#036 Magnetic North Brewing Co: Starting a Brewery & Staying the Course in Alaska - Jeremiah Christian

In this episode of The State I Am In, I sit down with Jeremiah Christian, founder of Magnetic North Brewing Company in Anchorage, Alaska. 

Jeremiah started a brewery on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic—when most people were pulling back, he leaned in and found ways for his long anticipated business to survive. What followed wasn’t smooth growth or overnight success, but six years of navigating setbacks, regulations, taxes, and the constant pressure of staying afloat in his industry's challenging business environment.

What separates Jeremiah isn’t luck or perfect timing—it’s his willingness to do what he said he was going to do. Even when it got hard. Even when it stopped making sense. Even when the hits kept coming. 

We talk about what it really looks like to build something from the ground up in Alaska, the realities of the craft beer industry, and the mindset and tactics it takes to keep going when quitting would be easier. 

This is a conversation about grit, direction, and refusing to drift.  

 What We Cover:

•  Starting a brewery during COVID 
•  The realities of running a business in Alaska 
•  Regulations, taxes, and industry challenges 
•  The decline and pressure within the craft beer market 
•  Why “doing what you said you would” matters 
•  The mindset required to stay in the game long-term 
•  Building something for locals, not just tourists 

 
About Magnetic North Brewing Co:
 
Magnetic North Brewing is an Anchorage-based brewery focused on crafting beer for Alaskans. Built on consistency, grit, and a commitment to the community, it reflects the same mindset Jeremiah brings to business—steady, intentional, and resilient.

Check them out on Facebook and Instagram
 

www.magneticnorthbrewingco.com

Transcript

Manny (00:25)
nobody that I've had on the show yet has wanted to have a beer. Not that I haven't offered it. I try to get a good feel for people like, hey, like what do you want? Do you want water? Do you want coffee? Usually we grab coffee at Old Goat and.

That's usually what people are drinking on the show. And it's also usually morning time is when people are hanging out. but nobody has took me up on the beer thing yet. So it's kind of cool to be able to have a brewer down from Anchorage. So it ends up being the afternoon, right? We'll call it beer 30. I don't know what time it right now, but, ⁓ but we got your, your brew, which makes it even better.

We did. We did trade. So I got the Yardwork kolsch Magnetic North Brewing in Anchorage. And what do you got? I'm running St. Elias's beer, the Industrial Pumps of Alaska. It's a heavy boy. It's a 9.5. I'll probably just have one.

I still got drive back to Anchorage. It's all good. was just telling you, ⁓ I'm hanging out with some, some guests after this too. So they're probably going to, we'll have you run it back on the double down. Yeah. See if it gets weird. Yeah. Yeah. No, this is good. Awesome. Yeah. This is good too. ⁓ Magnetic North. So one of the things I do on my show, I close out every show. I say, keep North. I say, keep North Alaska. It's kind of like my.

my tagline or whatever. And it kind of just, it encompasses a bunch of different things, but really it's just like to keep as into like preserve Alaska as it is, not as it is, but like just the things that we appreciate about where we live here. But then also kind of directional, where we're going as a state, the things that we're doing, not to get into politics or anything like that, but just.

That's kind of the mantra of show. So when I saw Magnetic North, I was like, huh, I wonder what the story is behind that name. Why did you choose that for your brewery? Yeah, so I did Navy for, I only did four. Four years, but I was active, so I got super unlucky with the schedule. I did three deployments in four years. Three deployments in four years, dang.

2010 to 14. Okay, so there was some stuff popping off then but when you're traveling in a boat if you don't have the magnetic declination okay to correct for true north You get to end up in the wrong spot. So if If you're going somewhere and you don't know the rules You could end up in the wrong spot

So that's why I named the company. Okay. Cool. Yeah. What was your job in the, in the Navy? sonar sonar hunting submarines, hunting submarines. Cool. I just saw what last earlier this month, first submarine. I don't know they call it. first time a submarine has taken out a

a ship in like since like World War II or something like that? Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty crazy. I know. I think there... I should probably know this, but ⁓ there might have been one more engagement. But yeah, since World War II, we haven't really had any shots fired. conflicts like that. Yeah. From submarines. It's wild.

I think the latest number that I heard is 42 vessels sunk. the fortress. I'm not sure if that one sunk or if it was just destroyed. That was their big billion dollar autonomous drone warship. They took an aircraft carrier from...

forget exactly who they bought it from, they... It doesn't matter now. It doesn't matter now. And then they put all their new drone technology on there where it's, you know, one way drones that would explode. And we eliminated that on top of everything else. Yep. Yeah, it's weird over there right now. Yeah. It seems like every day I see something new popping

⁓ Kind of a big question mark to see what happens what happens next with With all that are you are you glad you're out? Are you glad you did four and done after doing three three deployments? I mean, that's yeah, that's why I got out was you know out of the four years You have a lot of time on deployment, so I calculated that I only got to see my wife for eight months out of those four days You're married during that time, huh? Geez? So that makes even

Burn me out real quick. got your money's worth right off the bat. Yeah, it'll be interesting. I've heard rumblings that, you know, maybe, maybe not putting a Navy base up here. You know, I've heard maybe opening back up Adak Interesting. I have heard that. I've heard the Adak thing. I don't think that's the right play. I think ⁓ Nome would be probably the best spot. deepwater port

Gotcha. Yeah, infrastructure is kind of already there. So yeah, it's crazy to think about like in resurrection Bay, they, you know, how they all, they have all these like bunkers that are, you know, old bunkers and stuff like that. Um, it's like, what was the thought? Like they did a lot of, it wasn't a lot of infrastructure, a lot of concrete, you know, different towers and stuff like that. They, they ammunition. Um, it's just meant to slow them down. Yeah. Uh, it wasn't like full defense.

because as they would get closer, they would get weaker and weaker. Yeah, that makes sense. So everyone's story in Alaska kind of starts a little bit differently, whether you grew up here or you were your transplant. And so for you, Mr. Jeremiah Christian, Magnetic North Brewing in Anchorage, grateful for you to be here today, making the drive down to just be able to hang out, actually.

have a beer with a brewer is kind of pretty cool for me. First time on this show. And so, yeah, Alaska for you, where did that start? Well, I'm originally, I was born in Minnesota. And grew up there. When I turned 19.

My friends weren't the, you know, the valedictorians. lots of bad things happened, you know? And I was like, I gotta get out of here. Otherwise, I'm also gonna go down that road. So, kept hearing, was it Deadliest Catch was like popping off at that time. you know, I heard songs, I saw billboards. And I was like, all right, I get it.

I'll check it out. So I sold everything I had and I just came up here. I stayed up here for a year in 2007. Loved it. It great. But, uh, I was, uh, I was missing my girlfriend at the time who is now my wife and, uh, kept calling. I was like, all right, move back. Yada, yada, yada. Did all the trades.

couldn't figure out what I was going to do with my life, kind of screwed it up a little bit. I was like, how do I fix my life? the military. Yeah. Ding, ding. I'll just join all the other screw ups. the story is going to be welcomed there. Yeah. It just blends in with the crowd. Yeah, totally. So yeah, did the Navy. we were thinking about, you know, what to do after cause like you said, kind of got burned out.

And I was like, I really liked it up there. was beautiful. Why don't we go up there and we'll just do it for a year. We'll see. And then that's also a common thing that people say. Let's just go try Alaska for a year. Yeah. Yeah. And here we are. It has been 12 years. Sweet. Cool, man. Does your wife regret it at all? No, no. Yeah, she.

