Afternoon Pint
Afternoon Pint is a laid-back Canadian podcast hosted by Matt Conrad and Mike Tobin. Each episode, they invite a special guest to join them at a pub or microbrewery to get to know them a bit better. Conversations cover a wide range of topics, including Entrepreneurship, business, Arts, pop culture, music, science, society, Life stories, experiences, you get the idea...
Our aim is to create a show for everyone (even non-Canadians.) We create a welcoming atmosphere where guests can share their perspectives with transparency. Essentially, Afternoon Pint is like heading to the pub after work to catch up with some friends through your headphones or stereo. We are Nova Scotia's #2 podcast, but we pretend we are number 1!
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Afternoon Pint
Mathieu Gagnon - Sober Carpenter - How two Canadian brothers created an international non alcohol craft beer brand.
This episode was recorded in January but its the perfect episode to listen to after a boozy St. Patricks day. This is our very first Craft Beer in Canada: Non - Alcohol Edition.
Mathieu Gagnon is one of two brewing brothers who previously owned an alcoholic brewery identified a gap in the quality non-alcoholic beer market and created Sober Carpenter, now available in all Canadian provinces and 28 US states.
Mathieu explains their arrested fermentation process that prevents beer from exceeding 0.5% alcohol while maintaining flavour integrity. Their beer is manufactured at Equals Brewing in London, Ontario with national distribution strategies focusing on major retailers. We talk everything from tariffs to distribution in this episode that will give you lots of insight into the the complicated but booming non alcohol beverage market.
Visit sobercarpenter.com to order any flavour with free delivery on two or more cases, or find select varieties at select grocery stores.
Kimia Nejat of Kimia Nejat Realty
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From far and wide. We drink tonight with folks from all around. Cheers, cheers, cheers. Welcome to the Afternoon Pint. I'm Mike Tobin.
Speaker 2:I am Matt Conrad, and who do we have?
Speaker 3:here and I'm Matthew Gagnon from Sober Carpenter.
Speaker 1:Matthew Sober Carpenter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sober Carpenter yeah exactly.
Speaker 1:I'd really love to thank your team there for sending us the care package. At the beginning of the month, I announced that I was doing Dry January. This is being recorded on January 27th, so I made it. I didn't touch a drop of beer or anything, wine or anything alcohol-related now for the entire month. I also stayed away from Hawkins Cheezies. That was another commitment that I made. I didn't touch those either. I don't know if you know this, matthew, but the episode that just came out with we had former Premier Stephen McNeil on our show and he actually had a sober carpenter with us. He was doing Dry January also, so it was pretty cool.
Speaker 3:Very impressive.
Speaker 1:One of your beers with an ex-premier Excellent.
Speaker 2:So what do we have here? So I'll mean, I'll start, because I mean mine's right up here behind me, the one that I'm drinking, that's the double IPA, which is pretty tasty. Yeah, hazy, exactly. It's pretty tasty and I see you have pictures of oranges and creamsicles and stuff on there and I can definitely get that on there with that nice hint of orange, orange and it's. It's pretty good.
Speaker 1:I like a hazy ipa, so it's good I'm drinking the what uh black ipa right there yeah, yeah, so those were a couple of our limited editions.
Speaker 3:We uh, we we've launched in in the in the past. Yeah, cool. And what are you drinking? I'm drinking, uh, session ipa myself. I'm an IPA guy, so I drink the black, the hazy. I got a regular IPA and I got the Session IPA in my fridge. That's what I drink Amazing.
Speaker 2:We're all having IPAs. We're all psychopaths, all right.
Speaker 1:So Sober Carpenter. How did it all begin?
Speaker 3:So, sober Carpenter, how did it all begin? It's myself and my brother, are the, the owners, the founders. We've actually been around the the beverage industry for a little while. We were. We had a brewery in Quebec called, you know, two Brothers Two Brothers Brewery in the alcoholic space for a while. You know two brothers two brothers were in the alcoholic space for a while Also do a brand on the alcoholics. I think that's called Pop Shop. We do the alcoholic version. So we've been in that space for a while and you know same thing, I think as many people.
Speaker 3:You know we were drinking a lot of beer ourselves, personally, and you know getting a bit older, slowing down in the senior league where we play hockey, you know just feeling that. You know getting a bit older, slowing down in the senior league where we play hockey, you know just feeling that. You know just getting. You know you feel you get a bit older. So we decided you know we were in the beer business. We decided, you know what could we do to improve the category? Because we felt there was a need and we were just, you know, when we started the business, taking a look at the non-out category. It was, like you know, end of 2017, 2018. So really there wasn't much.
