Spirited Discussions: A Podcast by Montgomery County Alcohol Beverage Services

Local Beer

• Jocelyn Rawat • Season 1 • Episode 5

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Learn how one local brewery incorporates history and artistry into its products, how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the hospitality industry, and why ABS supports small alcohol manufacturers. ABS Retail Operations Chief Sean Peters and Silver Branch Brewing Company’s Chief Operating Officer Brett Robison join host Jocelyn Rawat to explore how art, science and geography come together at Silver Branch Brewing Company to create Dr. Juicy IPA, Gnome for the Holidays saison, and Glass Castle pilsner, which are available in the brewery’s taproom and in ABS retail stores. Guests discuss the fast pace of change in the hospitality industry since 2020 and the ways ABS helps small businesses get a foothold in the competitive market.

Announcer:

Welcome to Spirited Discussions, a podcast by Alcohol Beverage Services, exploring alcohol products, trends, and policies in Montgomery County.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Thanks for joining us. I'm your host, Jocelyn Rowat. Today we're going to talk about locally produced beer. And for that, I'm joined by the Division Chief for Retail Operations at ABS, Sean Peters. Sean has been with ABS for about a year, joining us after a more than 20-year career in the hospitality and alcoholic beverages industry, ranging from Baltimore to Charleston, South Carolina. Hi, Sean.

Sean Peters:

Hi, Jocelyn.

Jocelyn Rawat:

I'm also joined by Brett Robison, who is the founder and COO of Silver Branch Brewing Company, which started in the heart of downtown Silver Spring and has since expanded to Warrington, Virginia. Brett has been an integral player in the development of the craft beer scene in the county, and he continues to be a strong advocate in this local industry. Hi, Brett.

Brett Robison:

Hey, Jocelyn.

Jocelyn Rawat:

All right. Well, thank you both for joining us. And Brett, I want to start with you. Silver Branch is well known in Montgomery County for its excellent beer and it's for its relaxed vibe. Can you tell us a little bit about your concept and what you're trying to bring to the community?

Brett Robison:

Yeah, so we started really with a pretty big focus on our tap room operations and creating a community space for people to hang out. And the original goal was to bring in the four major brewing cultures under one roof so that you could kind of think about it, you know, as like beer from around the world, but all in one location. And that's really like how the story began, you know, and then it's obviously evolved quite a bit since then.

Jocelyn Rawat:

So what are those four beer cultures?

Brett Robison:

Yeah. So we generally see them as uh the four major brewing cultures being um Belgium, the British Isles, Central Europe, and the Americas. And so you can think of Central Europe as like Germany, Chechia, Austria, Belgium is kind of, you know, a little bit of a unique thing by itself, and then the British Isles obviously being, you know, Britain, Ireland, uh, Scotland, uh, and then the Americas would encompass also like Canada and, you know, Mexico and parts of South America as well.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Okay, so I know you brought some beers with you, um, and you're gonna walk us through them. But before we do that, I I'm sorry, we're audio only today, and I wish everybody could see these labels because they're really beautiful. Can you tell me a little bit about the concept behind these labels and how did you get here and and what do they mean?

Brett Robison:

Yeah, so I'll start at a really high level, and then hopefully everybody can stay with me. But there's a concept that Silver Branch naturally fell into that is a pretty prominent concept in the world of branding and marketing for really any entity like a brewery uh that makes a bunch of different kinds of beer. And that major concept is the distinction between branded house versus house of brands. So a branded house is where everything looks a little bit more uh templated and it's very consistent, and there's certainly some merit and some value for creating brands that, you know, whether it's the Pilsner or the IPA, it looks very similar. It's kind of set up in a similar template. Uh, maybe the colors are slightly different. But that was very much where Kraft Beer was a few years ago with respect to creating labels. Nowadays we've evolved much more into what people refer to as like a house of brands. And there's some psychology behind that, but the but the major takeaway is that a house of brands allows you to drive a little bit more towards the spirit of that potential beer drinker or the person who might gravitate or that might resonate with them. And it allows you to kind of stand out on the shelf a little bit better. So two examples that I have here, and uh, you know, one more that I'll talk about is think of a house of brands as like a stable, you know, and you have different almost lines within that. And so one of our most popular ones is Dr. Juicy, and that's our IPA, and it's an anthropomorphic hop on a surfboard, you know, and it's kind of like out there and it's meant to like sort of have fun with it and kind of we see it as playing into some of the spirit of maybe the IPA drinker. It kind of represents a little bit of what is prototypically American in terms of, you know, it's like extreme, you know, like even we did a label with this same hop character where they were chilling by the pool and relaxing, but they were extremely relaxed, you know? And so it's kind of just like it's going hand in hand with what we identify as something that people look for when they're searching for an IPA style. They want big flavor, they want stuff that's kind of going to stand out, they want bright colors. And so our line of IPAs are designed to represent that and kind of match where we think the drinker might be. Conversely, we have our kind of more classic-leaning, you know, Central European styles with architecture that's influenced by the cities that they originate from. You know, so you've got all this fine detailed line work on our Cloud9 uh German Hefeweizen, uh, and that is really meant to sort of evoke the sense of what it might be like to drink a German wheat beer in Germany, right? And uh more specifically, if you're in Munich, for example, like what it would be like. And so that's kind of another one of those like, you know, lines of brands that we have where we make a lot of like classic uh logges and such. And then the last one, which uh we may be most well known for is our gnomes. And we have a big one coming out this year, which you'll see everywhere. Uh, gnome for the holidays, that seems to be the most popular. Um, and it does, and that one is really fascinating because almost like Marvel has a universe of characters. We've built a universe of gnomes, and the the goal of that is to bring a style that's near and dear to our hearts, which is primarily Cezanne, but just we can say Belgian beers generally to a wider audience because they see the can label, they're like, oh my God, these gnomes are so cute. It's almost like I want to try this. And it gives us an opportunity to reach a beer drinker on a style that, you know, is maybe not quite as popular in this day and age, but they're so excited about the artwork that they they kind of explore and they try it and they're like, wow, that's like delicious, and I really like this now. And all of a sudden somebody figured out that they like Saison or Whitbeer, you know. So it's fun. We kind of we try to have fun with it, but we put a uh we put a lot of energy into our uh into our labels. And shout out to Chris, who's our art director. I think he does a very good job with it.