She likes it. I mean, she's got the call. if one day she's like, I want out. Okay, give me time. I'll figure it out. Yeah. Alaska has a way of like either like welcoming people. Like you just feel the call, like you said, or Alaska just chews you up and spits you out. And I feel like when it's a couple, the risk is higher because now you've got two people, right? So it's like, one of them may absolutely love it. I see this all the time working in healthcare. You have like young docs that work here.

And then they're like, I love it here, it's amazing. And the wife is like, I hate it here, I wanna go back to Colorado or whatever, you know? And then eventually over time, I guess if you're a good husband or care about your wife, you'll listen and you'll have a happy life. But that's cool, yeah, both of you guys were into it. Yeah, we've lived a few places and up here, you gotta want it. Because nothing's easy.

Yeah. It's really challenging, but you know, if you have a challenging environment and you're uncomfortable, you'll grow as a person and you can do way more things than if you were comfortable. Yeah. Had a lot more options. It's really, if you translate that to business, if you see all these people build like

billion dollar businesses and they're super rich families. The next generation didn't have a hard upbringing and they usually like squander the business and the enterprise and then the third generation like it's gone. Yep. There's some saying that I wish I had memorized. It's somebody smarter than me said it about like hard times creating hard men, something like that. Soft.

Easy times creating weak men or there's some some quote I thought you know what I'm about. I think it's hard times create Hard men hard men create soft times soft times create Soft man soft. Yeah. Yep. There's a lot of truth to that applies to business as well for sure. Absolutely. Was it anything specific about Like they jumped out to you some people love the remoteness. They like that. There's not houses on houses on houses

In Alaska, they like that it's kind of a little bit different pace There's obviously like the wilderness and like, you know You drive 20 minutes outside of Anchorage and you're just like in a whole nother world Like what was it for for you guys that? Kept you here

It was definitely a couple things. One is the because there's so few people, there's a large amount of opportunity. Like if you were to have a job up here in called the medical field, because there's not that many people up here, you will progress faster in any career that you choose.

Because you're it. If you're picking one of lower 48 states, they're much more crowded, there's more competition to move up, you won't excel as fast. And then the second is climate. It's been weird the last couple years, but overall, we grew up in Minnesota, gets like Fairbanks cool.

being close to the ocean, it's a big temperature sponge and ⁓ it's just, it's so gradual and it's not, it's not like it was in the Midwest. Yeah. Well, that's cool, man. I'm glad you guys stuck it out and you're what year 12 now is that you said? Yeah, we've been here 12 years. Sweet. That's awesome. And not only that, but you're adding, adding to it through, through your brewery. So I want to kind of talk about that a little bit.

I kind of got into home brewing a little bit. I lived in Fairbanks for a little bit. Tried my hand at home brewing. Someone was selling a kit on Facebook Marketplace. Someone else that tried and failed miserably, I'm sure. And they're like, I'm selling all my crap. I don't care if I get like hundred bucks for it. Like I just want this stuff gone. And I remember, I think I had like a three year old at the time and I was just like trying to find something new to do that wasn't just be a dad, like try to, you

learn something or whatever. And I was like, I'm going to learn how to Well, doing it in Fairbanks in your house was kind of hard. I couldn't find any like location in the house. It was like a stable temperature. was like, Oh, I'll put, you know, I'll put my keg downstairs. Um, but it was like too cold, um, in the, in the crawl space. And I was like, Oh, I'll go put it in the garage. And I was like, well, there's the temperature fluctuates too much in the garage, you know, 40 below once that garage door opens. And then it goes to like 70 degrees, you know, you know, minutes later. And so.

That was a very short lived, I was a home brewer long enough to make a really crappy brown ale. And that was it. I bottled it man, and I'm like, I can't pay people to drink this. Like it was so bad. ⁓ Everybody's is. Mine included. I thought it was so great. Looking back now, was like, that was awful. Everybody does the exact same thing.

Needless to say, I sold all my stuff probably by the next year. The next year too. I will say though, my favorite memories looking back at that, and every now and then you walk into a brewery and it brings back that memory, is there something about that mash on the stove top that's bubbling and your whole house just smells amazing? Is it wort, is that what it's called? Yeah, that smell is definitely one of my favorites of the whole process.

I wanna talk about your kind of origin story with brewing. Did you have the same like, I just wanna try this thing out. Was there already an interest there, any experience or exposure? How did that all start with you? Yeah, so growing up in Minnesota, you had two options. Keystone or Milwaukee's Best. That's where I grew up on, that's all we did. And then I got stationed in San Diego. This was in.

2010. Just craft beer was blown everywhere. Yeah. Everywhere. Especially in San Diego. and

I was like, I just had a whole list of places I wanted to go and I just started checking them off. was like, you guys get to do this? Like, this is your job? Like, I didn't know this was an option. Yeah. Yeah. They didn't talk about this in high school. and, ⁓ yeah. So then, you know, after I got stationed in Jacksonville, same thing, went to a couple of brews there. was like started home brewing. didn't have much time. Yeah. But, ⁓

Yeah, kept reading about it on deployments. Man, the learning curve is steep. I don't know how much you dove in with your home brewing, but I mean, I realized real quick, there's a lot more to this than meets the eye. I thought it was just like, it's like a easy bake oven. You just grab all the crap, throw it in the thing. And like you have cupcakes. Not the case. I it was, but it, yeah. I mean, as far as skills go, you're, you're looking at

Microbiology for the yeast, know, chemistry for the water. You're looking at being an engineer for the metals and heating. It's very difficult. And then, you know, there's the artistic side too of like, not only do I want to do this style, but I also want to put my own flair on it.

It's tricky. Yeah. I have to tell you one quick story about Milwaukee's best. That was the first beer I ever had living, living in Northern California. My grandparents, they were Portuguese. They immigrated from Portugal and like the seventies or something super cheap. I mean, they, they grew all their own food and like, you know, they had a dairy farm and, and my grandma was like notorious for buying the cheapest everything she could at the store. So for the beer that she bought was

Milwaukee's best for my grandpa. And I'll never forget, my mom was babysitting like a friend of mine and his mom was a teacher and I kind of knew this kid but not really. so I'm like, I got this kid at the house. I was at grandma and grandpa's house. We were staying with them at the time. I'm gonna kind of show off to this guy and be like, hey, you drink beer at your house? Because my grandpa lets me drink beer.

Not true. And he's like, what? And I was like, yeah, you've never had a beer before? I'm totally peer pressuring this kid. And cracked open a Milwaukee's Best and yeah, took a couple swigs and handed it over to him. And like later on that night, my mom gets a phone call. Your son forced my son to drink beer. And like, I remember getting in trouble, but then now as an adult, I'm like, Milwaukee's Best is barely beer. Like it's like, I understand, but I remember getting.

kind of get in trouble for that one. But that was my first beer looking back. And I think Milwaukee's Best was in my grandpa's fridge till the day he died. Yeah, he never branched out. anyways, yeah, I had to share that story real quick. But it's not every day someone brings up Milwaukee's Best. No. So was there like a moment where, I mean, I kind of get it on deployment. I've never been anywhere cool. I went to Eastern Europe for a year and lots of downtime.

Lots of like, what am I going to do with my life when I get back to the U S right. And so you have a lot of time to like deep dive into stuff. And so I relate with that, in the sense of like what could be, you know, and then especially you end up in San Diego and you're start, start seeing for yourself, like all these cool opportunities. Was there a point, like once you got into it, like I had a total crash and burn experience. Did you find yourself like having a knack for it? Did you like suck at it, but just powered through?