Speaker 3:You know, the partakes of this world or athletic brewing were just starting up. We were seeing, like you know, there's an opportunity. We should get involved.
Speaker 3:There's some opportunities started talking with companies like athletic brewing, brew dog or bravis out of the us to just look at it from a maybe just distribution portion, just importing from the us some of the beers that were starting up and that we saw that were very good quality, like an athletic brewing, which I talked to back in 2018, early 2018, during port.
Speaker 3:And you know, as we had these discussions and it was, you know, not going the way we wanted or it was a bit too slow, we said, hey, we know beer, I think we could do a good product and we decided to do it ourselves and work on developing a brand and, it's more importantly, working on developing some recipes and products that we thought Canadians could enjoy and have a top-notch product in terms of quality. So we started the route of talking to potential partners in terms of distribution mostly American guys and then we decided to go let's create our own brand, own product, do it in Canada, bottle it in Canada and then try to sell as much as we can in Canada and sell as much as we can in the US.
Speaker 1:What was your approach? Did it start on a community level, like Sober Carpenter? Were you just selling it in your hometown, or how did you start selling it?
Speaker 3:No, we actually right off the bat saw that there was an opportunity at a national level and that's sort of the approach we took with retailers having knowledge of. You know, rather than going the route of trying to sell to the BCLDB and the AB&L and all those liquor boards that maybe the beer guys are more traditionally used to selling, we went and saw national distributors and national retailers and said here's a product and we think there's. And said here's a product and we think there's. You know, it's a market that's going to develop.
Speaker 3:Look at, you know, on your shelf you have Plastowler, you have you know old, you know O'Doul's, you know like O'Doul's and stuff like that. You know like, who's bought an O'Doul's? I've never seen anybody drink it. So we went and we we sort of told retailers that, um, you know we have an offering of a national product and that is is we can distribute everywhere and build a national brand. So rather than than trying to to go to the liquor boards and sort of have a provincial or regional distribution, we right away tried to develop national relationship with retailers like Sobeys and Metro and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:That is kind of the advantage, eh, the advantage of not the fact that there's no alcohol. You can just go to anybody who's willing to sell your product, right? So that's kind of the unique advantage of anyone who's getting into that non-alcoholic space that still wants to sell a product for people who still want to have a beer at the end of the day, or however many you want to have at the end of the day and and you know, and still be able to drive home or whatever, right, how do you?
Speaker 1:get alcohol out of beer. Do you make the beer and then remove the alcohol?
Speaker 3:yeah, it's actually like. So there's a couple different ways to do it. Um, and so there's the, the, the, let's say the, the european way, which is a de-alc, right, you'll, you'll let's say, you drink a heineken zero they'll do, uh, they'll actually ferment it with beer and then they do a process where they de-alkalize it. You can de-alk with either a slow distillation, where you'll burn the alcohol off, or you'll do, let's say, a very small filtering system. The problem we found with this process and that's why european beers are, let's say, all blonde is they'll take out the flavor, right, they'll take out. When you take either with you burn off alcohol, you're going to take off some of the flavor, or, if you filter it right, you're going to take off some of the flavoring.
Speaker 3:So what we do is we do a process called arrested fermentation. So we're basically like doing a recipe with what we would do for like a normal beer with a bit less malt, because we don't want to have like residual sugars and have like a sweet, unfermented taste at the end, where you have like sort of a heavy aftertaste because you have unfermented sugars. So we basically do everything the same way as you do a beer, but then we don't allow it to ferment super high. We we we crash it before it hits 0.05. So we basically bring the temperature extremely cold in the tank so the fermentation can't continue, and then we package it, ferment it so it can't restart the fermentation.
Speaker 3:So that's our process. It's called the rested fermentation and it's a process that most brewers will use. You can also use a non-fermentable yeast that will convert the sugars into alcohol. Same thing. We've experimented with that, but we find that really the best result to have sort of products like the black IPA or the hazy IPA that will really have some nice hoppy flavors is a rest of fermentation.
Speaker 1:Are some beers harder to make than others? They must be because, like this, this must be a challenging one to make compared to maybe like a lighter lager style or something else.
