Inspired by Underberg and the social nature of after-beer drinks, Shahin Khojastehzad, the former partner in Portland, Maine’s Novare Res Bier Café, launched his own bitters company, Handshake. Drawing inspiration from his background as an Iranian living in Maine, his bitters are inspiring breweries and earning spots on bar tops.
Handshake makes its bitters in the space formerly occupied by Kit, a non-alcohol brewery, also in Portland, Maine. The bitters are available in a variety of breweries around the country, including Hop Butcher for the World in Chicago. In a conversation with All About Beer editor John Holl, Khojastehzad talks about the inspiration for Handshake and its place in the beer industry.
Starting with a Handshake
John Holl: You started the idea for Handshake back in 2017. Take me back there to the beginning.
Shahin Khojastehzad: I’ve been working in the beer industry and into craft beer since the early 2000s. I had my first Underberg at Toronado in San Francisco. A lot of beer bars have always carried it because of its unique designation as a food product, and it’s just kind of a perfect little bottle if you need a little help digesting after a big beer festival.
Then, I was introduced to a book by an Italian author who compiled this book of historical herbal, botanical elixirs throughout Europe and it opened my eyes. I wondered what my background as an Iranian in the beer industry could bring to the space.
I’ve brewed beers all around the country and all around the world with interesting ingredients. And a lot of the time I usually choose Iranian ingredients just because I want to bring something that is a head scratcher flavor that a brewer’s never worked with, but that makes sense. One time I brewed a witbier, like the almighty Allagash White, but added Persian tea and other spices.
I have a hidden arsenal of flavors that I can work with. So when it came to starting Handshake, I figured this would be a cool opportunity to tie in both my homes. I’ve been in the alcohol industry for years, and there’s not a lot of representation as far as people of color in the state of Maine actually being owners or producers.
I started researching hundreds of different recipes and then nailed down the 20 base ingredients that I wanted to add to Handshake. Then I looked at it from the state of Maine and from Iran and asked, “hat are the flavors that I want to try to achieve?”
It became this flavor triangle of citrus, tea, and wood. It didn’t necessarily have to be tea, didn’t necessarily have to be citrus, but things that give those elements or perceptions.
Handshake flavors
John Holl: Why those three flavor profiles?
Shahin Khojastehzad: I was at the Porter Bar in Atlanta and I had Amaro for the first time there, and there was an alpine Amaro that was spruce, pine, and really herbaceous and it reminded me of Maine. Like walking in the woods. The more and more you look at those different historical recipes from around the world, pretty much every culture is taking something, and adding herbs that grow around them, and it’s been like a digestive or an after-dinner drink.
So that was the challenge. How could I make something that was both Maine and Persian? So that’s when I started marrying those two flavors together, because I wanted the tea, citrus, and wood, because some of my favorite Amaro really fall under those notes.
As much as I love Fernet-Branca and Malört, they have their own place in the world. I wanted to make something a little bit more nuanced, where it’s a head scratcher flavor, rather than beating you over the head with saffron or rosewater or something else.
It’s not one thing standing out, but together, they’re all giving you a sense that you could be in Iran, you could be in Maine. I want to transport somebody in their head when they try it. They can only make their own perception of it, whether it’s the spruce is speaking to them, or the saffron or the black lime.
We thread that needle, and I made probably 90 different prototypes, and ended up getting close to what I wanted to do for the final product. We were ready to launch in April 2020, so obviously everything went on pause. But then I finally got it off the ground.
Expanding the category
John Holl: You brought up Underberg and there is clearly a brewer fascination with that product. In the last few years it’s showing up at every festival. There are tattoos. It’s a big draw. So where does Handshake fit in with that? Is it complementary? Is it competition? Where does it sit in the beer industry these days?
Shahin Khojastehzad: When you’ve had five million Underbergs in your life, it’s nice to have something new. So that’s one element. I’ve also been around for a while and have long histories with a lot of breweries, so that has helped. They understand my mission, and want to support it. But ultimately the quality of the product speaks for itself. I don’t want someone to carry it because we’re friends, because that’s not a path for long-term success.
Small bottle, big impact
John Holl: Tell me about the 50ml size, because it feels more substantial than what we might be used to in the category.
Shahin Khojastehzad: I had originally thought about a bottle like what Underberg has. Remember I was planning on opening up in 2020 and most of the fillers that I was looking at were volumetric fillers that were for pharmaceutical purposes. Once the COVID vaccine came around, it was impossible to get one of those machines anymore.
I started looking at other options and chose the 50ml because I still wanted to do a smaller package. And this just actually ended up working out well. Coming from the beer world the neck of the 50ml bottle fits a homebrew bottling wand perfectly.
John Holl: With the larger size this isn’t necessarily a shooter. Of course it can be, but how do you suggest serving it?
Shahin Khojastehzad: You can mix it. You can drink it by itself. You can have it by itself on the rocks. And it can also be a workhorse in cocktails as well. When I look back I was originally only going to do the tiny bottles, like Underberg. But I wanted to add it to cocktails, and no bartender wants to open tiny bottles and shake them behind the bar. I also wanted to make it accessible. This is a drink for everyone. It’s not just for luxury. Anyone working in a brewery or restaurant should be able to have this to enjoy.
Sourcing Handshake flavors
John Holl: Let’s just do a little bit of a deeper dive into the ingredients.
Shahin Khojastehzad: Ingredients from Maine and Iran have been interesting to work with because I went from using whatever I could get my hands on to slowly focusing on the product it has become.
The recipe has changed since the beginning. The ingredient vendors have changed. When I first was starting, somebody was like, “Hey, man, just make sure you’re buying your spices and not funding a warlord.”
Now I try to vet and to have transparency of where we’re getting our ingredients. Not only are we going to have higher quality ingredients, we’re not going to be causing harm.
There is a woman in Falmouth, Maine who grows saffron, not much, but I throw at least a thread of her saffron in. I found another woman who reached out after I opened from Afghanistan who is trying to have a female-owned saffron co-op. Since the US has left and the Taliban has come in, she is working to give Afghan women more autonomy, so I actually use about 40% of my saffron from her co-op.
And it sounds corny, but the 29 different ingredients all have some emotional story for me. Every ingredient is a ransom note of my life, of all of my friends and flavors that I’ve had over the years.
The first of many handshakes
John Holl: Given all the places I’ve seen it, and the conversations where Handshake has been brought up, It seems like things are going well for the brand. Is that a fair assessment?
Shahin Khojastehzad: It has been a learning curve over this past year. When I first started this, I wanted a strong proof of concept and then to hit a goal of four 500-liter batches that I would sell within a calendar year. I thought that if I could hit that, I’d be onto something.
I did the launch party at Oxbow Brewing Company, and I think the first night, we pretty much sold the first batch, and then I went to my mom’s memorial service, and then came back and sold out the second batch within two weeks. Then it just kind of kept growing, and people were reaching out from all around the country. The Mason Pub in Seattle was one of my first accounts. Human Robot Brewing was one of my first accounts. Oxbow was one of my first accounts.
The beer industry really helped me get to where I am right now, because, hell, even my big bottling line is the former Atlantic Brewing 22-ounce bomber bottling line that they just had in a shipping container somewhere for 10 years. I traded them some T-shirts and 50 bucks and got a new bottling line.
Pull Up a Stool is a regular feature on All About Beer. Reach out to editor John Holl at JohnHoll@allaboutbeer.com with suggestions on brewing professionals that should be featured. And to support our journalism, please AllAboutBeer.com/support
