Greetings from Lafayette.
With the 3rd Anniversary of People’s Brewing approaching, I
had the opportunity to sit down with co-founder and brewmaster Chris Johnson for
a bit of reflection and some discussion regarding the state of the brewery and
what’s on tap for 2013.
What’s the1st thing
that comes to mind when you think about the fact that you’ll be celebrating
your 3rd year of People’s Brewing?
Right off the bat, it’s amazing that it’s been three years. It seems like it’s been a whirlwind. Time flies when you’re having fun I
guess. It’s awesome, it’s cool…you never
know how things are going to go when you get started so it’s cool to get into
year three. Were at a point right now
where we’re further along than we expected to be. We’re working on some year five and year
seven original plan things to get done in the new year. So yeah, it’s pretty exciting and its fun that
we’re here in year three.
So actually you’ve
answered my next question to some extent.
At the 3-year mark, do you feel that you have fallen short, met, or
exceeded your expectations that you had set?
It sounds like you’ve exceeded you’re expectations to this point.
Yeah, we’re way further along than we expected to be. Right out of the gate we had a great local
acceptance, the local bars and pubs, and the local folks have been awesome for
us. Our taproom has done better than we
ever expected. We’re producing all the
beer we can possibly produce, which we’re excited about. We thought originally that we were going to
able to use our current setup for the first five years and we’re already
upgrading so yeah, it’s definitely been a really good three years and we look
forward to really good future years.
How much time is
involved with doing your job each week and has it diminished or increased since
you first began?
Well, it’s diminished, luckily. When we started, I was brewing, selling, and delivering. Basically, we didn’t have the money to have
people to do things. We’ve gone from
having two employees on day one, now we have four full time and seven part time
employees so that has taken away from my day to day hours. I can get what I’m doing done in a shorter
period and we have a lot of good people that are taking care of other things
that I used to do. From day one it was
seven days a week, 14 hours a day and now it’s much more reasonable. Every Sunday is a day off for my family and
Saturday’s I’m usually here until 2 o’clock or so, just sort of buttoning up
the week. It used to 24/7, it still kind
of is because I’m always thinking about this, I’m always working on new
stuff. Even when I’m at home I’m often
working on the brewery but it’s a lot better, I see a lot more of my family
these days.
How much of what you
do actually feels like work and how much feels like you’re amazed that you’re
getting paid to do what you do?
Well, I’ve done a lot of different jobs and beer is a
passion of mine. I get up every morning
and I don’t ever think to myself ‘I have to go to work’. I get up excited to go to work and I have
since I started in 2000 at the Lafayette Brewing Company. The days just fly by because you’re doing
something you love. My recommendation to
anybody is to find something you love to do.
It never really seems like work, that being said, it’s not that it’s not
stressful or hard sometimes but, at the end of the day, I’m doing what I want
to do and that’s incredible.
Along with this being
your 3rd Anniversary, we’re coming up on a new year. So, what does 2013 hold for People’s
Brewing? Let’s talk first about the
expansion of your facilities.
Sure, well we’ve expanded our taproom space and new cooler
space. We’re getting ready to break
ground on more production space out back.
We’re going to double our physical space for production, which is also
going to give us space for bigger tanks, more tanks. Basically, go from being able to do about two
thousand barrels a year to do more like six or seven thousand barrels a
year. In all, this will start to happen
mostly in the 1st quarter and we’ll really be moving forward at that
point but, as we go down the road we’re giving ourselves room to expand beyond
our current expansion.
So an increase in
production capacity opens up more possibilities. Concerning distribution, are you looking to
possibly tap into new markets outside of Indiana?
We’re looking at that.
We’ve got some distributors outside of the state that are interested in
the product and at this point we just couldn’t possibly get beer to them. As we expand we’ll continue to look at those
options and, when we feel like they make sense for us, we might make those
moves, maybe into the Ohio market, or Kentucky, or the Chicago area, which is a
no-brainer for us eventually. We always
like to see where we’re at and take a picture of what that means to us and make
sure that we can provide for that if we do move into those markets. But, we also feel like we could do more in
the state of Indiana as well. We’ll
probably focus mostly on staying local but we’re always looking at those
options as well.
You’ve also recently
expanded the taproom to accommodate more seating, what else may be in the works
for this side of things?
Looking on the taproom side, we’re looking at maybe doing a
small pizza or sandwich kitchen, offering a little bit of food that will be
something good, quality but not a real expansive menu. We just got the 12 (tap) lines put in so we
doubled up the line space. So we’re just kind of chunking away little pieces,
all over the place both on our production abilities and our taproom space.
You mentioned the
taproom expansion and the additional taps, what will that mean for what you
have to offer in the taproom?
Well we went from having six lines to twelve lines so it
gives us the advantage of being able to put more of our products on and some of
the specialty stuff we do, like the bourbon barrel aged and the nitrogen beers
that we do. Also, it gives us the
opportunity on growler fill day to put some of the beers on multiple lines and
just help with the flow of the taproom.
Most of all it gives us more variety.
We’ve often had more than six beers in the cooler so it’s nice to be
able to put on more choices for folks.
When we last spoke I
recall that you had mentioned the possibility of having a selection of local
wines at some point…
At some point we’re looking at getting a 2-way license so
that we can do some wine. We have a lot
of people that come in with their wife or husband that would rather drink wine
than beer. Our focus will always be on
the beer side but we may do some things to make the taproom a little more
inviting for everybody. We really just
want a sense of community in there and sort of give people a chance to stop in
and see what’s going on here at People’s.
Finally, December 17th
marks your 3rd Anniversary, what’s going on in the taproom to
celebrate this event?
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I want to extend a sincere thanks to Chris for taking time out of his Saturday to give me a tour of the facilities and answer my questions!
Stop down this Monday to help People's celebrate their anniversary and enjoy a cheap pint. They are located at 2006 N. 9th St. in Lafayette. As of this week, they are open every day: Mon-Fri from 2 to 8pm, Sat. & Sun. from noon to 8pm.
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