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely IPAs are more difficult. Anything with dry hopping is going to be more difficult and a lot of people think like, oh, it's non-alcoholic, should be, you know, cheaper than alcohol beer. It's actually more difficult and more expensive, for example, or IPA, because when you dry hop we can't dry hop with hot liquid, so we need to put even more hops to extract that hop flavor because it's you know, it's like seeping, seeping tea, seeping hops. If it's warm you're going to get a lot more flavor extracted out of there. When you're doing a dry hop with cold liquid, it's a lot tougher to extract that flavoring. So we have to pull it out a lot more with anything Like if you have more hops, more material in a brew, it's tougher to. At cold temperature it's tougher to extract, tougher to then, you know, centrifuge, get all the material out. So those, those IPAs that we have, especially the more like our, our traditional West coast IPA and our, our hazy IPA, are the most challenging beers to do for sure.
Speaker 2:That's a. That's a big thing I think that a lot of people think about. Is they think I mean, everyone knows that because there's alcohol and things, taxes are higher and all that stuff on those, and so that's why people sometimes justify the fact that you know the cost of beer. But people often will say that you know why is my non-alcoholic beer almost the same price as regular beer? But yeah, I don't think they realize the, the, the craft is still there, but also you have to. Yeah, like you said, there's some things. It's easy to just let things sit and ferment versus controlling the process a lot more along the way, which is why you guys, you know, end up having to spend a little bit more to kind of do the process. I don't think people realize that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, no for sure. And the ingredient cost. At the start there's not a major difference. Like I said, because we are using basically a same recipe and then you know, even some hops we need to use more hops.
Speaker 3:And the process is we're still fermenting the product. We're just fermenting it at a controlled temperature. So instead of having a tank where you're going to let the temperature rise up to 35, 40 degrees Celsius and then just have bubbling in it, just let it go, we have to control it. So the fermentation takes a bit longer and it's something where you also have to watch it a lot more. A normal beer you can, and once all the sugars are gone, you're good. Like us, we have a very good contract packer. We don't have our own plant. We work with a company called Equals Brewing, which is a great partner, but there's a brewer on site always checking the tank because as soon as you can't let it go, because if it goes over 0.5, 0.6, you're in trouble. So you can't just say like, leave the tank and come back in a week and and you know, call it a day, yeah, so yeah, it's a challenging process.
Speaker 1:How much beer are you guys or how much non-alcohol beer are you guys pumping out?
Speaker 3:now we're. We're right now in about six, 6,000, 6,500 accounts in North America. Amazing. So we sell accounts in North America. Amazing, we sell in 28 states across in the 28 states in the US. We're available in all of all the provinces in Canada. We try to get as much out as possible, but we're pretty proud to have that many accounts. It's just a question of people drinking as much as possible and then we'll pump out as much as possible.
Speaker 1:Cool. What are your concerns?
Speaker 1:or are there concerns with what's going on of people drinking as much as possible and then we'll pump out as much as possible? Oh cool, yeah. I mean, what are your concerns? Or are there concerns with what's going on in America right now with tariffs and trades? And I mean there's a lot of talk about things and and, and you know, being able to export to America might become a challenge in the near future. Do you guys? Are you guys dealing with that head on, or are you? Are you even seeing any of that in your world?
Speaker 3:So far we've made sure we're addressing with our customers. I think we're very proud of the fact that we're a small Canadian company and we're making a little dent on the US market. On CNNcom for their dry gen, we had a little blurb at the end. It's like with the leaded brewing and Heineken zero. Like it's pretty cool that you know two little guys from you know co-packing in London, ontario, or are on the CNN website. So we're we're very proud and what we're, what we're doing to prepare sort of for it.
Speaker 3:We, we don't want to start co-packing in the US. That's sort of a you know off the table resort. So we're talking with our partners and saying, hey, if this happens, how do we keep the product in Canada? Like we're going to, we're going to, you know, we're going to eat something. How can our partners like I'd rather buy four packs in London and co-pack in London and buy cans in Toronto, like, but if it all goes to the US, nobody's going to make money off of that right? So how can our suppliers help out? And we're going to eat most of it. So we're having those discussions but hopefully it doesn't come to that, that that we need to uh, tighten our belt. Hopefully, uh, you know, calmer heads prevail and and do the supplies mostly for your business.
Speaker 1:They mostly come from Canada or they come in from the US, like to the hops and such so hops?
Speaker 3:we? We have some hops from. Uh, we do use some Canadian hops. We have some European hops. We have some hops from the US as well. Uh, most cans are manufactured in Toronto. Yeah, um, so so. So cans are manufactured in Toronto. Uh, a lot of them. The malts will come from canada. Most of the malts will come from canada. Some malts, some, some more specialty malts, will be from europe, but most of the malts are actually canadian. Um, and then all the co-packing is done in canada as well. The only content that is us is when you're getting into, uh, you know, some of the the West Coast hops, you know, from Washington, the Citra Simcoe.