Did you find that like you were just committed to it? And so you're like, I'm just gonna keep trying this until I get better. Like, you know, obviously you had an attitude that has carried you through it up until this point. But like, tell me about kind of those early stages of like, am I actually gonna do this thing? Yeah, I've always. ⁓

I always had this terrible trait where if I say I'm gonna do something, if I say it out loud, I am forced to do it. I will see it to the end. Some would say that's a great quality to have. No, because you only see the highlights, right? It's like, after you hear those stories, it's like the, what's the 80s compilation?

the montage. Okay. Yeah. You only see the montage. That's true. To actually live through the montage is super annoying. It's terrible. Yeah. But, yeah, I, I sucked in the beginning. I think a lot of home brewers did or do, ⁓ there's a lot more resources out there now. if I would've had those, I could have accelerated, not sucking, but, it wasn't available at the time.

But yeah, you just gotta, you gotta want it and you have to have a plan and you need to be dedicated to that plan no matter what it is. So for every venture like that, know, something that you want to jump into, people will always talk about timing, like is it the right time? And some people will say like, there is never gonna be a perfect time.

Just go for it, just do it. Just Start, I read this book called Just Start but this was a couple years ago. Big motivation why I started this podcast was because I was like, just stop thinking about it and just start doing it. And then I just, I did. And then it's like, oh crap, now it's happening, you know? And it seems like such a simple thing, right? It's interesting looking at your story because you started this, you started Magnetic North.

at a time that was like, maybe you should wait. Maybe you should like pump the brakes. You started like the eve of COVID basically, right? Yeah. did.

When you're starting a brewery or a bar, you have a very long permitting process. If you were to submit, like if you wanted a license today, like you had your whole package and you submitted it to the alcohol control board for review, it'll be nine to 12 months before that gets approved. Oh, dang. And you have to have a lease signed. Like you have to be...

already in the process. Gotcha. So it had been a full year since I submitted and then I got to open. And then, yeah, I opened in the middle of April of 2020 and March, I want to say the second week of March, there was the full shutdown. Dang. I didn't even consider that. That's the way that it works logistically.

So that even had to add another layer. It's not like you were just like, oh, I'm going to open up the doors today. It's like, you should have been planning this for a while already. And then the time comes around and then yeah, freaking shut down. what kind of gut punch was that? That mean I know for any business, any business, there's the anxiety of like, are people going to buy my product? Are they going to use my service? Are they going to, you know, people going to walk through the doors?

let alone having something completely outside of your control like that happen. What was your mindset during that time? Well, it was an entirely different business model than what I have now. So when I opened the brewery, was learn to brew or brew your own. the original business plan was you would come in, I would teach you how to brew on a five gallon setup. We would...

Fermented in Carboys and you'd come back when it's done and we would put it in cans together and put your label on it and you can walk out the door with ⁓ five gallons of your of your beer that you made in cans and That requires customers coming in spending time and making the batch with you and then During the shutdown no customers are allowed inside

So I had to pivot and then I was switching to a production model, five gallons at a time and canning up, hand canning each one. So I would brew two to three times a day, every day and fill every carboy I had. And yeah, that was soul crushing.

How did it like, mean, everyone during that time was like, how long is this gonna last? Right? Like everyone was like, when are we gonna be able to go back to normal life again? I can't imagine what that was like for you as a brewer, as a new brand new business owner. You're already having to adjust on day one, basically. Like, how do you play the glad game?

in that time, you know what I mean? Like some people would just be like, screw it. Like this is the universe telling me it wasn't meant to be. know, we're, I don't know, whenever you want to say COVID ended, but like, you know, we're in 2026 now. You powered through that, you know, through that time. You've made a beer. mean, at least that I'm drinking right now is pretty dang good. You like you kept going. How do you get yourself into the...

into the mindset that you can still make this a success? I mean, at the time, you know, I was...

I mean, I'm still pretty stubborn. Like I said, I was going to do a thing and just because something happened doesn't mean I'm not going to do the thing. Like I'm going to do it. And I also didn't want to be like, I just wasted a lot of money and yeah, lot of investment there. Yeah. Well also my time like, almost two years of getting this off the ground. So, you know, I'm not going to throw away those two years, but

there's always going to be problems

Humans will create problems. That's why businesses are made. They're usually to solve a problem.

that's a product or service. And the entrepreneurs that are doing it are gonna have sub problems and you just need to solve those. But some people are built for it. Some people, they don't wanna deal with it. They don't wanna deal with the problems and they'd rather pay to have somebody solve those problems for them. Because they wanna do something else. there's no...

Like one solution fits all for it. It's interesting just talking to you. I mean, just meeting you today, we kind of, I've seen your stuff on online, like social media stuff, but you seem like you're, you say, you say you're stubborn. but, maybe, I don't know if it's a military part of it, maybe it's just your part of your character, but some of the people that I've, that I've read about or see it, see like being successful in whatever area of life it is.

is they have a sense of duty to just do the thing like you're saying. And I think it's easy to get caught up in the emotional side of it, feeling the pain and taking it as a sign that maybe it's not supposed to be that way. Or the opposite of you're riding the high of success and then the moment that you're not making the sales or no one's wanting to use your service or whatever it is, it's like you get the wind taken out of you and you don't know how to deal with it because you're riding on.

riding on the emotion the whole time. And so getting it, just getting a chance to talk to you, it does seem like you're like, I'm just gonna do the thing because that's what I set out to do. Call it duty, call it stubbornness, calling it just do what you, doing what you say you're gonna do. I think it's a pretty cool attribute to have, especially as a business owner, especially as someone that's started when you did on this whole journey.

Numbers don't care about your feelings. So life is still happening. Your feelings kind of don't matter. I mean, kind of. if you're like, the business isn't doing well. Facts don't care about your feelings. That's the saying, And you're like, I'm going to shut it down. There'll be somebody else. So if you can...

set aside your feelings for business decisions, you go a lot further. It's probably not healthy. You should probably just work through your feelings. I don't know, talk to a therapist. I don't really have time for that. Was there a point, an event, a moment where you felt like in that craziness of COVID that you guys were turning a corner, you're like, okay, there's light at the end of the tunnel.

Like we can do this. Was there any moment that pops out to you in those in that in that early time? Yeah, we had a one of the best summers like Weather wise it was you know, we popped the the doors open and have some outdoor seating and people would come you know, you had the six foot or whatever. Yeah, and Yeah, I was getting

you know, better and better because I was putting in more reps than any of the brewers in town. I mean, I was learning techniques way, way faster than if I were to do big batches and then have to work through those big batches. I mean, I blow through a five gallon keg in a day and it's like, well, I got to brew that exact same thing again or something new, tweak it, change it. I had.

so many reps in the first two years of brewing that it was like I had been brewing for like 10, 20 years. It was a lot of work. Yeah, I bet. But a lot of insight gained, lot of, You can't help but do so many reps of something and not come up on the other side being significantly better. Yeah.

So there's other, you know, looking at the Anchorage brewing scene, breweries that come to mind. I mean, you got the big players like Alaskan, right? You got Alaskan Brewing Company. Is there a home base in Juneau? Are they down there? Is that like the base? their big facility is down in Juneau. I think of when I was in Fairbanks, there was Silver Gulch. Hoodoo was actually a favorite of mine in Fairbanks when I lived there. I remember that they were...

when they opened up shop there. In Anchorage you have Midnight Sun, right? Not anymore. No? Yeah. Their whole operation shut down.