Jocelyn Rawat:

I think you sold me. I I'm the customer who's gonna buy the beer because it has a gnome on it. Uh that just speaks to me. Okay, so you brought some samples with us. Can you walk us through the beer that you brought?

Brett Robison:

Yeah, so so kind of tying onto the labels and trying to make the labels match not only the flavor, but the spirit of that brewing culture and that origin and where it came from. Dr. Juicy is a modern IPA. Uh, a lot of people have a tendency to want to classify IPAs as like either it's a West Coast or it's a hazy IPA. And we are reticent to say that it's anything like that because we don't see it as neatly fitting into one box. We kind of characterize it as being driven by the flavor. So it's got a really big, juicy, kind of tropical nose on top, but then it's not maybe quite as thick as a hazy, so that you could drink a few more of them. And the way that we produce that is we use cutting edge techniques. So we use this liquid hop extract, which is called incognito, and that helps us both preserve the quality of the beer on the shelf for longer and it gives it a more kind of explosive aroma. You know, you brewers weren't doing this not even five years ago. So when you're making an IPA and there's so much American innovation, the way that we produce it is trying to embrace all of that innovation. Another beer that we have with us today is Glass Castle, and that's our really ultra classic Czech Pilsner. You know, and I won't go down this long rabbit hole, but what is now Chechia was a bit of like a beer time capsule for the about 80 years there. You can look into history if you want to try to understand what where I'm going with this. But uh, so we believe the best way to make Czech Pilsner is to embrace all of these techniques that are maybe outdated in modern brewing terms, but we're somewhat dogmatic and we're trying to give reverence to the tradition of how that beer is produced. So we'll use classic um Czech Saz hops, and we don't really deviate from that. We'll use reverse osmosis water so that we can perfectly recreate the water profile from the town of Pilson, which is where Czech Pilsner originates from. We'll use a procedure called a decoction mash, which is a labor-intensive, old school way of making beer, but we do it because part of the point is to acknowledge the sort of the traditional character of that beer. And that's why that one gets the, you know, the city of and the line work label, because we're we're evoking more of that kind of tradition of styles.

Jocelyn Rawat:

I think that's great. How history meets art meets science. Um, so uh, Sean, does ABS carry all of the Silver Branch uh beers in the 27 retail stores?

Sean Peters:

Yes, uh, as part of our robust uh local program, uh all these products are available in our retail stores and alongside some other great Maryland-made beers, but Silver Branch being one of those products that gets a lot of recognition, a lot of searching for and people coming in to look for. So they they're pretty prominent in our features.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Yeah, I noticed that when I go to the stores. Usually the first thing I see is that nice big long row of all the beautiful cans. So tell us more about the LLC program. How did it get started and where are we going with it?

Sean Peters:

So in 2018, uh ABS started ramping up our local program uh to feature a few up and uh coming local manufacturers uh in our retail stores. We started small with only about six businesses. And that first year we came just shy of about $70,000 in retail revenue worth of products sold. Small but measurable success, but ABS committed and saw the potential in the program. Uh, so we started increasing our allotments to the store and growing the uh local program. Uh main design of the program was to allow local, small suppliers to use ABS as a stepping stone to gain recognition and distribution as a local manufacturer and to use the revenue from the county orders to gain capital and expand operations. You know, some may even be noticed and picked up by a national wholesaler. So uh really kind of pushing out all the great things that people can produce here in Montgomery County and giving them that platform uh as part of our support of the community and the industry as a whole.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Okay, so you said that this program really started to ramp up in 2018. So I think we all know what happened next, right? The COVID-19 pandemic hit, um, and that affected a lot of businesses, but especially the hospitality industry. So what happened next?