Speaker 2:I just opened the blonde here just because you know I'm on my second one, because it's a hard Monday night. You know we're going into it. So I mean, yeah, I can see the here like two row dominantly. Obviously everything's going to be two row. I assume that's Canadian two row. But yeah, you get your carapils kind of malt in there, which is that's what gets that nice caramel kind of flavor on it. So you have traditional Hallertal and Zotz hops on there. So those must be the European ones that you're bringing in. Yeah, yeah, I'm excited to try a blonde beer with Zotz hops because generally that's like for a pilsner, like you know, type of style, like a traditional European pilsner. I just something about them. Those noble hops are just yeah they're great, definitely stand out.
Speaker 3:And and we tried to, uh, when we develop each beer, we tried to really have a different you know hop profile to them. Like you know, our our session has galaxy hops, or, or, or, let's say, our original IPAs it was really West coast IPAs. It'll be all West coast American hops. So we tried to have different hop profiles to all the beers so that they really taste distinct.
Speaker 2:Where's the name come from?
Speaker 3:the Sober Carpenter Everybody. Yeah, it's a question, we get a lot. Somebody wrote to us and said, like you know, it's the original Sober Carpenter is Jesus.
Speaker 2:Somebody came up with that. I thought it was a good, good answer we should use that that's not true, because he turned water into wine.
Speaker 3:That's what. That's what he was drinking. He wasn't. He wasn't going to leave sober. A couple things when we started brainstorming on the name myself and my brother, you know, you go through these lists and then you, you know you sort of uh brainstorm, and then you, you talk to your friends and your wife about hey, what do you think sticks? And there's a couple of things we wanted to make sure we had. One was we wanted to make sure that, you know, people knew that we were a non-alcoholic product, right? So, having the word sober in there, we wanted not to shy away from that fact and really have it in the name and really communicate that we're, we're a non-alcoholic brand. You know we'll never do an alcoholic product. It will never be. You know, a boozy carpenter. You know we're sober carpenter. That that said, that's all. Yeah, yeah. We wanted a name that is easy to pronounce in French and in English.
Speaker 3:You know, we want a name that you know because of that regionality too, like we're very proud that I think we can say with the fact that we're probably the most you know one of the really national brands, craft national brands in Canada, because we're Quebec is sort of its own thing, right. Quebec is a difficult market. You French obviously an issue, so we wanted to have a name that stands out and is pronounced. It is pronounceable in English and French. So in Quebec, you know we're, we're the number two craft any beer after all.
Speaker 2:Sanchez from Boreal and so for a brand that's manufactured in ontario.
Speaker 3:That that's pretty neat. You know it's not la boquera, it's not uh, l'alchimiste, you know it's sober carpenter. So we wanted a name that you can pronounce in english and french, so that it's we can truly build a national brand. And the last thing was was a name that that's fun and and funny. So we thought, like you know why, silver carpenter? And the same reason like why? Because it's it's funny, it's fun, and that those are the three, three things why we're named silver carpenter you said you the blonde, we can get that here, I guess, yeah, the blonde's at sobeys uh, I know it's a great blonde.
Speaker 1:There are standard IPAs at Sobeys as well. I really like the red too. Man, after trying the sampler pack, did you try the?
Speaker 2:I know I gave you one out of the big. I know there's a red. I have a red down in the fridge downstairs.
Speaker 1:I was surprised how great that one was as well, you're really nailing the flavors.
Speaker 2:I'm interested to try it. I saw that it's an Irish Red.
Speaker 3:Irish Red yeah, with Windsor yeast. Actually, I think the Red is our most decorated beer. It's the one that's won the most awards for us. It was actually in USA Today named the best non-alcoholic red in North America.
Speaker 3:So, last year they had, you know, the best IPA, the best blonde, and our red was named as the best NA red in North America. So we're very proud of that fact and I think it's probably our best beer. Like awards, at least competition judges feel that it's the best. That's the one that's won the most medals. For us, cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think that was in Sobeys the red.
Speaker 3:The Sobeys. Distribution in Atlantic Canada is challenging. We've got to work on our distribution. So, you know, some stores can order but all the stores like have what we call is it's like a flex listing, right, so a store could order it that the product exists, but we have limited representation in like Atlantic Canada. Right, because to get in the stores we need we have we use brokers. We don't have our own employees on the, we're not big enough, you know. Use brokers. We don't have our own employees on the on the, we're not big enough, you know. So we don't have our own employees going store to store.
