On this episode of Brewer to Brewer Brad Clark of Private Press Brewery interviews Cory King of Side Project Brewing. The two spend a lot of time discussing barrel aging in multiple vessels and blending.
The conversation eventually turns to the maturing of the industry and how drinker habits have changed and King recalls a recent meeting with a young staffer who had just returned from the gym.
“For his generation there are pictures posted online all the time. They live in Instagram so they are more health conscious that we were because they want to look good,” says King. “When we were 24 we didn’t have to worry about being posted online all the time. They live in in a different in in a different world than we grew up in and so we need to look at those changes.”
The Future of Side Project
“What excites me is that I still get excited about doing these big blends. I get excited about our quality. I get excited about our consistency of quality. I get excited about what our staff likes to do, and we’re going to look forward to do it in another location that has food and beverage together place I can take my kids. A lot of our customers now have children and families and they’re more apt to drink a play at a place where you can get aa snack and have two beers,” says King.
“We just had our anniversary and it surprised me from all these people around the world that come in and treat us like, like I treat Cantillon in Belgium. They came in to drink our stouts here in St. Louis, where I would go drink lambic in Brussels, or I would go to Champagne and drink champagne or Burgundy and drink wine. They came to St. Louis to drink stout. And that’s not lost on us at all. I am going to continue to do that.
But what’s next for us? When we kind of plateaued in production about four years ago, because of our choice, because we had no more space. I don’t want to make more beer, because that would be tougher for me to keep control of a lot of the beers if we get too big. But how do you keep growing your business? Our staff is really, really great. And they stay with us. And we want to continue to take care of them and pay them well and give them raises, and 401k’s, and health insurance, and all those things that now I have to talk about that. And so going forward, we just want to grow the business organically local, and still always have that global crowd that that appreciates our niche.
Hear the full conversation on the Brewer to Brewer podcast.
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This episode is sponsored by:
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The above transcript was condensed and edited for clarity.