Sean Peters:

Yes, that's right. It was a, you know, sort of what everyone says, that watershed moment. ABS then became a lifeline for a lot of local suppliers. We added over a dozen additional businesses to the local program, increased our marketing efforts, and now our local program features over 31 manufacturers and posted nearly $2 million in revenue last year. Quite an exponential growth in that. Uh, most importantly, most of the businesses that entered the program are still in business today. As uh local business employees, county residents contribute to the local economy and put Montgomery County on the map as a destination for beverage alcohol. Uh, the success of these businesses is everyone's success, not only from that job creation standpoint, the revenue standpoint, but really becoming that great cultural destination. Yeah, just making us cool.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So you said there are 31 local manufacturers in the LLC program. How many of them are beer?

Sean Peters:

Uh currently there are about five existing uh beer manufacturers in the program. Uh the beer scene in Montgomery County is is really fantastic, uh, not only just within within our program, but independent ones that are still yet to enter the program. There are a lot of brewers making excellent products in the county. Uh, we're very, very lucky to have uh the innovation and the growth here as a homegrown industry.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Brett, from your perspective as a small business owner, how does the partnership with ABS work?

Brett Robison:

Honestly, we were one of those people that were scrambling for a solution when COVID had happened because we were still so taproom heavy. And we reinvested in a bunch of tanks and shortly thereafter, we were able to set up our relationship through the LLC program with ABS, and that has been instrumental to our kind of growth and then us growing into a bigger wholesale brand overall. Uh today, ABS represents our single largest customer. And, you know, without getting too much into the specifics, um, Maryland as a state is doesn't really have like a chain setup. So it's really nice to be able to work with one entity and know that there's a pretty stable line of revenue coming in the door every day. It's sort of the wholesale business isn't that different from the bar business. You got to have your regulars, right? So I'd like to say that ABS is uh one of those very important regulars. So yeah, I mean, it's been huge. It's been a great relationship. And, you know, having even before opening the brewery, having worked in the county, I definitely think this is a great time in Montgomery County. And the the setup is pretty favorable for a beer manufacturer overall.

Jocelyn Rawat:

So Okay, I'd like to change uh gears with you a little bit, Brett. Um, you're also the chair of the Alcoholic Beverages Advisory Board, which is tasked with making recommendations to the county about ABS's enforcement and distribution functions from the standpoint of efficiency, service, and convenience to the public. Can you tell me a little bit more about the board's work?

Brett Robison:

Yeah, so we we meet uh once every other month a year, and uh that board is comprised of a few other individuals, and it's a good opportunity for the senior management here at ABS and other entities in the county more generally to kind of provide status updates on what's going on in the county, what we what residents need to be looking out for with respect to regulation andor enforcement. We get an update from the police chief as well. And it it what it does for me, but is really helpful, I think, for everybody, is it creates a process whereby we can understand what's really going on, you know, and it and it helps everybody for me. I see the progress that's happening. And I've been sitting on the board for a few years now, and it really is interesting to see the way that these things are developing. And and I just, you know, I think uh this isn't a shill. I'm not here to shill, but I'm I'm impressed with an organization this size, the continued progress that's made. And I think I wish everybody could attend the AB A B meetings, and technically there is a public comment section. So it's open to the public. Anybody is welcome to attend. Um, and if they were, I'm sure they'd also be impressed to learn everything that goes on and sort of how the ABS plays a pretty big role in the continued success of Montgomery County overall.

Jocelyn Rawat:

Yeah, well, I'm glad you mentioned that the meeting is open to the public. Um, you know, alcohol beverage services is a part of Montgomery County government and therefore is uh subject to the Open Meetings Act. And all um meetings, board meetings are open to the public, including the Alcoholic Beverages Advisory Board and the Board of Licensed Commissioners, which uh grants licenses to local businesses like restaurants and specialty venues and beer and wine stores. Okay, so that's it for us today. Um thank you, Sean Peters and Brett Robison, for participating in today's spirited discussion.

Sean Peters:

Thank you for having us. Yeah, I really appreciate it.

Jocelyn Rawat:

If there's a topic you would like us to cover on the podcast, email us at abs.spirited discussions at Montgomery CountyMD.gov. And thanks for listening.

Announcer:

Alcohol Beverage Services is the alcohol wholesaler of beer, wine, and spirits for Montgomery County, and it operates neighborhood retail stores. ABS also manages alcohol licensing, enforcement, and education for more than 1,000 businesses. Its profits are used to pay for resident services that otherwise would be funded by county tax dollars.