S4E4: YMI Talking to Josh Divers from Seven Sirens Brewing Company

New episode out now 🎧

This week we sat down with Josh Divers from Seven Sirens Brewing Company and got into the real story behind the business

From taking a huge risk and opening right before the world changed to navigating the challenges that followed, this conversation is all about what it takes to keep going when things don’t go as planned

We talked about growth, mindset, and the reality behind building something from the ground up

A great reminder that success is not always a straight path

Listen now! 

For more info on YMI insurance visit our website at ymiagency.com

Or give us a call at 610-868-8762 to see how we can better protect your business and family.

Transcript

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It was amazing to see the support. You know, we have a capacity of 320 people in Bethlehem, and we had for the first three weeks before Covid because we opened Valentine's Day, you know, 2020, 3 weeks before the pandemic. You know, we put our houses up for collateral and yeah, every everything, it was all in. Yeah. But we were at capacity for like three weeks with a line out the door. And that's what really helped us because we didn't get a bunch of like PPE loans and stuff like that because we weren't open long enough. Welcome to YMI Talking! A podcast where the guests are so good you'll wonder why the host is even talking. In each episode, you will hear one of the leaders of the Lehigh Valley’s vibrant business hub. They will tell you the keys to their success, the mistakes they've made, and what they have in store for the future. Here is the host of YMI Talking, from YMI Insurance, Jimi Honochick. Yes. All right. I am so excited for this episode. This episode is I mean, I love beer, I love beer so much. Who doesn't? And we have an expert here today. You know him! Josh Divers from Seven Sirens Brewing Company. He is the head brewer over there. He's a co-owner. I'm sure you know of this brewery. They are here. They have been doing incredible things in Lehigh Valley, and I couldn't say thank you enough for coming on here. Josh, I appreciate you having me. Absolutely. So talk to me about seven sirens, you know, how do you guys get started? So we were looking at a spot now in Allentown when we first started and that fell through. So we were on the journey to find another spot. We already had social media started, so it was a decision to start it again, or just bring everybody that's been following us on the journey to find a location, a home. Yeah, we worked with, you know, a bunch of different people. We found our Bethlehem spot was a parking garage, 7000 square foot. Felt right because we started in my one car garage. So we joked, that really got an upgrade. Yeah. Oh, yeah. One car garage that you can't really fit a car into to a 7000 square foot parking garage. Oh, wow. Yeah, it just felt right. And, we joked that we're like Apple and Ford, you know, because they started in one car garages. Yeah, but we make beer. We don't make money. I like your product more. So it works out. Well. Yeah, I go back to that then the one car garage. I mean, were you doing something before you decided, hey, I want to brew beer or, you know, how do you make that transition? It was it was a big transition. A transition. I came from a family business doing landscaping, running a fertilizing company. I was doing that with my family since I was 11. So early dismissal days off. Get your butt to work. Yeah. So that's. Yeah, I can thank my my dad for my hard work ethic. But I, I really just fell in love with beer. Even before I started brewing beer, I was just kind of like a brief stalker. Kind of like just, you know, loving what dogfish was doing and Sam Adams was doing. And like, dogfish was one of my big inspirations because they did wild stuff, like, they just did a lot of crazy stuff. I lived in Delaware for five years, and so you have to love dogfish, but it's so. Yes, it's so incredible what they've done. Yeah, yeah. And he came from, from home brewing as well. Okay. You know the inspiration behind that. Like it's it's so many different aspects that it was inspiration to start up a brewery, you know after dogfish because you know he came from home brewing I believe it was a 12 gallon system that he started with. And, you know, he started young. Yeah. And it was kind of a path to like, you know, you don't have to be in the brewing industry to, you know, start a brewery. Yeah. You just have to have a passion for it. And that's, you know, I didn't have schooling beforehand. Like, I just obsessed about beer. Like I said before, you know, I go home and my wife says three things. You can say three things about beer after that. Shut up. So I try to talk about beer all day long. Right? Like all spent. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, the one car garage, we, we pretty much convert it into a brewery. I brewed three batches in the house, and my wife said, this smells. So I moved out to the garage. And, you know, the garage was pretty much a unlicensed brewery that we were just homebrewing a bunch and figuring out recipes before we, you know, decide to make it a living. Yeah. And so are you distributing it at that point? Like, what are you doing with the beer that you're brewing at that point? You know, at the early days we were doing some beer festivals and tasting events. You know, in Pennsylvania you can only make up to 200 gallons. Yeah. Without a license as, as a home brewer. And we, you know, kind of pushed limits before we open. We were we were pretty close because we were doing a bunch of tasting events, a bunch of beer festivals, just trying to get our name out there. So, like when we opened, It was amazing to see the support. You know, we have a capacity of 320 people in Bethlehem, and we had for the first three weeks before Covid because we opened Valentine's Day, you know, 2020, 3 weeks before the pandemic. You know, we put our houses up for collateral and yeah, every everything, it was all in. Yeah. But we were at capacity for like three weeks with a line out the door. And that's what really helped us because we didn't get a bunch of like PPE loans and stuff like that because we weren't open long enough. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we figured it out, kept us on our toes. Let's let's dive into that a little bit. You know, you are open for three weeks and things are going great. You guys are crushing it. Everything you would hope to dream for. And then, you know, the pandemic hits. How do you guys stay afloat. And like, what's the feeling in you at that moment? Yeah. So many emotions all at the same time. Yeah. Like it's it was hard to, you know, even like there was a lot of times where it was, you know, it was scary because we put our houses up for collateral. Myself and my partner, you know, pulled out retirement funds and literally, you know, clean savings accounts and, you know, all in. Yeah. And when we like, you know, pretty much found out nobody's coming to save us. Like, we had to figure it out. And then during Covid, like all the different regulations that changed throughout, you know, it. I missed some of those days because it did keep us on our toes and, you know, keep us actively thinking. And, you know, we were very flexible of changing processes and procedures and all that. And I remember my wife saying multiple times, like, what are you doing today? And I was like, I don't know. We're going into work and we're going to figure it out. Yeah, like because we we didn't have a kitchen. So like we wanted to fully focus on our beer. Yeah. We didn't want to, you know, every place that we went to, you know, back back in those days, if they had kitchens and they also made beer, it was like, okay food, okay beer or really great food, you know, crappy beer. And we just wanted to put full focus in beer. So we our plan was rotating food trucks. And Bethlehem is somewhat hard to deal with food trucks because all the permits and stuff like that. But yeah. Yeah. So you were in your garage. When does Jordan get involved? When do you guys kind of go in and say, we're going to make a real run of this? So, I'll try to make the long story short, I was home brewing for years and, you know, doing my family business. I was really into craft beer, then got into brewing, and then I was doing a competition for Sam Adams where there was different levels. And, you know, before you could even submit your beer to, like, get to the next level, you had to have people vote for you and like, you had to create this profile. And it was it was a pretty complex competition. They do it all the time. You know, I believe it's once a year. It's been years since, I mean, I can't enter anymore because I approve professionally. Right. But I made it up to the top five nationwide. Wow. But one of the parts of the competition you had to, like, get out and get your name out there and get people to vote for you. Seven sirens was started for about six months. Like the name was created. The organization was created between Jordan and a previous partner, and he had some really big dreams. And his partner, you know, made good beer. But his dreams, like he just didn't want to go as big as Jordan did. Yeah. So, you know, and Jordan, he was in the Navy for six years. That's where the name Seven Sirens comes from. Because sirens sing the sailors and lure them to their death. And we say they're sexy and luring like our beer. The plan was to have seven flagships, you know, and we don't decide those flagships, the customers do. You know, there's a lot of great beers that I would love to brew, and sometimes I'm brewing. What keeps the lights on? Luckily, there are some beers that I do really enjoy that keeps the lights on. Yeah. But when I was getting my name out there, he was trying to get seven sirens name out there, and we kept coming across each other and he, you know, we sat down the one day because I said, hey, I want to get into the industry. Like, I see that you're, you know, opening a brewery. If I can help at any