it okay

ADAM 22:48
so most of our beer is like arguably very similar in recipe except for the hops and it's kind of you know it's kind of like making a courier stew and using a bunch of different spices you okay you know you can really no i mean we've had comments and people are not necessarily wrong to say this to say like oh you know i've four or five year ipas and they all kind of seem the same well there's definitely a style but there's also nuance between them so you know those if you're the type of person who never smells anything that you eat or drink you're probably inclined to think that our beers are quite similar but i mean they smell very very different and there will be very different flavor notes some of them are balanced a bit differently where there'll be like a little more sweeter a little more bitter but in general like hops that are that we like or that are quite popular they used to be sorry hops used to just be like more piney and maybe have some citrus and all the breeders or cultivars now they're making all these hops that tend to have much more like fruit forward citrus pineapple

GLO 24:02
that's what i read about your beer as people say it's very fruity

ADAM 24:05
yeah and it's it's fruity in a yeah and like there's a lot of candy kind of fruit like we say get those have forgotten the name of the marty sweethearts or like starburst or starburst and then that there's that yellow trident gum it was like kind of a tropical thing, yes

ADAM 24:32
that it just says like a very specific kind of five alive-y flavor and like all of those things exist in these in this realm of hops quite a lot so which is cool and it's fun to play with so those are generally the types that we like to use more and they come from yakima and washington they've come from we buy a bunch from australia and new zealand as well which is great and they yeah so they all have kinds of different characters and we love playing with those Figuring them out, and then some of our beers will prominently feature one hop. So it'll have, you know, and each hop can have many different flavor components to it, some are more complex, and others, like, you know, even grapes and wine and stuff. But we, yeah, sometimes we have beers that are very prominently featuring just one hop, almost all of that hop or 90%. And then we'll have other beers that are very blended, I'm gonna try to give you other a lot of different character, or to take advantage of, you know, the certain things that we like, like some hops aren't that good on their own, and some are really great on their own. And

GLO 25:37
that's interesting. I'm now you both started off as well. He was a bartender, and it sounds like you were a hobby Brewer right on the side. And then you started making your own recipes, I guess, out of callister, has your recipes changed that much? Or, you know, like, did you go by client demand? Or is it really just your flavor palate, like what you guys are producing is what you like,

ADAM 26:02
know, a little bit of both, I mean, so we now have a head Brewer, Simon, who used to be the head Brewer at how sound and Squamish and he really likes these styles of beers as well. And he's got his own opinions and stuff. So it's, you know, there's three of us now and even more, but we definitely take into account, you know, what our fans like and what, you know, what seems to be popular, like you can, you can tell pretty quickly if something resonates with people, but we So in general, like, I mean, there's a thing a lot like people think I feel like the same is true in cooking. But I'm not a chef. But people talk a lot about recipes. I mean, you can give somebody the best cookbook in the world, and they can make some pretty terrible food out of it. So with beer, I think you can, you know, recipes, or they're only worth so much. The biggest thing that comes into it is technique, and which I think is similar to cooking. Like, there's, there's just a lot of decisions to be made in the three weeks between when you make that beer, and you know, are able to drink that beer. So like, you know, just quickly for the people who don't know much about beer, I mean, it starts with little pieces of grain. So you take that grain, it gets malted, we don't do that we buy a malted, and then we, we crush it, we basically steep it in hot water, we filter that hot water off, we boil that hot water, we add hops, at some point, we don't do a lot on the hot side anymore, which is that's a whole other thing that gets kind of technical. But then we we strain all that out, we call the beer down, we add yeast to the beer, and we ferment the beer, you can pick whatever temperature you want to ferment and that some won't work and some work badly. And then we chilled the beer down then we packaged a beer but all along the way. I mean, each one of those steps, there's probably 50 different things you can think about. You know, like just want to talk about grinding the grain. It's like how fast you do it, how fine you do it, how Of course you do it. That has a whole bunch of other things that factor in, in general, that's pretty standardized. But so yeah, you just kind of find your system that works. And then you base things around it. Like there's you could change one thing and it could drastically change the beer, you change three things and then not know which one had the effect and all that stuff. So over time, it's mostly been a change in technique. But for us, like most of that change has been around the technique of dry hopping, okay, because that's the key thing and it, you know, it, we use a lot of hops, so we want to make sure we're using them, right. They're very, very expensive, but I'd say 60 to 70% of the cost of our beer, or at least ingredients is hops so