Speaker 3:We use brokers and what our broker in atlanta, canada, has a has a couple bodies but not enough to cover, you know, the whole territory and calling on it. But we work every day on it. They're working every day on it. We're adding stores, adding flavors, um, and uh yeah. So so just going increasing, but you know the best way to get all of our flavors or try anything is really the website silvercarpentercom and on there you can order whatever flavors you want.
Speaker 3:You know, we have two, two cases free delivery after that and we we often have very good deals. Uh, we just had, like last week, an ipa bundle, so you can just buy you, you know, every IPA like as a special package, so that's the best way to do it. Or else we also have Amazoncom. That we sell.
Speaker 3:Just to get one case free shipping with your shampoo or whatever else you're buying on Amazon is a good way to just try. You know, get one case instead of buying two or three to get a free shipping. So but we're working on distribution hard and trying to get also some some food and restaurant distribution in Atlantic Canada. So we're working hard on that.
Speaker 2:No, you know what, like I think Mike and I will, just we can do, we can do some distribution for you down here, we'll work for beer, you just send us.
Speaker 1:For you down here, we'll work for beer, you just send us keep sending us care packages and we'll spread the word out here, but yeah, you know well. But but to find a point though, I mean, uh, even now, today, we, we record our show at a microbrewery or a pub, and that's right. So it's all mobile podcast gear we have. We go out and we're quite right there on the spot, um, and we go to various pubs and microbreweries all across nova scotia. A real pain in the earth sometimes is if they don't have an alcohol beer or if they have a really lousy one. Right, because I, uh, I might, I often don't have a second, uh, alcoholic beer when I go record these shows yeah, and you know what we had.
Speaker 2:We had a good uh brand from pei here. They made only two. The beer was excellent.
Speaker 1:What brand is that?
Speaker 2:That's Upstreet. They make alcoholic beer, but they also make two of their styles in non-alcoholic Upstreet the brewery slash barbecue place pulled out of here, I think you can still get it. It's called Libra, I think you can still get it.
Speaker 1:Libra's pretty popular here. It's called Libra. I think you can still get it.
Speaker 2:It was pretty popular here, yeah, it was pretty popular, but honestly I thought it was one of the better ones. But honestly, I'm really really enjoying this blonde, and blonde's not really a style I enjoy that much. But I think it's just because you can taste the hops quite a bit on it, which is good, because I that those two hops. But um the um, it's amazing how, how far this non-alcoholic beer has come, because I was definitely one of those people who, you know, pre-covid and all that stuff was like you'll never, you know, I'll never drink it because there isn't any that are any good. Um, but that's changing drastically now. Right, there's a big market for it and now I feel like I can go out and I can grab six of them and you can drive home Cause he can, you know, drink six beer while you're sitting there talking to people and get in your car and go home.
Speaker 1:A good point, though Now on a lot of these a lot of these. I don't think there's warnings on yours, but there is warnings If I had the Corona Zero Alcohol in the summer at the house and they actually say right on, do not drink more than two. I have no idea why it said that and if they had any kind of concern other than maybe somebody feeling it. I don't know know. Is there any concern if you have consuming multiple of these beers, like there would be consuming regular beer?
Speaker 3:not aware. No, not, not on our side. I'm just trying to think for corona. The only thing I can think for corona is they had they had added like vitamin d in there yeah they had vitamin d to sort of make it like a special thing that, like you know, summer and then. So maybe that was the reason to not consume too much vitamin d um, and they may have actually removed that from their, their beer, but I'm not, I'm not too sure, but I think that might be the reason why they had to.
Speaker 2:I think it was more along the lines that their beer just tastes like garbage and you shouldn't drink.
Speaker 1:It's a good hot tub. Beer, buddy, it's a good hot tub, I'm an easy guy. I'm an easy drinker, I'm not.
Speaker 2:I tub beer buddy. It's a good hot tub. I'm an easy guy. I'm an easy drinker I'm not into.
Speaker 3:I'm not uh pretty, I'll drink anything. Uh pretty. Well, I'll try it in it, so yeah. So you guys are located in montreal, right? So yeah, our we're based out of montreal. Uh, myself and my brother live in montreal, and then we uh work with equals brewing out of, uh, london, ontario.
Speaker 2:Okay, so our products are manufactured in london oh so our products are manufactured in London, oh so they're actually manufactured in London.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay, yep, yep, yep, everything is manufactured in London, ontario, and then we ship from there all over the Canada, and then we ship them there to Detroit and then from Detroit all over the US.