point, like just figure stuff out, pour beer at Beer Fest. And he came to me and was like my partner, you know, Hebrews, the beer. But he's not interested in doing at this level. Do you want to brew beer for Seven Sirens? Do you want to be a partner? Like where? Like where do you see yourself? And he was like, I'm putting my house up for collateral, and I don't know how. Well I do. Kind of. So a week later, I was like, I'm in. I become a partner. And I put my house up for collateral, and I look back and I was like, I said to my wife, the one day I was like, why? How? Like, how did you agree to this? And she's like, you're stubborn. You were going to do this with me or with that. So that's she she would, you know, support me 100% from the start. It's great. I feel like in order to be successful in business, you need to have that support at home or it's not going to work. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And she's great support. You know, she's a saint and she doesn't get enough credit. Yeah. So I try to give her credit when I can. That's great. Yeah. All right. So are you like a kid in a chocolate factory like I picture you now have. You're going from your garage, and now you're entering seven sirens and you've got, would you say, 7000 square foot of space? Like, what is that transition like for you? It was it was huge, you know, five about 5000 square foot is is tasting room. So I had about, you know, 1500 to 2000 square foot, including the cold room. Yeah. You know, to put all my new shiny toys. That's another story in itself, because we paid for full. And, you know, the brewing equipment was supposed to be turned around in two months. 14 months later, it finally showed up. Oh, wow. Yeah. What are you doing then? How are you bridging that gap? Yeah. So we had to do a bunch of contract brews and collaborations at the time. Wire Baker had some empty tanks, so we were brewing at Wire Baker. I was running down to Philly with Second Story doing collaborations with them. Ten seven, Tattered Flag, blueprint and my wife's like, your schedule is absolutely nuts. And I was like, it is until like we figure things out, right? Because I was, you know, trying to run a business but also brewing. And I didn't have the equipment, you know, to do it. So we had to figure out how to get beer. You know, that was another emotion. You know, when we opened, we were blowing through more beer than we planned for. Right. So Covid was kind of a blessing, you know, where it slowed us down a little bit to catch up because we would have ran out of beer. Right. You know, we thought we were stuck for like three months. We were good for like three weeks. Wow. Yeah. Good problem to have, but also a problem to have. Correct. Yeah, yeah. You know, generally there's always problems. The goal is to just figure it out. Yeah. How is the partnership? I mean, I'm assuming you guys are pretty good at figuring out how the best approach is to these problems. Yeah. I mean, we both don't sleep, so, like, sometimes, you know, we could figure out the problems during the day. Sometimes it's, you know, in the middle of the night, sometimes, you know, it's at the end of the day we figure the problems out. Yeah. You know, if I need help with. He's more front of house. I'm more Becca house. You know, if if I need extra input or extra help with something, you know, I can go to him if he needs input. On on in front of house thing, you know, same thing. I'd rather just focus on beer and business and, Yeah. It works. Just. You need a yin to your yang, right? Yeah, yeah. We'll talk about the beer, then. This is your favorite part. This is where you come in. You did bring a four pack, but talk to me about, you know what makes seven sirens beer different than other beers? Okay. Yeah. So when we first started, Orange Skies was our first batch that we actually served of through our system. Okay, so when you first start, you know, brewing on a system, you have to figure out certain numbers, your efficiency and all that to dial in your recipes. And the first couple batches, this was the fourth batch that we've ever done through our system. The first couple batches you generally thread on the drain because they generally don't work right. Yeah, yeah. Orange skies. I absolutely hated that beer. It was my least favorite taste wise or everything about everything about it. It was, you know, there was nothing. The beer tasted good. But when we first did it, it came out 8.3. It was punch you in the face with flavor and a Belgian wits. Just not supposed to be like that, right? And I was like, this is this is horrible. I want to dump it down the drain towards like, I think it's good. I think we should serve it. And it's actually my wife's favorite beer that we have. And for years I've hated it because it was nothing. What I wanted it to be from the start. And it became our number one seller overnight, like we were going through 1 to 2 kegs of it a day. Wow. And Jordan's like, I guess we're brewing that again. So we consistently, you know, it just over the