Episode 22: Dan Carey, Co-Founder at New Glarus Brewing

Dan Carey co-founded New Glarus Brewing in 1993 with no money, no investors, and no roadmap — just a passion for world-class beer and the work ethic to match. This is part two of our conversation with one of the most respected brewmasters in the Midwest.
In this episode, Dan opens up about the brutal early years of building New Glarus from scratch using dairy equipment bought at auction, the legendary mentors who shaped his craft — including the man known as the "Pope of Beer" — and why after 32 years in business, his greatest achievement has nothing to do with medals or ratings. Dan also talks about how he manages stress, and why running has kept him sane through it all.
🎧 Missed part one? Watch it here: https://youtu.be/dFyFBBYnjWc
🌐 More episodes and content at: midwestmicrobrew.com
⏱️ Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
00:18 – The challenges of starting New Glarus in 1993
04:22 – How the craft beer world has changed
05:06 – Dan's most influential mentors
09:18 – His greatest achievement after 32 years
12:13 – How Dan handles stress
13:30 – Running, racing, and staying grounded
🍺 About Midwest Microbrew:
Midwest Microbrew is a craft beer discovery site dedicated to celebrating and promoting the independent brewing scene across the American Midwest. Host Henry Nosek sits down with the brewers, founders, and visionaries behind the best small breweries in the region. Visit us at midwestmicrobrew.com for more.
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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Hey everyone, welcome back to Midwest Microbrew. I'm your host, Henry Nosick, and today I'm bringing you part two of my conversation with Dan Carey, the co-founder of Nu Glaris Brewing in New Glaris, Wisconsin. If you saw our first interview, you already know that Dan is a legend in the craft beer world, but in this one we get a little bit more personal. We dig into the early days of Nu Glaris Brewing from the ground up with basically nothing but sweat equity and a vision, the mentors and brewing icons who shaped Dan to the brewer he is today, and what he says is his greatest achievement after 30 years in the business. And I'll tell you what, the answer might surprise you. We also talk about how Dan manages for the pressure that comes with running one of the most respected regional breweries in the country. It's a candid, wide-ranging interview uh with a guy who has genuinely seen it all in the craft brewer world. Let's get into it. All right, Dan, thank you so much for joining us today again at Midwest Microbrew. Um, I had some a few follow-up questions to ask you in addition to our last interview. First one being, what were the biggest challenges in starting your brewery?

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Uh for us, uh my wife and I started the brewery in 93 and we started thinking about it in 92. I was working at Anheuser-Busch at that time uh as a brewing supervisor. And in order to be successful in a in a large corporation, in fact, my wife used to say it's a lot like the army, that you you have to be willing to be upwardly mobile and move. We were in Fort Collins, Colorado, and uh where there's an Anheuser-Busch brewery, and it at that point it was a reicest brewery in the system. And in order for me to continue to develop in that company, I would have to be willing to move around the country. Like every three years. Uh the joke was that uh once you open that last box after a move, it's time to move again. Our daughters were uh were in junior high at that point, and she said, uh, you know, I I had been offered a job in St. Louis, and she said, Look, I I I um she said, My my dad moved us around when I was a kid, and when you're in junior high, it's really tough. So it's not what I want to do, but uh I want to move home to Wisconsin, which was her original where where she was born and raised. And so she said, let's go back and I'll I'll build you a brewery and you can make beer for yourself rather than for a large brewery. And but but but we when we were first married, we we we lived in a trailer that I think cost uh five thousand dollars. So we didn't really have any money, we didn't have any family money. So to start the brewery, the biggest obstacle we had was was no money. Nowadays, at least up until maybe this year, craft brewers could could easily find money. There's a lot of people, like uh Michael Moore always says, uh there is a lot of money floating around, you just don't have it. And uh so it's easy to find, relatively easy to find investors. But in our day, uh it wasn't the case. It was hard to get bank loans, it was hard to find investors, and so the biggest obstacle we had was really uh trying to do everything with sweat equity. So a lot of hours, you know, it's probably working 70 hours a week was seven days a week, six and a half days a week, 12 hours a day. Some some shifts were 20 hours to try to build the brewery. So not having any money and having to be creative to solve problems. And you know, I I did I did uh a lot of welding, I did a lot of concrete cutting, I did some electrical wiring, and I did a lot of uh in those days craft brewers had to do everything on their own, and we used uh dairy equipment that we bought at auctions, you know, for cents on the dollar. And so it was uh it was it was a different different time. I I remember when uh you know nowadays uh you can you we didn't have the internet of course, but nowadays people can buy a pitchable quantities of yeast online, they don't even need to leave their desk. But uh we we had to get yeast in slants and then propagate them in our kitchen. And uh so everything was a little bit more took a little bit more effort. And nobody really understood craft beer in the early 90s. People I remember when I first came to New Glarus and uh I hired some farmers to help me stand up some some some tanks. They said, So you're gonna start a brewery, what kind of beer are you gonna make? So I tried to understand, well, we're gonna make lager beers, we're gonna make pilsners and and uh Hella style beers, and they said, No, no, no, no. I I mean, did is the beer gonna taste like Miller, Coors, or Bud? Because I can't drink bud because it gives me a headache. So don't make a beer like that. Make a beer like Coors. So that that was the market that that we started into.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