Speaker 2:Okay, so if someone went to Montreal they would not be able to go to your brewery then.
Speaker 3:No, no, nope, no, they would, uh, they, they, they could come and knock on our sales office, and then we have uh we have some beer, but, uh, they won't see big fermenters and uh, uh, they won't see huge fermenters.
Speaker 3:And we went that route as well, just because you know, uh, there's, building a brewery is just so, uh, it's, it's time. Consuming takes a lot of resources and I don't think, you know, you can only be good at so many things. You know you can be good at packing stuff, you can be good at developing recipes, you can be good in sales and marketing, you can be good in customer service. And we know our strength wasn't to go knock on doors and talk to banks or investors and try to get a couple millions to build equipment. We know our style is we're good in marketing, we're good in product development and we're good at talking to retailers and working with retailers customer service. So those are our strengths and that's why we partnered with a contract contract packer, um, to do that and uh, so you know there's really two routes and we took that route. We think it's it was the best option for us.
Speaker 2:Uh, at the time, yeah, oh, I mean, it definitely lets you guys focus mostly on, like you know, the actual marketing and developing recipes and things like that, and just let someone else brew it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh, it makes sense.
Speaker 3:It beats shoveling grains, that's for sure. And brewing is a lot of fun, but it's certainly challenging, right? It's seven days a week, 24 hours a day, it's nonstop. So it's good to have. You have to find the right partner and you gotta, you gotta you gotta love it to do it for sure.
Speaker 2:And then just like all the like, the brewing parts, the fun part it's like the part is. The other part is like the cleaning. That's the part that I always I always hated about it is making sure everything's clean, because beard, you know it can get infected, not that it'll hurt you, it never, it'll never hurt you but you know it tastes and smells pretty bad when it is and uh, so you got to make sure you're cleaning things exceptionally, exceptionally well, and now even more so for you guys, because you guys are not fermenting it all the way, so the, you know pathogens aren't actually being cooked off with the, the fermentation process. So is that even a concern for you guys when it comes to like, like, if you had any situations like that where you know batches go off or anything like that, does it happen more often than regular breweries?
Speaker 3:I think you know, working with equals we were. We actually sort of like I'd say we sort of both helped each other out, because the uh uh one thing we you have to do with any beer in arrested fermentation is pasteurization right okay, you have to pasteurize your beer.
Speaker 3:Um, and that's a route. So basically, you're killing everything in can and there's. You know, some people say pasteurization can oxidize the beer. But the reality is, if you have a low level of oxygen or any low level oxygen in the product and you pasteurize it, what you're going to do is you're going to one, you kill everything in there so you can't have any risk of contamination or refermentation, but you're basically aging the product if there there's any aging to do any oxidation right away. So once you get, like our, our beer pasteurized, it will taste the same thing day one as it'll taste in two years. It's not like an IPA with really fresh hops where if it's three months old, you're seeing that the hops are losing their flavor. So fermentation does that.
Speaker 3:The other thing that, because we're NA, what we had to deal with in terms of retail is, let's say, the AB&L and LCBO they all work with alcoholic products. Let's say the ABNL and LCBO they all work with alcoholic products. So it's not in their mandate to ask for certain types of. They don't ask for audit certifications, for example. So we've been. We've sold product to Costco, we've sold product to Loblaws. All these retailers have certain standards of quality that require high level certifications. So because of that we've had to put in place with equals, certain standards for cleaning tracking that might be above what a regular brewery has to do. That might be above what a regular brewery has to do, because the standards of a Costco are higher than what the LCDO will require in terms of facility certification.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, and I mean, like, when I look at this, on top of that, the calories and stuff like that are pretty good too for people. Anyone Like that's another factor with this. Without the alcohol the calories tend to be much lower too. So that's another thing. But what like is there? Because I mean, it's a non-alcoholic product and you know, sometimes with alcohol and with hops like things tend to last a little longer. But is there a shelf life for your like for the beers, because there's non-alcoholic on there?
Speaker 3:Sorry. So, uh, yeah, there is a shelf life. The shelf life varies depending on the uh, depending on the uh on the beer, yeah, um and then. But what we do also is we do bench testing. We keep samples of every you know, every beer we're brewing. We got a couple and we'll taste, we'll test them, uh, down the line and to see if any, you know, if product is, is we need to, uh, you know, send a note to the distributors. Maybe this lot number pull a bit faster, or or you know that that's fine.