years, it's been number one until lighthouse came out. Lighthouse, our American lager. We've tweaked orange skies over the years, so I do enjoy it now. Okay. I can finally say that I can enjoy it. The bartenders would laugh when I'm actually drinking an orange sky. Yeah, I know how much I hated years ago, but being head brewer, you can make some changes. Yes, the goal is to tweak stuff so it's not big changes. You know, a lot of breweries do that and it's just, you know, you want to make small tweaks. So especially like for flagship stuff that people like, you don't want to just completely change it overnight. Yeah. You can work out recipes and make them more efficient or, you know, change the ABV or, you know, the bittering or different ingredients. You can change them. But especially for flagships, you want to make small changes over time. Unless it's a, you know, something went wrong. Yeah, yeah. But yeah. And then lighthouse came out a few years ago. That was our number one seller. But since that came out that took over orange skies. Orange skies went to number two. Lighthouse kind of had a name before we even bird it because people would come in and be like, what's your light house beer. Oh like that. What's what's your house beer. That's light. And they who names the beers do you get to do that? Is it a group? Sometimes it's a group thing. Okay. I generally make the final call on it. Most like if it's if we're trying to make it a flagship, like I said, the customer decides on flagship. So, you know, we don't get to like we don't get to just pick certain beers and be like, we're going to brew that all the time, right? It's got to sell. There's a lot of great beers that are underrated that, you know, we end up, you know, stop brewing. Or does that hurt you like personally at one point it did. Yeah. You know you kind of get over it after a while. You know there there is a lot of fun projects and new beers that, you know, bring bring excitement. So it's just like, okay, yeah, that sucks. That one's going away. But hopefully another one will come back. Yeah, yeah. You know, sometimes we bring beers back after a while. If we get enough people that, you know, are asking for it, sometimes we just give beers a break so it's not overdone. We've had some beers where, you know, we've just given a break and then brought them back. And people like, I want to say two, no, two months ago I think we released two beers that we did five years ago at Wire Backer, and people loved them. Yeah. Some of the batches that we did at Wire Baker when we first started our flagship. So we continue to do today. That's pretty cool. Yeah, that was really cool because when we had to do the contract brewing at Wire Backer, we had to put it on a personal credit card because the bank said, that's not in your business plan. Oh my God. And your SBA loan is not paying for that. Yeah. So we had to put it on a personal credit card. And I scaled up a recipe from five gallons to 40 barrels. Wow. And hoped and prayed. Yeah, it worked out. But there was there was a lot of sleepless nights over that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure. So that's crazy. Yeah. So tell me about seven sirens inside. It's, you know, you guys have done a great job there. But what makes the drinking experience different there than it might be from another brewery? We try to focus on the ambiance there. So, you know it's not just drinking beer in a parking garage, right? Yeah. You know, when we first, which I'm not opposed to, but no, it's not the choice. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's definitely a lot better than when we took over the spot, because when we took over the spot, there was a little bit of electric and no doors were windows. So like, yeah, now we have doors, windows, utilities rack. Yeah. But we, we added lighting, you know, whether it's stadia or stage lighting, just ambiance throughout certain times of the night, we dimmed down the lights to change on Beyonce. We have games to keep people entertained. We just put in a what was it? We have a claw machine that the kids love. And then what was it, one of those punching? Yeah, yeah, we just put that in. Okay. I got wiped off the top ten list real fast. Yeah. My older kid loves that, so I bet. Yeah, yeah. Do the kids spend, like, a lot of time there? Is it a family thing at this point? My kids grew up in breweries. Yeah. So I love seeing the the fights on Facebook of kids shouldn't be allowed at bars and breweries and all that stuff, because my kids grew up in breweries and they behave better in breweries than they do anywhere else. Yeah, especially at home. But yeah, I mean, there's there's many times where they've they've helped me at the brewery. My younger one, he's nine and Jack will be like, hey, dad, I want to go on shift. Yeah. Can you, you know, can I squeegee the floors? Well, what else can I do? Yeah, I wipe down the tables. You know, my older one when I was taking them to school in the mornings, you know, on, on brew days, you know, we would stop at the