GLO 28:42
interesting. And what's your background? Like? Are you a chemist or a scientist or something? Like because it sounds like you'd like to sort of, you know,

ADAM 28:54
I do like that stuff a lot. And it was beer that got me to do that. So that's kind of why I knew I could start a business in beer. Because when I was thinking about beer, I didn't mind learning all these other things to you know, figure that stuff out. So I used to know a lot more i think that i do now. Because I don't have to apply it as much I start learning more about the business side of things. And I've learned a lot more about how financial statements and QuickBooks works. So yeah, yeah. When I when I did brew, and when homebrew Yeah, it was important to learn a lot of that stuff and start to understand so you grab it, no, I have actually just have a business degree. Which helps you don't know. Yeah, it it sort of helps. I think it hurts at first because it gives you some sort of false confidence that you actually know anything about business and you don't. But it It helped me get some jobs when I started out which helped me learn how to sell and I mean for the folks that are listening that are thinking of starting a business and turning a hobby or a craft into a business or even just like whether you want to think about it as a business or not you want to just monetize that a little bit selling is an important thing and some people are feel like they are not supposed to be able to do it but it's it's just a skill and it's not what most people that are afraid of it think it is it's you know it's not the sleazy car salesman kind of thing

GLO 30:27
well unless you make it that way right 

ADAM 30:32
i know it shouldn't be and that's not the best way to do it either even if your product is incredible and your product speaks for itself and i feel like we fall in that category that is also a lot of problems but you still need to sell and you still need to promote and you still need to ask for business every once in a while i mean we do it every day we open the door and we ask people to come in and spend money and we ask our partners to buy our beer and sell our beer and you know so supports anyway a bit of business background is great in that and getting a little bit of a sales job was was fun for me so

GLO 31:06
well and what would you advise someone like would you i mean did you keep making the beer until it was absolutely perfect and then sell it or did you guys just get go with the mindset of hey we were making something that's pretty good we've got to cover our cost like let's go see if we can sell some stuff you know

ADAM 31:22
yeah you almost set it there right at the beginning and then you said until it was perfect but our thing was just keep making beer and we said that to ourselves for the first two or three years like before we found the place we were gonna open the brand was like just keep making like again we had already decided that not perfect but i mean matt is a perfectionist more than i am i would say but it was just like we knew it was really good and we wanted to always make it better and you can always make things if not better a little more on what you want

GLO 31:52
yeah

ADAM 31:53
yeah and we've we've definitely evolved our labels to have evolved a lot even when we thought they were good matt redesigned them when we opened our new space and i was like oh man like i didn't even think we needed to change them and these are way better and so that kind of stuff all the time but yeah it was you know my advice would be first of all if you know you want to start a business which is it is different like if you just love doing like i love cooking and i i would open a restaurant but i would i do not want to be a chef at a restaurant like hey i love cooking because i love cooking i do not want to turn my love of cooking into a business i i love beer and i always wanted to turn it into business you could you could like you could destroy your passion by trying to make it into a business potentially so if you but if you if you're past that and you know you want to do it i'd say just do it and like even if you make $100 next year yes take the thing sell it and see how that goes you might totally surprise yourself and i you know we did and i'm so happy that we did it because i you know i've been scared to do that before us and we just kind of like beer was the one thing i found where i knew i was gonna do it and i knew i had the confidence and that's great yeah so that's i mean that'd be my piece of advice is just do it and it might take you a couple years but just do the thing

GLO 33:16
yeah just do the thing well and i think you said it too right like just keep making beer it's the practice of it right you just got to keep putting yourself out there and just be consistent about it and you know just keep i think the more you do it the more brave you get really right you get more confidence

