BP: Were the recent rebranding efforts tied in any way to the expansion?

DW: We had known for years that our packaging was inferior, but we simply weren’t doing a volume that we had any money to work with. It’s not just the design work, but the printing plates…getting new printing plates for a case box for example, there’s an expense per beer brand. And if you have printing plates for six packs, you’ve got printing plates for labels…it all adds up. In the past, we simply weren’t there and couldn’t afford it, but we knew it needed to be done.

Two years ago we decided to undertake the process. We had no idea it was going to take two years to come to fruition. We spent a good six months developing a document where we all had to sit around to define the brand. We all had homework to go to a supermarket and bring in products with nice packaging that you think is interesting. We are able to reach consensus from that (process) and then move forward.

Then we needed to hire an artist. We found somebody we liked, and the first example of his work that we saw was a pencil sketch of the jester’s head that you see now. And it was perfect. Then we had to get the plates made, federal approval on the labels, print the labels. We had inventories so we had to time when it ran out. We finally started using the new packaging in late June for (imperial stout) Old Heathen, and the last one we changed over was Blithering Idiot. So that’s why it took two years (laughs).

BP: Is Merry Monks your top seller by a large margin? Has it always been your flagship beer?

DW: Out of the year-round beers we have, Merry Monks is the clear leader. But we’ve been an eclectic brewery without a flagship for so long. And years ago we tried to establish Hops Infusion as our flagship IPA and it just…I’m sure you’re aware of the issues we’ve had with that. The recipe wasn’t as good as it could have been. When we introduced it in 1998, there weren’t a lot of very hoppy ales out there. And then the whole market sort of surpassed it. So we finally changed the recipe a few years ago, and it got to be a better beer, but it just wasn’t getting traction for us. And I think the name was holding it back because people knew it from before as “that other beer”…a lot of people didn’t know we changed the recipe.

However, Merry Monks sort of emerged on its own about three years ago as our flagship. It just all of a sudden, it started growing about 30-40% percent a year. And this was not a planned thing. I mean as a 9.3% beer, everybody around me thought, no you’ll never have that for your flagship…and then it just did it on its own. Blithering Idiot has also been growing about 25% percent a year for the last several years. And that’s why it’s number two now.

Now since we have the new IPA that just came out, Last Chance IPA, that could easily surpass both of them, being lower in alcohol and price. We’re going to add more states for distribution on the Last Chance probably in November. We just kept it close to home at first because we couldn’t launch it all at once during the time we make our most popular seasonal (Imperial Pumpkin Ale), which really requires a lot of our brew time at this time of year.

BP: Can you talk about the origin of Last Chance IPA and the idea to involve animal charities?

DW: I had been toying with the idea of doing something involving animals. Not tied to a beer per se but we’re just getting to the point where we’re profitable enough that I wanted to give something back to the community. I was going to do some kind of plan for the welfare of animals. But when the IPA came up we had real trouble thinking of interesting names for it. I think we spent two months trying to come out names and just couldn’t get anything. So one day we just hung it up and retired to the bar and had a beer afterwards. And somehow the animal thing came up and we started talking about it and got the idea from that. And it gave us a theme for the beer, we had a name that wasn’t the most crazy or wild, but it stood for something. There was a mission behind it and we knew it was the right thing.

BP: And every month a different animal-related charity is featured?

DW: Yes. We’ve got three donations so far; May, June and July. And each month a different employee picks. We’re going in order of seniority; right now we have sixteen full-time employees, and they have to work here for a year before they get to pick. But yeah, it’s been around $2,600 the last two months. And of course it’ll go up as time goes by.

BP: Let’s talk about Pumpkin. There’s a lively debate on the internet about the release dates of seasonal beers in general and pumpkin in particular. What are your thoughts?

DW: Yeah, I think what you’re talking about is what we hear, you know, “every year you turn it out earlier and earlier.” No it’s not, it’s the same time every year. We start shipping it in July and people think it was moved earlier in the previous year. But I guess the idea is you think of pumpkin as an autumn beer. Certainly it’s intended to be. We’ve had growth on our Imperial Pumpkin Ale of 50-100% a year. We get the wholesale orders six months in advance…we want to know how many cases they want.

With Pumpkin, there is so much that if we’re still going to keep all our year-round brews in stock, we have to spread out the period of time we brew it. So we may start brewing it in May, bottling it in June and it just goes into cool storage and we start shipping in July. We’ll end up brewing it from the end of May until the end of September. So that’s a little over four months and we just can’t store it all. So we ask a couple of wholesalers to take it in. A few take it and hold it for three or four weeks in their coolers, and others want to put it out right away.

And what happens from the wholesalers that I’ve spoken to is, if they get it out in the shelves in July people go crazy for it. So it’s not a concern where you’d stick it out in the store shelves and it sits for a month or two. You know there’s demand for these beers, would probably be a demand year-round for them. The Pumpkin craze is an enigma in itself (laughs). How and why it became so excitingly popular in the craft beer industry still makes me wonder and try to figure it out. The best thing I’ve been able to come up with is the festivity. There’s just something fun about it.

But circling back to the original question, why we had to ship it early is because of space. To make as much as we need to make, we couldn’t store it until August or September. Because we send so much out, we have to schedule who’s getting shipped when because we have batches coming out every week. So there’s a few wholesalers that will get it right after Labor Day; they’re the last ones…and some of them wanted that way. For example, a wholesaler in Georgia wanted it after Labor Day…they’re keeping to the old traditional schedule. That helps us out there too cause we wouldn’t have it all shipping in July either. It sort of spreads it out, gives us space and allows us to function with the other beers too.