brewery before I drop him off at school. He would help me mash in and get the beer started just so my day was a little bit shorter because the clock doesn't start for brew days until you start the beer. Yeah. And it's, you know, for us with our, you know, gas pressure and stuff like that. Like it's an 11 hour day for brew day. So he's like that, like there's mornings where he's like that, I don't want to brew beer. And I'm like, dude, you're going to love these stories in high school. Yeah. So, you know your friends that you made beer. Yeah, when you were younger. So that's awesome. And so the family is in the business. Something else that I think is really unique, interesting. I don't know if it's breweries in general or the Lehigh Valley, but there's a family feel among the breweries, a camaraderie. Oh yeah. Where does that come from? It's so I came from landscaping my previous, you know, before brewing. So landscaping is very cutthroat. And when you go into the beer industry, it's crazy because it's like complete opposite, you know? Yes. We're all trying to sell beers to customers and stuff like that, but each one of us have we have our own demographics. So like there's times where I would love to brew more traditional beers, but that's not my demographic. You know, Yergey’s over in Emmaus like their demographic. It's more traditional beers, you know, Funk they do, you know, a lot of, well, well done IPAs and and chanties, you know, so when we want to do different beers, like, we'll talk to each other and be like, hey, you know, how would you do this? What yeast did you use? Or, you know, kind of I mean, there's times where, like on a brew day, you've overlooked something and you're short, you know, a product like, hey, I need rice hauls, send out a message. Who's got rice halls? Yeah. And, you know, there's 20 I think there's 27 or 28 breweries. And we have alley 24 of them are in the guild. So like, we have a guild that we're, you know, constantly talking, you know, back and forth between different projects that we're working on together and, and sharing ideas and stuff like that. that, which this January, this past January just became the president of the Guild. Congrats. Thanks. I had not enough stuff to do. But yeah that's awesome. Insurance is not that way. We have not made tons of friends, but I'm I'm of a similar mindset where, you know, we're all in this together. I'm not trying to steal from you like we a rising tide lifts all boats. And it's really cool to see that in the brewery world. Yeah. Very cool. Are you from the Lehigh Valley originally? So the house I live in down the street from here. Yeah, I been there since fourth grade. Wow. So I went to school to Salisbury. I met my wife at Salisbury. Wow. We were high school sweethearts, and she went off to college. I stayed at the family business, and. Yeah, but, yeah, I grew up in the Lehigh Valley. And my kids go to Salisbury now. Yeah. So that's very cool. What makes the Lehigh Valley unique or special? What has kept you here over all these years? I don't know. There's, you know, I don't know. I mean, it's it's a great it's a great spot like the we have has a bunch of different little things, you know. You know. Yes. Allentown. There's fun stuff like Dorney Park and, you know, stuff like that. And then you go to Bethlehem. It's a completely different vibe, but it's 15 minutes down the road. Yeah. You know, same thing with Easton, like Easton, if you like food, if you're a foodie, go to Easton. Like they have great food. You can. Emily I do like food. Yes. Yeah. Bethlehem. I mean, they have great food as well. I feel like between Bethlehem and Easton and not to take away from any place in Allentown because there's some great places here too, but also the nightlife changes in those areas. There's just a lot of diversity. Yeah, and I think that's what I enjoy. You know, and we have 23 taps in Bethlehem. Our goal is to have a diverse, you know, lineup. Our goal is not to hit your palate 23 times, right. You know, two times would be nice, you know, but we can have a bunch of different stuff. And hopefully you like two different beers. Our draft list. I love that. So that's great. Yeah. All right. So season four, we are sponsored by the Swiftwater up in the Poconos. It's beautiful hotel, brand new. They do all these incredible, incredible amenities. You know, it's the best vacation you can take in the Poconos. So, Josh, what was the best vacation you ever took? I want to, I forget what year was we. We went to Rehoboth. Are we going back to. We're going to head. We're going back to dogfish. Let's see. My youngest is nine. I think it was about ten years ago. We went to Rehoboth. My older one, he was probably two years old. Yeah, he was strapped to my chest. We did a tour through dogfish. Nice. And he was the only kid, probably in the brewery strapped to my chest during the tour. Yeah. And and around that time was when I was really big in the beer before I, you know, before owning a brewery. So, I mean, it was, you know, eyes wide open just looking at stuff like, oh, that's cool. You know, look at those shiny toys. Like a kid in a chocolate factory or a candy store. And then I'm going to say, two years ago, we went back to our Hobart and kind of recreated some of the pictures with ice cream on the boardwalk and stuff like that. And like, we joke that that's where Jack came from with, you know, you go off the timing of when he was born. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it was Rehoboth is probably my all time favorite, you know, place to go. I grew up going to Virginia Beach with my family. You know, we had a time share. We spent a lot of hours on the beach where I hate sand, but I. I enjoy Rehoboth sand. Just not my sandwich. Well, Josh, is there anything that we didn't hit that you want to talk about? Anything seven sirens is doing that we should have talked about. We just got rid of a shuffleboard table. We got some new stuff coming. Okay. We got a bunch of open room for more stuff. For an experience. Yeah, I don't want to give away. I was going to say. Did you just tease that? I just teased that. Okay, we're changing some stuff up. I think, you know, we already have it out there that we are partnering with somebody for food. That used to be. So MetroPCS used to be next to us. Yeah. And we have a partner going in and putting a kitchen in. Wow. So we're going to be there dining hall pretty much. So you could be at your table. You can order your food and they'll bring it right over. We're working on procedures and stuff like that where we might do some table service. Not definite yet, but there's going to be some new changes coming with seven sirens. That's exciting though, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm excited for consistent food. I mean, we have food trucks. There's a lot of great food trucks. And, you know, it's a struggle sometimes, you know, just having consistent food. So we want to partner up with somebody where we can, you know, do more pairings and stuff like that because beer, dinner pairings. Why? You know, why make it a tick. An event when you can make it an everyday thing? Yeah, yeah. So I love, Yeah, I'm excited to have food right next door and, you know, not have to pack my lunch. All right. I have to ask, though. Do you have a favorite beer? Both yours. And then just in general, that's a hard question. I, you know, I that's what we do here. Hard questions only as far as our, our beers. My favorite is lighthouse. Lighthouse. Because it's just a beer flavored beer. It's just simple. It's 4.2 ABV. So like I, I really enjoy, you know, when I'm networking and talking with people to have a beer in my hand. And with lighthouse being 4.2, you can have multiple beers and you're not getting wasted. Yeah, you know, I that's the secret. I always end up wasted at these events. Yeah. Stay away from the stats. But out of hours. Lighthouse is my favorite. You know, not only for the beer, you know? Yes. It's not a cool. It's our lighthouse beer. Like I said, it was name before we even, you know, brewed it. But my grandfather that passed away years ago, he collected lighthouses and love lighthouses. So when we came out with that, my grandmother was like your grandfather. I was like, I know. Wow. I was like, so it was kind of, you know, an honor for him as well. Yeah. And I actually have a lighthouse tattooed on me. Yeah. For that as well. It's my favorite. My favorite beer for hours. Yeah. As far as a favorite beer, you know, that's not ours. You don't have to plug anyone if you don't want to know. I honestly, I like I said, I that's a hard question because I generally have multiple favorites. It just depends on what I'm doing, where I'm at, who I'm with. Yeah. So like if I'm on a picnic, it's going to be a different beer than if I'm having a shower. Beer. Yes. Because shower beers are awesome as well. They are. But probably Sierra Nevada pale ale. Yeah. It's just an easy drinker. Yeah. And you can have multiple of those as well. Yeah. All right. So and then last but not least, I would be remiss if I didn't ask was the secret to a good beard? I grew a beard recently and my staff knew it was not a good period. How do we how do we get that going? You just have to have a fear for razors. Okay. Now, I stopped shaving when my when my oldest was a week old. I didn't have time for it. Yeah, it was either shave or not be able to change diapers. So I pretty much stopped shaving then. And once you get past the high stage. Yeah, you know, you're. You're back. Yeah. Yeah. The dog definitely likes if you leave some snacks in there and it's like having a natural bib. Yeah. So it's good. Yeah. Well, Josh, I can't say thank you enough. This was great. The things that you guys are doing in Seven Sirens are awesome. And I thank you so much for coming here. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. for listening to another episode of the Why Am I talking podcast. If you enjoyed this and want to hear more content from amazing personalities in the Valley, please subscribe. Leave a rating and drop us a quick review.