ADAM 33:30
well totally and i mean you'll learn more yeah you'll learn and you'll learn 80% of what you learn i think is things you didn't know you didn't know and didn't think you'd need to learn and will lead you to all this other stuff like i mean it's just you know i've been lucky now to meet so many different people like entrepreneurs or people with small businesses or whatever and you just you ask people how they got into something and i mean it's usually not the same as oh i always wanted to be a doctor so i went to school and i became a it's usually like i thought i was going to do this and then i started doing that and then this happened and then i learned this and i took advantage like this your passions and your hobbies can bring you to some really cool places if you just kind of chase them so like like it'll force you won't even force you you'll just learn all these things because you love it and then all of a sudden you'll realize you have this wicked toolkit that you can apply to something else and i think it's awesome so i i encourage entrepreneurship all the time even if it's just like yeah like i say just slightly monetizing a hobby again it's not for everybody and a bunch of ways and a lot of people i'm sure don't want to borrow a million dollars to do something no but yeah it's there's tons of levels of it and i just think ignoring so much

GLO 34:53
yeah just try it that's the thing just try it um what about superflex i didn't ask you about that how did you guys come from machine ales to super flex i'm sure you've been asked that before

ADAM 35:05
you know what we have for sure it is one of those little things that you learn which was you know you think about it a name so we we we wanted to have our name like we like to machine hours because it didn't sound like any other brewery really or like you know it was different in style than what breweries were calling themselves but we couldn't trade market and we realized it like just over time which it didn't seem that important at the beginning but we couldn't trademark that name and we didn't want to develop a brand and packaging if we ran the risk of being told we might use a name and that's actually something a lot of business owners take for granted you don't have to trademark every name if you want to use it you can register your business and username but you could find that you've invested a whole bunch of time and money in someone else who has much more money comes along and says hey you can't do that you can't use that name we own the trademark and then you've kind of wasted your energy so again i mean some people that are listening maybe have experienced that or seen it happen we we've had some interesting experiences with that all the time so we had we had to find a new name we had a long list of names that kind of met our criteria and i didn't really like any of them or i didn't match something to me i was like i don't like any of those except for superflux he's like favorite too so we'll just use that so like the

ADAM 36:42
process or something like is it what is it what superflex

ADAM 36:46
didn't really mean anything

GLO 36:50
it reflects like you're flexing super flex

ADAM 36:55
yeah no we had yeah we had all these random ideas and random items and like you know we just we wanted something that was different and didn't like i said didn't really sound like it was a brewery or it could be anything right it that works for us like machine sales or like i always used to say i liked it because like we had this really i liked our logo i thought it was really cool and are our word market guess but it like it just could have been like a snowboard company or something right just it just looks good on a hat and i was like and you wouldn't necessarily know what it was and i i like that that was always one of our our criteria so because yeah we may want to put our name on something in the future that isn't beer

GLO 37:43
well you could put it on clothing like you could actually have a whole line of swag with with your designs and that name and everything yeah no it's a great name and i like that story i thought it might have referred to a process of brewing or something i wasn't sure

ADAM 37:59
yeah not really i mean the closest that it comes to having any like real genesis story is that when we were machine we had a couple things where we said we'd name things like something machine like you know we made a coffee beer we called it bean machine and yeah and then we had like we were gonna do this one we wanted to call it like time machine and then aka like flux capacitor which is the you know the basically the engine of the delorean from back to the future

GLO 38:29
right

ADAM 38:31
the word flux was kind of like floating around for us is something we might use yeah that's the closest that it was to like really having any story but we just kind of like the sound of it and i mean we do that with the names of our beers naming beers is terribly terribly hard every name you can think of for beers been used

GLO 38:51
like okay yeah now you've created your own word your own name kind of like the lol like now your super flex is like you just gotta own it that's awesome you know i started to ask you a bit too like you're a brewery right now it's got i don't know how many silo is that what they are called those those silver containers

ADAM 39:12
yeah

Unknown 39:14
yeah yeah they're just started fermentation vessels or packaging tanks but

GLO  39:20
and they comes right out of there right like as soon as it's done you just pour it right out of that tank

ADAM 39:24
that's it sort of so we there's two tanks in the process so the first tank is where we ferment the beer in the presence of active yeast so like you know anybody who's baking or doing kombucha or anything like that they'll kind of know that process and when that's done basically when the yeast has eaten all the sugars we move it over to another tank called the bright tank and the right tank which is actually spelled br i t but it is it's a packaging tank basically and the idea right does refer to the same thing as the other spelling of the word which is like clear and i know i said we don't make that much clear beer but the idea is in that tent set yeah exactly and we do have a lager as well for a room and stuff but the idea with that tank is traditionally that any yeast that would have been left after fermentation would continue to settle out to allow you to make more clear beer okay and kind of condition it essentially but we only move it in there for a few days and then we carbonate the beer in there as well