That's a tough one to answer.

you have an ambiguous statement that they put out. So 100 % the loft is closed. Okay. I knew that part. I didn't know that that meant they were like kaput, but I believe that the production facility is also closing and as far as the brand,

Those are all rumors that I cannot confirm. There's a couple different things I've heard. You're at the bar with the industry folk. People talk. Is it true? Is it not? don't know. Dang. Is there any speculation that you want to share as to why? ⁓

hint at like the craft brew scene taking a turn, you know, for the worst or like anything like that. Yeah. So you could see nationwide drinking as a whole is, down. I believe the brewers association put out around 25 % nationwide.

So and you're also seeing a lot of the bigger breweries close-up shop, you know 21st amendment rogue brewing, you know, Pop Valley rogue shut down rogue is shut down what they They had a lot of debt on and unpaid taxes. Hey, so what happens with these companies is They around in the beginning. They did really well. They expanded and

There were leveraged pretty heavily because you got new buildings, employees. And they, you know, usually expect a certain amount of growth each year. And if you don't hit that and you're leveraged and you're placing bets on it's still growing and it doesn't. Well, then the cash flow doesn't work. Yep. Dang. So you have a couple options. ⁓

You can either close that new facility down, take a loss, or you could wait and hopefully you can recover and pick back up. But in the meantime, you recruit more and more debt. And then eventually you can't push, you can't kick the can down the road any longer. That's crazy, man. I didn't realize that. I mean, like,

I don't want to say I understand, like with the smaller scale breweries, but like with any business, the chances of them surviving, you know, past five years or statistics, you know, about that saying that survivability is like not great for most businesses, let alone like brew a brewery that's facing, you know, generations that aren't drinking as much or people wanting more like non-alcoholic options. How does that make you feel is like

a brewer like in this game where you're watching the big guys tumble and then you're watching your neighbors close up shop like is that is that motivation for you? Is it like do you feel like you're like going back to the drawing board? Like what does that kind of stir up in you when you see all that stuff going on? You're really softballing these questions here. Yeah, it's ⁓ yeah emotionally it's it's a terrifying.

You're like, did I make a wrong choice? Did I throw away the last, you know, seven years of my life on something that's just going to kind of fade away. then, you know, there's the other options like, you're already, you're already in it. Right. so, you know, what did they do wrong? What's working? What's not working? How can I, this is the goal I want to be at. Let's reverse engineer how I get there.

and plans change a lot easier when you're my size. So I run the brewery solo. I do have one employee where she helps me out on Fridays for serving in the tap room. But other than that, it's just me. So if I need to pivot, the team meeting is very short. I'm like, hey, this is what we got to do. Okay. All right. ⁓

Yeah, I guess that's true. There is a, there is an advantage to being more able to pivot, to pivot easy, easier to kind of see what's going on. They make, make the adjustments kind of like you did in the very, the very beginning. Yeah. I've had to do it three times now. So you had, when I opened COVID, that was wild. Had to, really restructure what I was doing, completely change business plan.

Then you had the largest inflationary period in American history. So had to tweak it again and really dial in on systems, operations, workflow, beer versus then artistically creating beer. Originally when I started, was like in my head, was like, if you build it, they will come, right? Field the dreams.

Wasn't that way. And then now this third one is a very sharp drop in alcoholic sales, not only nationwide, but even more affected up here. So we're more around the 30 to 40 % reduction depending on the tap room or depending on the brewery. But so those like since I opened the last

six years have been, um, one problem after another. And I'm sure it's like that for any industry. know, you look at, hear the stories of Microsoft and Apple and, uh, all this stuff, or even, uh, SpaceX. He's like, you get one more, we got one more rocket guys. Otherwise, uh, you know, I'm to go bankrupt. Yeah. Dang. So as you look,

I mean, from the beginning till now, like you're, you're injecting your own flavor, your own style, your own approach to the brewing industry, and to the footprint that is Anchorage. What were you hoping to like, establish yourself as? Like when people think of like magnetic North brewing, like,

what kind of brewery do you want to be known as? Is it the place that people, is it the actual place where people come to? Is the product itself, it what you guys stand for? I don't know, what is it that you hope people see when they experience you and your product and the brewery? In the beginning, I didn't have a brand awareness plan. was make sure the product

spoke for itself because you're going to be compared to everybody else that they've ever had. It's really similar to food trucks. Yeah. You get one shot to make a good impression, make a good impression. Hopefully it sticks in their head and see him again. Like, had a good time. I'll, I'll get another thing from the food truck. So around, I think year four, I was like, I need to,

focus on like what people associate with my brand. I was like, all right, let me learn how to do that. And I think now when people come into my taproom, it's kind of like hanging out in somebody's garage. You know, it's not commercialized, it's not.

tweaked in tune to what the commercial...

design, you know that you see is like tech bros come in they're like, we'll just pull designs from you know, blah blah blah. But yeah, I I built all the furniture and everything I like myself, you know redoing. I mean I had to strip this building out as built in 74. I all the buildings in Anchorage are very old. So just the atmosphere. But yeah, you're still in like

Basically a small garage you got to one side for brewing one side for like storage last seating and like a very tiny taproom like a couple hundred square feet So it's it's really small and quaint I I have had The widest range of customers come in I mean, maybe that's all of Alaska but like

everyone from judges, doctors, lawyers to, you know, DOT guys and fishermen and, and as long as any, anybody comes in and they look at the board and you, you brew a wide enough spectrum of styles and there's something for everybody up there, then that, that's where I want to be. But

I'm still working on what the brand truly means, but it's more about like

I wanted to be more focused on...

building up the state than trying to cater to tourism and commercialized values.

Like the people up here.

It's hard up here. They work really hard and I don't know. just think...

they deserve something cool and not to get ripped off and not to share it with like tourists. I mean, not saying that you, if you're a tourist, don't come. I'm just saying, the winter time, there's no tourists.

It's so weird. Yeah, you're looking at developing like the people that live here, work here. It kind of reminds me of like a fishing spot, right? So you have like your spot that you take your buddies to and it's like, you don't tell the tourists about that. I I live down here on the Kenai Peninsula. There's spots around here that we don't tell everybody about, right? Like when family comes to visit. Because it's kind of like, it's where we go when we're like...

We're not trying to be, you know, sold something. Like you said, we're not trying to get ripped off. There's a lot of places in Alaska that you go to and it is kind of, it's either commercialized or it's like people are trying to make a buck. And for the locals, that does kind of get old, you know, not to bag on like the, you know, the, ⁓

you know, like the tourist traps in any little town you go to that's selling all their trinkets and stuff like that. But I've walked through those places countless times and I know that there's nothing there for me. It is different when you catch a spot that's like, this is like, I know this guy and he makes cool stuff. That's what I want. And it's, it's a reasonable price and it's good quality. Like there's a different feel when you go into a place like that. And I think that's kind of what you're getting at is that you want a brewery not for, you know, the

the postcard Alaska, but you want it for the actual Alaskans that live here, work here, and are looking for good quality. Yeah, I think you said it better than I It's all good. get what you're going for. caught me off guard. I'm still trying to figure out, it feels like the last few years I've been, you know, there wasn't time to think about, what is this?

Where's this business going? How should I design the brand? What kind of styles and all this stuff? isn't until recently that I've been really trying to focus on that. It's like, okay, we're at six years. What are we doing here? Yeah. Yeah. Because in the beginning it was like, make your product, make it better, do more better.

Yeah, that was it. Yeah. One of my first, this is what I think is cool about breweries. My first experience going to a brewery was this way. And I think every other one that I've been to has matched up with this in some way. I remember going to Hoodoo in Fairbanks and I was a shift worker at the ER, a workday shift, got off at seven o'clock, breweries open till eight and had an hour, right? So.

hey guys, gonna go to who do I have to work. I guarantee this still happens across Alaska, across the country. We could talk about how crappy the hours are later, maybe, and how that's kind of a forced thing. But you go there, there's a food truck parked outside. So another business, right? So you got another local business that's doing their thing attached to this other local business, it's a brewery. You go, there's a place.