So it was a different world. Yeah, that's interesting to hear how things have changed.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Yeah, because nowadays people don't really realize that even you know, even even people that aren't really beer fishing and autos are drinking IPAs, but when we started, a beer a beer like that would have just thrown people for a loop. Really? Oh yeah. That's interesting. I hadn't thought of that. That's a whole different world. Yeah. I mean, it used to be bars with taverns would have they they'd have uh they'd have Miller High Life in Wisconsin, they'd have Miller High Life, uh Miller, and you know, maybe a dry beer uh or ice beer, and if and if they were really uh adventurous, they might have uh uh a craft beard amber ale.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Wow, it's uh a little different. So I guess for my next question, who has been the most influential in your brewing journey?

SPEAKER_00 5:19

I've had so many people uh that have helped me over the years. Uh I've been uh I think that uh the thing about being successful in business is you you have to work really, really hard. And that's that's always true. And that's the number one thing. You have to get out of bed every morning and go to work. And uh, but that doesn't uh that doesn't guarantee success. There's a there's a level of never underestimate the value of luck. Being at the right place at the right time, but we we always worked really, really hard. And I think that sometimes when you work hard, good luck comes your way. So what I mean by that is is I had a lot of mentors over the years, people that have helped me, and it's they helped me and Deb because they saw how hard we worked and that we had passion and were genuine. And uh brewers responded to my desire to make the absolute best beer I could. My dream was always to make world-class beer. So I had uh lots of older people help me. Uh I went to the Siebel Institute in Chicago. There was a old brewer, uh, Walter Swistowitz, who had started brewing at the end of Prohibition, and he was one of my original mentors. And he started as a young brewer right at the end of Prohibition. And I remember I asked him one time, what is what what what were the there were lots of breweries after prohibition in every small town and even before prohibition. And so people were kind of looking down on the big national shippers, but were all these little breweries making good beer in those days? He said no, most of it was really not very good. But in any event, I learned a lot from him. Uh Carl Strauss, who was uh came from originally came from Germany and was brewmaster at Paps. He was very kind to me. Probably the uh person who helped me the most was the principal uh at the um Vahin Stefan Brewing School, uh Ludwig Narzis, who is basically the Pope of Beer. If uh if you were drink German beer, most likely uh it's been influenced by a professor Narzis. And he uh passed away at 97 years old from COVID. But for 30 years, he was my number one mentor, and we spoke every week by phone, uh, and he helped me with every single problem that I faced, which of course in a brewery is many. And uh and then uh another uh German uh brewmaster by the name of Joseph Engelmann, who was uh just recently passed away at uh I think 74 years old, but he he knew more about brewing than anything anybody, practical brewing, so than anybody that I've ever met. So I could call him out of the blue, he would pick up and I'd say, I'd say, Hey Seth, I'm having a problem. This this is happening in we have a Weiss beer fermenter and this is what's happening. He says, Yeah, I've seen this. I saw this in 1978. What you need to do is this. And I think, how could somebody know so much about beer? Uh so I guess my point is that there is there was a whole group of people uh who have been instrumental in my knowledge. Uh I studied brewing at UC Davis, University of California at Davis. Michael Lewis was my professor, and he's also an iconic name in the brewing business. So, you know, most people won't know these names, but these are sort of the these are the rock stars of the late 20th century brewing.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Wow, that's amazing. It's really cool to hear how much of like a wealth of knowledge certain people acquire over the years. Oh my God. It's it is just amazing. Absolutely. I'm I've been lucky enough to come into contact with some people like that in my life too, and it it makes a big difference for sure. Yeah. So what would you say is your uh greatest achievement?