GLO  40:31
okay so the tank or part of the process as opposed to just holding it it's actually doing something

ADAM 40:37
exactly and then from that tank after it's been a couple of days in there we actually put it into cans directly from that tank or into kegs so the if you come into our room and you get a glass of beer that's actually being poured from a keg that's in the back of our fridge

GLO 40:50
oh i see

ADAM 40:51
yeah so we some breweries and there's there's a bunch around where you'll go to they do serve from a big tank like that i mean maybe not that big because that one's pretty ours are 5000 liters which is pretty large to serve from it would take us i don't even know how long to go through one batch of beer on tap in our room you know anyone here it would take a long time so so we you know split it up and put it in different things and send it all over the place but yeah some places will have those serving tanks which is there handy as well

GLO 41:25
right is it different now having customers as opposed to just selling it you know in cans dinner man because now you've got a port for people live and you've got the pick it up and go portion what yeah is it different 

ADAM 41:40
different and it's awesome though it's yeah that's one of my favorite parts because it's like before it would just be really really cool if someone was like oh i really love your beer you'd be like oh that's awesome or you'd see somebody maybe walking down the street with your beer which is you know anyone who ever makes a product that first time you see that it's awesome you're just like hey they have my thing like i don't even know them right but now i see that like every day so you just see

GLO 42:12
it's like coming to your home

ADAM 42:13
yeah like when we first opened like that first week just to see people sitting in there and they'd never been in there and they just came in and they just sat down and in 10 minutes everyone's just sitting there talking like they're just hanging out they're just enjoying it like they've like this place has always been there and they're just in it yeah that felt awesome

GLO 42:38
yeah

ADAM 42:38
i bet i don't know what i expected but like people weren't like sitting there like what do we do right like they were just they're comfortable enjoying themselves and like that is awesome and to see people who like i mean we have people who come in there's these two guys that seem at the bar pro twice a week like they're always in there after work and there's a bunch of people who just come in all the time like there's some dogs that people bring by all the time missed out on all the dogs now and it's like oh that kind of stuff is super super cool like to have that you know direct connection with the people who love your love what you do amazing

GLO 43:14
it's such a sunny space to like considering we live in gray kind of dreary vancouver he really captured that california style like when i went into the space i'm like i'm surprised i didn't see the waitstaff or whoever you know rolling around on rollerblades or like or scooters or something right because it's just lends itself to fun and to movement it's such a great space

ADAM 43:38
yeah thank you yeah we're very very proud of the space and how it turned out it was neither of us had ever participated in a project like that so we were we were nervous but just because we're particular and we i don't know we didn't know what to expect but it it turned out great like i mean we we had in our heads it doesn't look exactly the same but it it feels very very much like what we thought it would feel like and we were pleasantly surprised so yeah yeah it does have this cool extensive moment and i'm so excited to be open during the summer and spring like we like i say we didn't open till october and we were open for three weeks and then the next set of health restrictions came in that has kind of you know it's it's kept our place not as busy as it could be which is fine

GLO 44:26
you have an outdoor space as well i don't know that i saw that

ADAM 44:30
okay we don't have one set up we have it we have an area we should be able to use for a patio we have to do a little bit of logistics but we do have an area inside that although it wouldn't be quote unquote a patio it is right next to a big bay door we can open yeah i saw that so it's there is a good thing like you've kind of touched on it there's our space it you're inside but you don't necessarily feel like you're missing a nice day so which is good and i mean i don't know what how that'll go i don't know if i can convince everybody who wants a patio that next summer but like anyway we're trying to work on one the city in the province have made it relatively easy for businesses you know in the hospitality sector which is great so we do have approval from the province and we just need to yeah we got all these things we it's in our parking lot that we use for a lot of other stuff so we have to try to figure out how to do those other things while people might be there and i know there's a bit of juggling so

GLO  45:40
um they are super flex is located in the old budget printing warehouse which or no space retail space i remember that space actually as a kid because if we crossed clark you know we used to we start off in burnaby and if we cross clark we'd be heading to either the gelato place or chinatown so i knew where we were kind of heading we always went up and down and so i like and plus that's got such a great view of the mountains it's kind of like you look at the north shore you're like wow there it is so