Speaker 3:We have our standard, standard levels, but we usually have very, very high level of turnover on a product because, as the volume has grown, what we've been able to do is so, rather than doing it's a bit more expensive what we do, but I think it helps with the product turnover. So, when we brew an IPA let's say a regular IPA we'll brew it and then we'll do part of the. We'll brew it almost every week or every two weeks, and every week and every two weeks we do a bit of 355 ml, we do a bit of USA product and we do a bit of Canada product 355 ml. We do a bit of usa product and we do a bit of canda product.
Speaker 3:So rather than saying week one, we're doing all 355 ml and we have 3 000 cases of 355. We do a bit of everything and so it helps with the velocity um and the turnover of the product awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great yeah what's in the future for Sober Carpenter?
Speaker 3:I think what we really want to work on and what we want to focus is just ensuring that that we keep bringing new products to the table and innovating.
Speaker 3:You mentioned how the quality of beer has has increased, and that is because there is a lot of competition and that's positive for the consumer because it forces all the companies like us to sort of take a look at the product and make sure that we're continually improving it and bringing new products to the table.
Speaker 3:So that's one thing we want to do is continue those limited series, series or limited edition products. Bring those, bring some to the market, um and uh, so that that's a big uh, big focus of ours and in 2025 and uh, and I think we want to make sure that we increase the distribution. In terms of reaching, I think retail stores like the Sobeys and the Loblaws of this world are getting more product onto the shelves and increasing the shelf space. I think the next target really for all the NA products is restaurants and bars making sure that you know you have two or three options of NA drinks on the menus and they're printed on the menus. I think that at that level, probably we're one or two years behind in terms of what's in the restaurants versus what's on the store shelves.
Speaker 1:I hope to see that too, I think it's just good beer choices, whether you can drink that day or not.
Speaker 2:And you guys do have a cider too. We do have that downstairs, so you guys are doing a cider product. Any thoughts at all of moving into, like the sodas or anything like that?
Speaker 3:No, it's not something we've taken a look at. The cider does very well. That's a de-alk cider, so we actually ferment it to 7% and then extract. So the process where I say we remove flavor, we do, uh, remove, you know, some flavor versus the cider, but what we think we end up with a nice crisp product. But uh, I think uh, there might be some cider innovation in 2025. Um, but I think uh not in terms of the hot waters and stuff like that. The more soda products. Uh, I think I think we're. Beer is keeping us busy. Beer and cider. I think, uh think we're there.
Speaker 2:There's nothing wrong with really mastering our market. I mean, I know Quebec. I believe it's a Quebec company that does some of the mixed drinks Atypic, I think you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a big one.
Speaker 2:That's a big one there from Quebec. I mean, their rum and coke honestly fooled me, uh, one time, like it tastes like it has rum in it. It's crazy, right. Um, but that's, yeah, that's if you, if you like a rum and coke type of thing, if you're, if you're, you know, if you want to get into there. But they have a bunch of different flavors, everything, so we can get some of those here. If you're like a mixed drink. But I think, yeah, stay, uh, I don't think anyone has to venture into that because, yeah, you guys are making a great beer product and I I'll try the cider later, but yeah, it's. Uh, it's always interesting to see if you want to compete in that space, but if beer's keeping you busy, just keep crushing it, right that's.
Speaker 3:That's what we got. To keep working at it.
Speaker 1:Right on, all right. It's time to move to the silly part of the show. Are you ready?
Speaker 3:Good to go.
Speaker 1:All right, cool so these questions. It's not that silly, but we just ask random questions. Matt, you got the questions there too. My friend, oh, did you send them to me? I hope I did, If I didn't I. Oh, did you send them to me?
Speaker 2:I I hope I did, or if I didn't, I'm gonna send them right now.
Speaker 1:No, I got them. I got them. Have them okay, awesome, yeah, okay. So, um, I'll just start question number one what's your favorite quebec specific dish?
Speaker 3:could be anything oh, gotta go with poutine I just, I had some on uh sunday with scheme and my daughter had poutine for lunch.
Speaker 1:Nice Okay. I was going to say you chose something different.
Speaker 2:I like the poutine. Do you like poutine? Or, specifically, do you like the galvode?
Speaker 3:The galvode. I'm not familiar with that.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's the poutine with the frigging peas and all that stuff on it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, no, no, no Cheese curds sauce and all that stuff on it. Yeah, oh, no, no, no cheese curds sauce and fries that's it, yeah, simple, simple fair answer all right number two.
Speaker 2:So, uh, what was the worst movie that you saw last year?
Speaker 3:uh, what is it? I, my daughter's not going to be happy. Uh, wicked. I'm not a musical guy, but my, my, my daughter wanted to see wicked. I was just happy not to fall asleep during it, but I, I can't take two hours of singing I.