The whole place is centered around just hanging out. There's tables, there's chairs, there's a fire pit. There's kids running around. I'm like, whose kids are, like I remember in my mind, I'm like, whose kids are these? Just kids running around and like no one really cares because they're just, it's contained, it's a safe place. are, everyone's got a drink in their hand. I mean, maybe not everyone's got a drink in their hand, but you know what I mean?

It's just like you walk in and you're like, this is like, this feels like a community center. This feels like a place that people come to, like you said, all walks of life just to kind of hang out, meet and like from young and old, like there's like grandmas there, like just with their fanny packs on, just talking about who knows what. There's people that just got done running a freaking like 5K that are like, you know, it's just all walks of life and

people are just hanging out and it was a really cool feeling. I don't know like, you know, what the equivalent would be. You you look back in like America's history or the history of humankind, know, and you have these gathering places where people would come and like have meetings or like public hangings or whatever, you know what I mean? Like, but there's always been places where people got together, you know.

no matter what you were doing, whether you're peasant or the king, there was places where people would come together and just kind of share life together. And I guess you could say that the church has been that. This was like a different style of church, honestly. And it just felt safe, it felt cool. It felt like you were just another human being doing life with all these other people that whatever they got off work or they were looking forward to just.

dropping the kids off or bringing the kids with them and hanging out with their girlfriends or their buddies. And it's a cool feeling. And I felt that across most places. I will say that the one time I did not feel that was, I'm gonna bag on Lagunitas real quick. I was in Northern California, went to Lagunitas and it was very, it was more commercialized. It was more like, here's the tour starts right here. We're gonna move you around this way. And like everything was very like.

pushed in like, okay, now this is where you're gonna eat and this is where you're gonna order. And it just felt like you were just kinda getting pushed through like friggin' line of Chick-fil-A or something like that, you know? I would say most places I've experienced in Alaska have been pretty cool, pretty welcoming though. Yeah, I think the goal is to create a decompression space. So you have a few options. You can go to a straight up bar.

Right? That has its own connotations of like, dive bar, fancy bar, cocktail bar. Are you trying to pick somebody up? You got a restaurant, which might have alcohol. That's more formal. Like, you're going there to eat. Nothing else. Usually you go with a group. You're talking to your group. Coffee shops.

Honestly, it's kind of a little more formal to you're like usually you meet somebody at a coffee shop And you have you have like an itinerary of like what you need to discuss. it's not Or they sit there on their iPad and do some work or use the Wi-Fi but in a brewery There's no agenda. It's just You know you show up hopefully there's some good beers on tab

You have a couple, maybe talk to some people you've never talked to, decompress, and then, all right, we gotta go home. Do it all again tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah, it's a cool environment. I missed out on an opportunity on checking your place out in person over at Iditarod weekend, and I apologize for that. I really missed out. I wish I would have connected those dots.

You sent me message and I wish I would have been able to go and check that out. cause I haven't been too many places in Anchorage, if any, now I'm trying to think of, breweries that I've been to in Anchorage. think I've maybe been to one. Is there one in Eagle River? There's one, Odd Man Rush. Nope, that wasn't it. So maybe it wasn't it. ⁓ but yeah, I think they're unique. They're definitely like a unique vibe.

and kind of cool part of the community.

Yeah, it was kind of a bummer. Nikiski had Kassik's and my wife, she's a school teacher here. It wasn't very often, maybe once a month. I like a teacher in service, or maybe that's what it was, like a teacher in service day after they had to be at work when all the students were gone, they would go and just hang out, just the teachers at Kassik's and hang out. Kassik's is no longer. It was kind of a bummer. Cause that was, for Nikiski, it's kind of a cool.

kind of a cool thing to have. They were very large. Yeah. There's a lot of different ways you can approach this business. There's the straight up brewery, small scale, highly rotating. There's the brew pub. There's a larger brewery with massive amounts of distribution to make up the lack of sales in the tap room. It's a

Each place is, you would have to choose what model works for how many people are there. I mean, you get into some.

target demographic, your disposable income. You gotta run the math. The economics of beer are...

It's incredibly complex. A lot of it's kind of boring, but if you can figure out this business, can figure out almost all the business, anything you can think of. Even tech side. It requires a lot, is what you're saying. A lot. The learning curve is incredibly steep.

⁓

you look back on the last six years, what are the things that you were most proud of that you've been able to accomplish this far? Not shutting down. Hell yeah. No, I'm.

I would say, you know, continuing to grow while, you know, others are either shrinking or shutting down.

It's all relative on how much I'm growing compared to where they were. Sure.

That felt pretty good. It feels pretty good. There's always problems, but.

Also.

The amount that I've learned in, even if the brewery fails, say something catastrophic happens, I have learned so many skills with this whole adventure that when I do something, if that happens and I have to do something else, I'm gonna do a lot better than if I weren't.

or hadn't done it. Yeah, that's a hell of a perspective to have for anything. But yeah, to have to have the awareness of that is is huge because it makes you appreciate the person that you've become through the through the process of it all. Failure is like such a can be such a trigger word for people like they try to avoid at all costs and yet like so much good is on the other side of failure if you choose to look at it.

if you choose to look at it that way, because it's not the end all be all. Like you're gonna get up and keep going after whatever that is. So that's pretty cool. You ever listen to ⁓ Jocko? Yeah, read his book. Extreme ownership. Extreme guy, right? Yeah.

Don't take all of his advice, but he has this one phrase. It's like, you know, ⁓ if, you screwed up something good. Yeah. Cause then you learn from it. It's like, well my, you know, my employee made this mistake and lost me money. Good. Yep. Yeah. Everything has an opportunity for sure. And just for the record, for the people listening, he says it like this. Good. ⁓

His podcast voice is like next to none. Like he's got the best. He's got the best. But don't go to his Instagram page. All it is is pictures of his Timex watch. 430 AM wake ups. in the morning. Yep. Or like the floor of his gym covered in sweat. In just old man sweat. Yeah. He's in his 60s I'm pretty sure. Yeah. I mean, look, he's super impressive. But yeah, he's wild. Yep.

I got my kid hooked on Way of the Warrior Kid. He's got Way of the Warrior Kid podcast. he wrote these children's books and my kid has absolutely ate them up. Absolutely loves them. So he's a little Jocko nerd now too, like me. So if that's, yeah, some of your successes that you're most proud of, do you have any like epic flops that you're like, oh man, that was awesome. Like any, like what comes to mind for me is like some like beer flavor you're trying to make. And you're like, oh, I'm going to come, I'm going to do this.

in this and it's gonna be amazing and then you make it and you're like, oh my God, that is like the worst thing I've ever put in my mouth. Yeah, this podcast isn't long enough to explain all the, but I got one. I tried to make a Tang seltzer. What? Yeah. I just bought Tang and yep, tried to make seltzer, tried being the keyword.

The weird part is, I was like, man, this is awful. And I had some buddies test it out. They're like, no man, you never know. Somebody might like it. I'm like, yeah, I don't want to put this out for my name. And they're like, just do it for a little bit. So I put it out. 25 % of the people liked it, like a lot. And then 75 were like, they're like, this is what you want to serve?

Like this is, and yeah, I got maybe halfway through a keg and I'm like, you know what? Nope, we're not, we're not doing this. And people, the people that liked it still bugged me. They're like, you could do it better. I'm like, no, I was scarred and I'll never do it again. That's hilarious. What would you say the, if we're talking like, you know, beer types, flavor, you have your flagship.

beers that you have, like any that stand out that you're most proud of that you're like, man, this is like my moneymaker. This is like what people love or what I love or, you know, any special story around any of those? Yeah. So I started out, you know, with some flagships and then about a year and a half ago, you know, I, I saw a lot of people kind of asking for

loggers and you know like a low ABV kind of option and You know I'd hang out with people after I close a brewery. What do we drink? Coors Light right there. They're like three bucks four bucks at at the bar Because we get stuff to do the next day so I was like I need to I need to solve this so I Made a Kentucky Common

which is like a corn based kind of beer. Anyway, that's an ale. And I was like, ⁓ typically CoorsLite, Bud Light, all those guys, they make a light American lager and it's the adjunct that they use is rice. That is kind of the industry standard. But I read that we used to use corn.

before we started trading with China and then rice became so cheap. So I made a light American lager with corn. I call it blue collar lager. You got a couple upstairs and six pack I gave you. Sweet. And then I sell it in the tap room for $4. So cool. You know, very little margin for me. But if you want to come into a brewery and not spend a bunch of money.

You can get three of those, which we're only allowed 36 ounces. So I do 12 ounce glasses, you know, for 12 bucks. And then, yeah, there you go. Thank you. That's awesome. you kind of, we've kind of like danced around it a little bit in our conversation as far as like the regulatory realm of, of having a brewery what that means.

Because I mentioned to you earlier that it almost seems like there's a lot more restriction on you just being a business and operating like a business and doing what you want to be able to sell your product and to market your product and to get people to engage with your business. We kind of said earlier that the hoodoo at the time was closed at eight o'clock, right? So we only had so much time and all of that stuff comes down from up top. Like you're only allowed to stay open.

so many hours, there's all these regulatory things that are out there. Do you want to talk about which things in Alaska specifically or Anchorage that are the most difficult to deal with? Like the things that are like just piss you off when you think about them working in this business, trying to thrive in this business.

It's very frustrating when summertime comes around. Tourists will come in and they're not familiar with Alaska laws or liquor laws Why would they? They're more worried about their hotels and where they're doing. So when they come into the tap room and say they have three beers and they want a fourth, I can't give it to them.

very very frustrating because then I have to go through the same spiel like hey this is a state law not just a you know company decision as well as the the times you know

Closing at eight, now nine. I mean, people get off work, they go home, shower, change, and they wanna go out. Well, now you only get a little bit. You get off work at seven. You get one hour to have fun or decompression. In the summertime, I mean, in Alaska especially, mean, nine o'clock is like early. Yes. Very early. And sun's up till one in the morning.

And then, you know, all of the...

All of the restrictions compared to the lower 48 and all of the other states.

They have so much more freedom and rights. You know, it's all the same process to become a bar, to become a bar restaurant, as well as being a brewery. Like it's the same exact process. There's a ton of paperwork and taxes and there's a ton of regulation because it's a regulated

product, same as, you know, ⁓ nicotine and.

marijuana, you know, all the all the regulated things. So you've gone through the same amount of struggle and work as those other companies. But you get a quarter of the capability. So it's it's like fighting a match or a boxing match with one arm time tied behind your back.

Like, you'll do like okay, but you're gonna lose. You're not gonna do well. You're at a disadvantage, yeah. So yeah, the laws up here confuse me because you have so many other freedoms in so many other ways. Like open carry, you know.

building anything beyond the building code things are pretty open. It's supposed to be the last frontier, but it's confusing to me why it's so heavily regulated. I'm not saying throw out all the rules. You gotta have some. There's gotta be guidelines. But it's definitely skewed in one direction. So for people who don't know,

There's only so many licenses for breweries wineries meadries and that's based on population and the same goes for restaurant bars and straight bars and those are broken up in a few different licenses and The application fees are typically about the same for all of them they're

around 2,500 bucks per year, biannual, I believe. However, because of the population caps, if I wanted a bar license, like I have a brewery manufacturing license and a retail tap license, which they added for more fees. But if I wanted to add a bar license so that I could stay open past nine, if I could serve.

more than 36 ounces. I'd have to buy it on the secondary market. So to do that, you would approach a real estate.

not broker. Yeah, real estate broker. and you would say, Hey, I'm looking for a liquor license or a beverage dispensary license. And they're like, yeah, okay. We'll do search. there's one for sale. Someone's retiring. they're closing down their business and, they're selling it on the secondary market. That same license that you could have got

through the city for 2,500 bucks is $300,000. Oh my gosh. And sometimes I've seen some as high as 330, 350. So you buy that license and then you do a transfer of ownership and address. And then that process takes another year. Dang. And there's a bunch of building code stuff.

where now you're considered a bar. So they need to pay in the space. You might need to install a sprinkler system or an additional bathroom or emergency exit somewhere because you're classified different. So

What happened with those caps is a lot of people in the 70s and 80s during the oil boom bought up a lot of licenses and then they've just been sitting on them and they realized that hey instead of you know just letting that license die I can sell it make 300,000 and they're like it's part of my retirement so the system's not really working

Like the ⁓ barrier to entry for anybody who wants to get into this business or into the alcohol business is either going to have a ton of disposable income or crushing debt.

Is there any regulatory path or is there any, any, any path really to changing that anything that you've seen at least attempted in the legislature in the state or, you know, representatives or people that have been talking about this? Yeah. So the Brewers Guild of Alaska, you know, it took 10 years of lobbying and, ⁓ back and forth.

they had a bill called SB9 and that was meant to loosen up all of these tight regulations.

the problem the problem was is that They gave up a lot more than they said they were going to so at the end of the process You know what we said What they said that we were gonna get? Was a lot less than what we actually got so the only the only changes that we got were

additional hour which was you can be open till 9 p.m. and then You were allowed to have events So before you couldn't have events live music TVs Games even trivia nothing. Okay, You could do events, but you could only do four a year and only one per quarter And you would have to pull a permit Through the city which also cost money

cost money and then you have to have the police review your security plan and then approve that which costs money and then you once that's passed then you can have the event but that sometimes will take a month or two to get passed. So there was a lawsuit that

a of the companies in Alaska put together for a class action against the state for these rules. And it took a couple of years, but the judge ruled that it was unconstitutional for a First Amendment violation to have those restrictions. It was a freedom of speech issue.

So that went through and opened up. You can have live music, televisions, like board games, stuff like that. I haven't received a response from AMCO. Like generally when there's a compliance change, AMCO will send out an email, say, hey,

This is the new regulation moving forward make a note. It'll be changed In the law, this is what you're allowed to do. This is what you're not allowed to do We haven't really gotten that and who was AMCO AMCO is the Alaska marijuana control office And they also handle this like these type of regulatory changes also early put out the guidance. I I said that wrong. It was alcohol

Marijuana alcohol office. Okay. Yeah, sorry. It's a it was separate now. It's combined They're very understaffed. So I always feel bad about sending a message. So it's like I know there's like three people there So yeah, it's ⁓ It's super weird And how do you how do you run a business with the uncertainty of like what you're doing? Yeah. Yeah, am I allowed Am I not?

Totally. Is there any state in the lower 48? any place you're like, if we could like model after this place, that would be really nice. Is there anything that comes to mind or any place that comes to mind? Yeah, I mean,

Really most of them. Really? So the biggest ones that come to mind, I don't know if memorized, but Utah, Wyoming, think New Jersey, those three you have, or Montana as well. Okay. Very similar to what we have, the stranglehold on this, but all of the other states, it's...

treated the same. If you have a bar license and if you have a brewery license, they would be the same. It's

In fact the the breweries actually have to go through more hoops than the bars hmm, so a bar if you own a bar and You want to buy a keg you just go on the list of distributors or sales rep from a brewery would come in and try to sell you on it and then you just order and then at the end you would just take the taxes from the sales of the patrons if you have a

city or state tax, and then you just pay the tax. For brewing, you have to make the product, you're taxed on making the product, then you're taxed on distributing the product, and then you're taxed on selling the product in a tap room. So you have, in Anchorage, you have the alcohol sales tax.

which is 5%, that's the sales tax. You have your monthly state tax, which is your amount of gallons that you produced, you're taxed on that. Your quarterly, which would be at the TTB level, so that's federal. And then your end of year. So you have those four, and then you have to add in payroll tax.

corporate tax, depending what your structure is. it's tough to keep it all balanced. But a bar? Pretty straightforward. When I hear about you laying on the taxes, taxes on taxes on taxes, and I think, one, think of the Boston Tea Party for sure. My son came home one day.

And he asked how much something was and I was like, it's this, but it's actually this plus tax. And he's like, we don't have taxes anymore because of the Boston T Harbor. And I was like, boy, sit down. We're going to be here a while. Don't ruin his life. I know. The taxes are annoying, especially when you're going to have taxes and then you're still going to have schools in anchorage shutting down.

not able to have sports programs, stuff like that. It's one thing to be taxed and be like, well, my kid has a school to go to and they can play sports and all this other crap. then it's another thing when, least working in the industry that you're in, like, where's my taxes even, what is this all for, besides making it more difficult for me to operate business? I'm definitely disappointed in the transparency. So when that tax was originally voted in,

⁓ They ran that campaign for solving the homeless issue. That was the majority of ⁓ what they were trying to say. And typically, you would put that in a separate fund and then you would have either non-profits or state-funded programs.

funded from that account. That's not what happened. Or that's not what I believe happened. Disclaimer. I cannot confirm all of this, but I believe it went into the general fund and I have seen it be used through the assembly meetings for many different things that weren't originally.

Intended for laid out. Yeah it's I've I can't believe I'm saying this so I've watched these meetings and these minutes and They'll call it out they'll say hey, you know Is this something that we can cover the difference from last year with the alcohol tax or the marijuana tax and It's like well and it and it's not just a one-off. I hear that at multiple meetings

I apparently don't have life and I'm watching the assembly meetings. I'm a full grown adult now. You should have seen me when I was younger. This is my younger self would laugh at me.

Yeah, it's really weird. I know the state has kind of like a website where you can go and you can see where the revenue is coming in and the budget, but it ends up getting moved around in these meetings and the public doesn't, they don't have time. They don't have time.

But they don't have time to track it down. They're just upset that they see it. And they're like, why aren't you fixing this problem? Because, know, rough math, Anchorage is getting, please don't quote me on these numbers, is getting anywhere from three million to six million a month.

from just the alcohol tax, not the marijuana tax. So if you call it three million, 12 months, 36 million, call it 40 million, because you get seasonal adjusting. So $40 million, if you were to stick it into one issue, homeless? I mean. You feel like you should at see a dent in that. Or at least suck.

Progress. Yeah. Hey, here's a, building the facility because we saved up one year of tax revenue. imagine a $40 million structure. Yeah. That could provide services, bring all of these nonprofits into one place so that the services are provided. You know, people come in and they can get taken care of by going room to room instead of, you know,

this service is in this weird strip mall, this other one is over here, because they're nonprofits. They don't make a lot of money. They don't pay their people a lot. They don't have nice facilities. that's not what is ⁓ happening.

But yeah, it does, it gets pulled for schools. Sometimes they'll do remodels on ⁓ these schools, but we're sinking money into infrastructure that I don't think has longevity. I think if anything, we should be leaning into how schools are gonna be different in the future with AI.

I mean, I don't see physical structures the way that they are now. So they'll still be there. I think every student will be assigned an AI to teach them in the way that they learn. And you'll have your basic day-to-day skills that you should...

be able to handle without any assistance AI wise. Buying a sandwich. It's like doing mental math and stuff like that. More complex, you your taxes, buying a home, moving locations, getting a new job. could, the AI will teach you how to use the tools that are being created and then the school facilities will function as like,

a gathering place to kind of one interaction, social interaction, so you're not behind a computer or whatever it is in the future. And then also a little competition, like, here's what I'm building, here's what I'm doing. We still have sports, you know, and they do that. I don't know, that's all the future stuff, but I think if we don't.

lean into it up here now we will be behind the curve of the lower 48 and opportunities will just slip by. Yeah. It's naive to think that AI is, is going to go away or it's not that big of a deal. I think it's very much upon us and it's like one of those things. And yeah, you're,

I think your thinking is correct. You don't know how it's going to shake out, but you know that just the way that we're seeing AI operate now, it is going to force change and it is going to be different. And if we don't figure it out, we will be left behind. In a lot of ways, gets left behind, know, logistically, Alaska is a nightmare for some things. yet AI seems to do a pretty dang good job with logistics. So like if we can embrace that.

It would definitely, definitely be good for us. I think, you know, we're about the same age, I'm 38. 38. Yeah, me too. So we were taught memorize all of these facts and solutions. That's how we were taught. 12 grades of that. Flashcards. Flashcards. Memorize it. I think we'll need to shift and say...

identify all these problems and then order the tools to find the solutions. So you don't need to know the solutions, but you need to identify the problem and figure out how to solve that problem with what tool, what's the best. I think that's the way we'll have to do it in, actually now. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we're here.

The past two months I've been diving deep into AI because it's moving at an incredible pace. And in the business world, if you don't have a plan right now, it's not impossible, but it's going to be harder for you. learn as much as you can. There's lots of, everything's changing.

go to sleep and there's an AI breakthrough and I wake up in the morning and there's another breakthrough. It's like, God. but at least know the basics. Yeah. It's crazy to think knowing that you are the same age, similar age, growing up with like the basic Apple computer that you're learning how to do. Like we kind of got introduced how to even use computers in school. That was kind of new.

and then the home computer and then the laptop and then cell phones and YouTube and the internet like just kind of, and so to kind of, I kind of think millennials are, I think we're technically like elder millennials, like you're on the older side of the millennial thing, but we're kind of at a unique place to really capitalize. We kind of grew up with technology and if you're paying attention and if you're willing to get on board, I think we have the advantage.

I think we do have the advantage because our whole lives you've had to adjust to the changing technology. And the people that haven't, you know for a fact they got left behind and you see that. I have friends that never got with it. And it's pretty obvious. And you can. I mean everybody, that's what's great about America. You can do whatever you want.

It's just you have to it's a trade-off like how how Easy do you want your life to be or how hard how successful do you want to be or you know? Do you not want to be? Do you just want to like Like live a normal life. Where do you want to do crazy things? You can do whatever you want. Yeah Yeah, gotta want it though

So coming up, man, we're so close. It actually feels like summer might be coming, at least the last couple of days, lots of sunshine, warmer temps. Summer's coming and a lot of people I know like tourists are welcome at your brewery and other breweries across the state. But is there any events or any like stuff, is there any like stuff going on in the state that you're like a part of?

Either like, I don't know if there's like craft brewing fairs or like brewery events out in the state. Do you do anything like that? I have. I've done a bunch. And there are, you know, there's, I wasn't able to make it this year, but in Soldotna there's Frozen River Fest. yeah, Frozen River. I've yet to make it Frozen River Fest. I always have drill weekend or something. I'm out of state or something like that, This one was very cold. Yeah, I I wasn't there, but.

You know, they actually had to like heat the beer. Dang. Because it was freezing the lines. Jeez, that's crazy. But they're...

if I want to see this.

festivals used to be a big thing.

perception has changed and and partially it's it's the fault of the breweries because there are so many brewing festivals that the breweries would just and you don't get paid for them. Every every festival is a donation. You're probably paying to be there right? No you don't pay to be but you are giving away the beer for free. So yeah if you're a smaller brewery it's tough.

And what would happen is the bigger breweries and even some of the smaller breweries would bring stuff that they have overstock of, know, typically flagships. So people would go to these festivals and then they wouldn't see anything new that they couldn't get at the liquor store or in the tap room. Wasn't one off. It's not special.

And the prices for these festivals have been going up. So what are you paying for? The value isn't there. I think the brewing community and the couple companies that put on festivals are not providing enough value for what they charge for the customer. And people are realizing that, and they're not going.

So they're wondering why attendance is down and why people are not interested anymore. It does come down to price. Like I realize everybody, you need to make profit and it's not that much. there's, something's gotta change when it comes to festivals. Interesting. Yeah.

And I think that's probably just kind of some of the things we've talked on or touched on already with less younger generations not drinking as much. They're being like, I don't even know socially, like do these younger generations, do they want to go out and do these type of festival things? It seems like you have to be just always paying attention to how the culture is shifting and what the needs are of the community or what people are.

or really wanting in your lane, it seems like a full-time, that alone is a full-time job. I mean, you could have gotten to, well, and you did, you get into brewing or any business really with an idea of like, I love this thing and I experienced it this way and that's what I wanna give to my community. And then the culture shifts in five years and you're like, they don't want that anymore. I mean, dang, that's a tough job, man.

So I realized this like a few months ago and I was like, why do people start businesses? Like, why do you think people start businesses? People start businesses because it's something that they love or enjoy and they're trying to recreate that for other people. Yeah, there's that. That's the artistic business. Typically, you know, when you have not artistic businesses.

you are ⁓ fixing a problem and you're providing a solution, whether that is a service or a product. Those are the two paths. in a few years ago, I guess quite a few years ago now, there was a couple options, Milwaukee's best life, Keystone, that's all we had, Bud Light, Coors, and we had massive amounts of product, right? They're a huge scale.

So supply wasn't an issue. What the issue was is variety. That was a problem. So breweries came in, they fixed that need by creating lots of different variety. And then we went over-corrected and we hit a saturation point. And then now we're seeing the down curve, which is shrinking to match the supply-demand curve.

and it's gonna be uncomfortable.

But.

The people who can keep up with it and stay light and nimble and be able to change their business as the community is wanting to or as the social perception is going one way or another, those are the people that'll survive and then you'll hit that equilibrium, right? This supply-demand curve. But right now, if you're not

Keeping up with it, if you're like old school and you're like, this is what I do, people like it or they won't, it's gonna be not impossible but tougher. Yeah, so you gotta keep up with it and running it solo.

You're nimble. Nimble. I just don't sleep a lot. man. This has been a cool conversation, man. I feel like I've learned, I've learned a lot. Also just really appreciate your insight as a, as a business owner, as someone in this industry that I'm learning is a freaking challenge to be in and to be successful, let alone to start, you know, the timing of it when you started, where you're at with it now. But I think it's just your perspective with.

the whole thing is pretty cool. I definitely got more than I bargained for in this conversation and I hope people listening get that as well. think this is something that people might have been listening to this because they're like, cool, I want to learn about brewing. Sorry we didn't talk about how you actually make beer, that wasn't my intent with this. But I am glad we landed on a couple different things with just the mindset, what you've learned, the challenges, what it takes.

to keep going when things aren't ideal. then, yeah, and then you just, in the context of Alaska in general, the things that make that amazing and make it really hard. So. Yeah, there's a ton of opportunity up here. Yeah, this is just, this business is just one facet. know, there is so much.

so much room to grow and there's a lot, Alaska has a lot of problems. There's so many problems to fix. It's hard, but if you want to jump into any business, you could do pretty well if you go in with the right mindset. Definitely doing your research and keeping up with what's

evolving. think people will do really well if they're starting or solving problems up here in the next 10 years.

After that, I don't know. Nobody knows. Yeah, exactly. Gosh, no idea. Just with the way things have kind of shaken out in the last five years. The next 10 will be interesting for sure.

Whether related to brewing or not, who do you think would be someone cool to have on this show to talk to that either has a area of expertise or just a cool Alaskan to be able to sit down and just hang out with

Well, I hate to say it.

Zach Lamphere, he owns Bleeding Heart Brewery. He grew up here. He was Marine, couple deployments. Then he was school teacher in the Valley in Palmer. Wasillam, Palmer. And then opened up the brewery. he's a...

He's got a really cool story. Um, it'd be really interesting. do a little research on him, kind of prompt him on some good questions, uh, cause he is a Marine and, you know, he's not, he's not going to give it to you on a silver platter. It's like, yeah, answer. Yeah. Question. Answer. Uh, but like, no, he's, uh, I hate to love him. Um, but he's really, uh,

He is extremely talented in marketing. I think he's probably the best at marketing in the brewing world in Alaska. Hats off to him. Cool. I'll keep that in mind as I go forward for sure. Thank you. Thank you for that. So tell people where to keep up with you, man. Where do they find the tap room? Where do they...

buy your beer, is it in person with you? Is there other places in Anchorage or across the state? Social media, all that stuff. How do people keep up with Magnetic North? Yeah, I try to do all the socials. My videos are trash but funny. They're literally just me. like, hey, I'm making this thing. You guys should check it out. And I try to make it funny.

TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. I haven't put out a YouTube video in a long time, but I just don't have the time to edit. Maybe there's an AI tool coming out, I don't know. But then as far as getting the product, so the taproom is kind of in this little industrial space off the beaten path, really close to where Midnight Sun was. if...

Do know where Seward's Folly Bar and Grill is off of Abbott, just off of Seward Highway there? I'm just up the road. Couple blocks. And I am in liquor stores, so right now it's mostly in Anchorage, but you got anything, Brown Jug, Value, Gold Rush, Labadega.

Yeah, all the things. know, I'm in a, some in Eagle River, Chugiak Palmer, you Three Bears. Maybe I'll make it down here. If I, I did pick up a distributor, cause I have all these counts. also, so self-distribute. So I'm driving around. You're the guy. Yeah. To that as well. So haven't done a great job with that cause it.

absorbs a lot of time. It's a lot of time driving and maintaining the kids. So I did pick up a distributor so that I should be able to solve that problem pretty soon. Okay. Take the hit on the ⁓ margin and just have somebody help you out. Gotcha. Cool.

You have the mindset of a business, businessman for sure, which is pretty cool. I think it's a great.

I think it's a great quality to have. I'm glad that you're here in Alaska. You're on our team. You're doing cool stuff with the brewery. Still dreaming up innovative ideas for problems that we face here. It's really cool. And so happy to have you. Appreciate you having me on. Yeah, dude. Thanks for making the drive out, doing a turn and burn from Anchorage to Kenai. I know what that's like. It sucks. And I just had you.

sitting down for a couple more hours that you're already gonna be on your butt for the rest of the day. yeah, this has been fun, man. And appreciate your insight, your time. Jeremiah Christian, Magnetic North Brewing. Thanks so much for coming out, Yeah. Sweet brother. Yeah.

That beer was really good.

Manny (1:27:17)
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Manny (1:28:00)
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