ADAM 46:11
it's a great question i have not yet figured out how to capture it on film

ADAM 46:16
on film i agree i tried that too

GLO 46:18
is when you come down clark and i see the brewery in the mountains and the cranes like at the port

ADAM 46:26
yeah

GLO 46:28
know i totally know what you mean i think

GLO 46:34
maybe a drone

ADAM 46:36
yeah me actually a drone could work we had one of our contractors in a photographer it our inside shots did go up above there's a coffee shop across the street called aggro and they did up above there on the roof of that building and take something and it was it's it was pretty good it just it's still like really hard to capture how it feels when you drive down the street and see it i guess also most people don't also like that's not their dream they're driving to it's mine so like it looks it feels different in that way but like it's pretty cool like i really really like it and our rooftop is an amazing place to drink beer

ADAM 47:19
no only if you own it right i get it we went up there on the summer and we had some and we'll i'm sure we'll do it again as staff but yeah which unfortunately otherwise i don't think it'd be possible but i don't know it's maybe one day we could we could build a patio up there would be extremely expensive but

GLO 47:40
why not add them now that you've got the confidence of dealing with the city like why not that's a perfect way to you know keep it COVID safe it's outdoors and all that yeah and what have you up there from out there

ADAM 47:52
yeah

GLO 47:52
yeah great um there are so many more things i could ask you but i do have to be mindful of your time so i want to ask you about like all the different well maybe you could just help us finish off by telling us about what you're going to do when you grow up what's the next evolution what sort of takes up your thoughts and dreams right now

ADAM 48:13
sure well we have a couple part of our long term plan is within 10 years which i think we can probably do in five years is to have three total business units that ideally one of those has nothing to do with beer or isn't beer focus so like for example it could be like a restaurant like yeah we'd sell some beer but it would be our own kind of space or place we have a couple other ones that i don't like specifically don't want to give away but yeah just trying to combine the idea of beer and fun like you know we it doesn't need to be a brewery there are other types of beer that we really really like that we don't make and we it might be very very cool to have another brewery that is more focused on that so like for example and this is not uncommon or it's not even really all that unique of a path for a brewery but you know like barrel aged beers is a common thing or sour mix what they call mixed fermentation so that's not something we are really set up to do or necessarily want to do in this space but we could find a really cool space to do that or people to partner and collaborate with to make something like that because that's the kind of thing that like i don't know it's sort of yeah just seems like a fun project i don't know

GLO  49:46
i mean no it sounds great it's i love it because that means the beer empire is starting this is just step one

ADAM 49:53
exactly and you know ideally we'd love to see another and maybe it's not the same as What we do here, it might be more tailored to a different community. But, you know, potentially another brewery in another city. Again, it could be a bar or a restaurant or something like that. But it would be fun. I mean, we we feel like there is lots of opportunity. But we had another idea when we were starting out, we sell hot dogs at the brewery,

GLO 50:21
the food thing because you like to cook and you've talked about rush, you've touched our restaurant a couple of times, what's the thing for you? Yeah,

ADAM 50:27
we so we, like we do hot dogs there. But since starting that concept, we were lucky enough to find this guy, Justin, who is a, I mean, he doesn't like to call himself a chef, but he's a chef. I mean, he's like, he makes incredible, incredible food. And so he's he kind of started taking, we want to do hotdogs and salads. And he's taking the salads and using incredible produce from some of the suppliers he worked with at previous restaurants. And he's also created these he has his dish. It's a cabinet like a stuffed cabbage Polonaise. It. So it's kind of easy to think of it kind of like a cabbage roll. But without rice, and it had 10 times better. 

ADAM 51:14
Is is incredible. It is. And so it, you know, that is, I don't know, we didn't set within any of the scope of what we had. But it's it's awesome. And it's kind of become this iconic little dish that people love. And you can read it a brewery but it's this sort of semi fusion. Yeah. Anyway, it's really rad. But

GLO 51:39
you think about my cotton candy idea. I wonder what he would think about the cotton candy idea.