Speaker 1:I, I was dragged to that one as well. How about, though I get? There was one great part of that movie, I thought. In my opinion, and it's when Mr Goldblum appeared At the end of the movie, the last 15 minutes it almost became a different movie when Jeff Goldblum appeared in that. It was just very silly, but I'm with you on that, it was a long watch. Yeah, I saw that one. Yeah, all right, number three Okay, this is a choice you can make. Okay, we won't judge you.
Speaker 3:You can only choose one, or take a drink, quebec separates or becomes the 51st state oh, I think Quebec becomes the 51st state, and you know, you get an extra 20 seats in the House and then the House becomes blue. In the US, you get two seats on the Senate, the Senate becomes blue and it's done. The US is not red anymore, it's blue. You know what?
Speaker 1:I like the answer. That's a great answer.
Speaker 2:I love it. There's a guy out here, out east, who talked about Quebec separation. His name is Rick Mercer and he said he had this great bit where he said we have a plan for Quebec if they ever separate. He says if Quebec separates, we're going to join you. All of Canada is just going to separate. We're going to be one big country called Quebec and then we're going to put it to a vote to rename it back to.
Speaker 2:Canada and we'll start it all over again. That was very much what you got going on there. Your strategy Very good. Next question Would you rather lose your hearing or your sight?
Speaker 3:I think I'd rather lose my hearing. I mean, there's a documentary right now on Netflix with the family. It's a family from Quebec and they know they're. I don't recall the name, but I saw some of the previews and I think the kids are. They're traveling for one year with the parents because they've gotten a diagnosis that they're going to lose their sight in a year. So it's on Disney and I saw that and, as I got thinking, I think that that would be very challenging, having seen things and remembering and not being able after that. So I think it's, I think that'd be more challenging.
Speaker 1:Hmm.
Speaker 2:Great, I would agree with that. So I think it's uh, I think that'd be more challenging. Hmm, Great, I, I yeah.
Speaker 1:I would agree with that. Next question Okay, Um, what style of beer tastes the most like a beer with alcohol in it? So sober carpenter lineup, or or any non-alcohol beer, I guess. Um, but uh, which one of yours tastes the most like a real beer with alcohol in it that you think it could fool somebody with?
Speaker 3:I think it may be the hazy IPA, because you know you got that juicy taste in it that would mask the alcohol usually. Because I think a hazy IPA, even though you got alcohol in it, sometimes you won't feel it as much as a West coast IPA or like a blonde or red or something else, because that that juiciness you're going to you're going to mask a bit. So I think I think I'd say the hazy, the AZ IPA.
Speaker 2:All right. Who would win in a celebrity death match Lady Gaga or Celine Dion?
Speaker 3:Oh, my mom would kill me if I don't say Celine Dion Okay, I'm a huge fan. I got no choice. Okay, fair enough.
Speaker 1:This is kind of just a wrap-up question, man. We ask every guest this same question. We were getting some awesome answers, take your time thinking about it. Question and we uh, we were getting some awesome answers. Take your time thinking about it. Um, a piece of advice that was given to you that you like to just share on with the world. It could be a quote that you remember and kind of live by, or just something your mom said that kind of stuck with you, whatever, whatever, just any old piece of advice that you love to share. I think it's a pretty simple, simple piece of advice and you love to share.
Speaker 3:I think it's a pretty simple, simple piece of advice and that's what I tell all my employees. Nothing spectacular or anything, but I think it's in any circumstance, the customer's always right, Whether it's it's a retailer, whether it's an individual customer. Like, if you know, we always take the time to answer customers and we always try to make it right, Like during the winter, like you know, there's there's product freezes, let's say, when we send an online, you know you don't argue, we you send it back or you replace it in the spring, when there's no risk of freezing. I mean, I think that's the most important thing, most important thing Um, customer is always right.
Speaker 3:Because I remember in school, in one of my classes, the, the, the, the statistic that that I've always remembered is one unhappy customer will tell nine people for every happy customer who tells one. So an unhappy and especially now that probably has increased because now people go and, you know, will say it on their Facebook pages versus, you know, melt them out. So I think our, our, our how we've dealt with customers always right, If it's retailer or end user customer, that's, that's a most important lesson.
Speaker 1:Cool, good answer, awesome man. That's it for the funny questions, and uh cheers to you. Thank you so much for uh having a beer with us and uh cheers and uh yeah, we'll uh continue to enjoy Silver Carpenter.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Cheers.