SPEAKER_00 8:54

Well, s uh building the business is is uh is a is a is a huge achievement. Obviously, surviving for uh since 1993, whatever that is, 32 years in business, I think is an achievement. My wife and I are business partners and we're you know we're still happily married together, so that's an achievement. You know, winning medals is uh is is fun, is nice, uh having good scores and untapped, but all of those things are a little bit vain. And and to be really to be honest, we have 125 employees in the brewery, and what brings me the most joy is when employees bring their their children and like maybe they they have a baby, and so they bring in um they bring in their new son or new daughter to show off. And I always I I see these young families that uh are you know living uh that are have a have a have a paycheck that is uh uh a good paycheck, a living wage and and full health insurance, uh good medical care, and their families are safe. And so when I see people get married or engaged or have children or buy a house or get a new car, it makes me happy that we're able to uh we're able to to make uh to bring good things to people. I think I think in the end, uh I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that I'm probably the only uh principal in a brewery that has a socialist tendency. And I really do feel that our purpose uh in a business is to take care of first our employees, our community, and uh then our investors. Uh and if you if you take care of your employees and you take care of your community, everything else sort of falls into place because the people are what make the difference. If you have good people, and we do, we have the best employees in the world. And when they're squared away, uh they keep us safe. So I'm you know blessed to have them, and that probably is what makes me the most proud.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

And what sounds corny, it sounds corny, but it's but it it's it's honestly the how I feel.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

No, that's a great answer. That's yeah, that's absolutely a great answer. That's a great legacy to leave too. I'm sure your employees are, you know, they they know that they're being looked out for and they're yeah, they they trust us.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

We trust them, they trust us. Certainly, uh, we're all imperfect entities with our foibles and mistakes, but as long as uh a decent effort is put in, we we all do well.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Amazing. That's great to hear. Last question from me is how do you handle stress? Not very well, actually.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Um, but I've learned over the years to I think the the you have to trust the people around you. If you have good people on your team working with you, you you don't feel alone because sometimes stress comes when you're afraid and you're alone. And if you if if you can spread out that burden and know that there are people that are watching your back, if you're watching their back, they're watching yours. So so uh a acknowledgement of uh that the people around you can help support you, I think is uh philosophically uh the first thing. And that's something that I to learn trust was a long journey for me because I'm sort of an engineer scientist nerd that would probably be happiest in a uh 500-barrel brewery working by myself. So working in the community was a learned thing for me. But what I what I do is uh I I love to run. I uh I run and I lift weights. Uh I always lifted weights and always run my whole life. I run uh you know weekend races. I run uh I'm I'm my heart is I I'm a I'm a miler. I love I'm a middle distance runner, uh but I run also, you know, I'll run 400 meter races, half mile, uh, you know, 800 meters, 1500 meters, 5k, 10k, half marathons. And uh I try to run I try to run 15 or 20 miles a week and you know I'll I'll lift I'll lift weights twice a week. So that's probably that's my that's what keeps that's what really keeps my my brain straight. I s I remember I saw a t-shirt at a race one time that said, I don't run for vanity, I run for sanity. It's like, yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

That's a good way to put it. I I haven't heard that before. I appreciate your time so much, Dan. Yeah. Thank you, Henry. Nice talking to you. Yeah, nice talking to you again. Take care. Yeah, you as well. Bye. Alrighty, guys. That's gonna do it for today. Be sure to check out some of our other exclusive interviews with the people from the best breweries in the Midwest. Bye now.