ADAM 51:47
He likes having fun too. So it'd be good. Well, yeah, it's, I mean, our food has kind of ended up being a little more upscale than we initially planned for. But it's worked out really, really great. Because he's, you know, he's capable of take like the hot dogs. I'll have real food on them. It's not like ketchup and mustard. Like we would change them up all the time. But I mean, yeah, the

GLO 52:09
elevated hot dogs. Yeah,

ADAM 52:11
I would say so. And I mean, they're, so whatever's leftover from those are some of the salads. He's able to take those other things and work those in other dishes. And it's very seasonal, and local and fresh. And and that's Yeah, that's been fantastic. So but yeah, Sir, did I get off track of the initial question?

GLO 52:30
I'm just I'm just letting you go off track. Because there's, there's so much like I said, there's so many more things I could ask you. But I do have to be mindful of your time. So thank you for your time. I do appreciate. Yeah, I know. I do appreciate knowing about the whole beer thing. The name, you know, the design where you guys are headed. It's all great to know. So for anybody else, can you ship beer? Like can it be shipped to I have listeners in the States, for example?

ADAM 52:55
Unfortunately, not to us now. Our next, like we ship within BC right now. So right now for the time being we have $5 shipping anywhere in BC, which is awesome. Oh, wow. Yeah. So that's a promotional thing that we're running for bet we don't really have an end date for it, but we'll modify it

GLO 53:14
as I pay more for my bread, I think. Or pizza.

ADAM 53:18
That's great. No, it's great. And we just wanted to get our beer to more and more people and give them a chance to try it and see, you know, during the winter and COVID and Christmas, it was awesome. We will at some point expand to be able to do that. In other provinces. We just need to make sure we do that smartly. Because it gets a lot more expensive for everybody. And us, there's got to be some legality to that I have not even begun to understand. I'm still mapping out the legality,

GLO 53:47
right? Yeah, yeah. Why don't we end with Okay, so for a newbie like me, when I go into your shop, which beer Am I going to try? What should I try? What What can get me to be a super flex super fan?

ADAM 54:01
If you don't like color and shape, which is our main hazy IPA? Yeah. You'll probably find something else you like, but we may not be your favorite brewery. So start with that one. Okay. But typically, we're gonna have a couple different things on so I definitely if I gave you three beers, I'd give you two different IPAs. And then I asked if you wanted a stout if we had like one of our crazy stoats on or something kind of fruity or sour. Okay, cool. So we have like an orange creamsicle fountain beer with fountain beers a style we made up and we call this beer but it's all supposed to be like a soda fountain. So we just it's called

GLO 54:45
ice cream Adam.

ADAM 54:47
They would be terrific with like an ice cream float. But it's all like soda. Inspired like we haven't made like root beer. But the first beer we did, we tried to make sprite basically into a beer and the next one was coconut and lime which isn't based on any particular soda but it's all this kind of like you know it's it's not a sour beer and it's not super super fruit forward like it's not like we haven't made one that's red like raspberries we did make one called candyland a while back that was cream soda pretty much cotton candy ish candy super super cool anyway so yeah we i mean we can find something but we're we're very ipa driven we most of what people would find from us outside of superflux will be ipas so yeah if if you don't like ipa we've got stuff for you

ADAM 55:45
we have other beer but we won't we might not be your favourite brewery at that point so that's why i would say start with cone shape if you're like wow this is really good there's a lot of hope

GLO 55:55
there you go well i better get in line first because i when i dropped by for a quick visit i was only there for five minutes but i think it was like 11am i want to say maybe it was 12 i'm not sure but there are a lot of people live there already

ADAM 56:09
friday saturday sunday's are pretty crazy tuesdays are great tuesdays are fine too but again yeah most people can drink beer tuesday afternoon so one got to work okay

GLO 56:23
yes yes okay i will i will make a point to you that color and shape anyways thanks again for your time i really appreciate it love the conversation

ADAM 56:31
that was a pleasure i really appreciate

GLO 56:33
it well i wish you guys all the best best of luck i'm really looking forward to your seriously you're building your beer empire you know what else that i was thinking when you're talking as you know your clear beer the clean beer you're saying was called happiness but think like super bright light bright bright lights i don't know something about your brand just makes me think of toys and retro and fun

ADAM 56:56
i like that i like light bright so thanks

GLO  56:58
yeah remember though good luck with all of that

ADAM 57:04
well thank you so very very much that was a pleasure

GLO 57:06
okay take care and i'll talk to you soon

ADAM 57:08
yes goodbye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai