Four Peaks Brewing Company - An Interview with Andy Ingram

Four Peaks brewers Craig Koontz(l), Jim Roper(c), and Andy Ingram(r), sample some tasty strong ale brewed by San Diego brewer Tom Kickel during a recent Barleywine sparge. Four Peaks Brewing Company Interview with Andy Ingram By Pete Ricks. Four Peaks Brewing, located on 8th Street in Tempe, Arizona, continues to expand sales and production at a steady pace. Four Peaks has ascended to the top of the Arizona Craft beer market by establishing local brand loyalty with the decorated Kiltlifter and 8th Street Ale. Long a popular destination in Tempe, Four Peaks will be opening up the first satellite location in North Scottsdale sometime in late 2003. Four Peaks founder Andy Ingram was kind enough to sit down with Pete Ricks, Beerdude.com and Arizona/New Mexico Celebrator Correspondent, in late August of 2003 for the following interview. Pete: Andy, can you tell us about Four Peaks and when you guys started? Andy: Well, we have a couple of different dates. Probably the most accurate one would be April of '97, which is when we had the grand opening for the brewery and bar. So that's 6 years now I guess, from humble beginnings? Pete: So you started out as a homebrewer? Andy: Ah, yes, initially I did. I went to school in England for a year and sort of fell in love with the beer there, came back, and realized that I couldn't get the same thing back here. Really, it is a pretty typical professional brewer kind of story. Then, I started homebrewing, got real lucky and met some professionals and got to work with them, and ended up here. Pete: How long did you homebrew before you started brewing professionally? Andy: Probably about three and a half years. Not a real long time. I got in real quick with a guy named Clark Nelson who was at Bandersnatch and then Coyote Springs. I worked at Coyote Springs with Clark for a while and then Clark and I came here to Four Peaks. Clark eventually moved on and went to a place in North Carolina so I kind of tail ended into the job. Since then, I've had, well, Clark was a great mentor, and a fellow by the name of Barry John, who for 35 years was one of the three main brewers at the Young's Brewery in London, and moved to, of all places, Scottsdale. So I got his phone number and called him up out of the blue and told him we were starting a brewery and asked him if he'd like to come down and tell us if we were doing it right or wrong. He said, "Sure, I'll be there", and I was like "OK". So he came down and didn't leave for nine months. He was a brewery mentor. Every day with that guy was like a month's worth of learning. He was the one who convinced me to go back and get a formal brewing education, which I did at the American Brewer's Guild program. Pete: Tell us more about that Four Peaks yeast? We hear you use a very special strain of yeast. Andy: Yes, special in that it was isolated and propagated by a fellow named Dr. Paul Farnsworth while he was down in Tucson. It's basically any typical London Ale yeast that you would find through Wyeast or White Labs. Um, he isolated the things that you wanted, (its) a good attenuator, an incredible flocculater, it just drops right out, its like peanut butter at the bottom of the tank, and alcohol resistant. Its just a good yeast, you can kick it around the brewery and its got some really good flavors. The flavors that it produces are just phenomenal. Pete: We would agree. We would agree! Andy: Thanks. Pete: If I had to take three beers from this state elsewhere to show people what Arizona Craft Beer is about, Four Peaks Kiltlifter would be one of those beers. What makes this beer such an Arizona favorite and a consistent medal winner at the national level throughout the years? Andy: That is a question that we sit around and ask ourselves all of the time. Its probably one of the most quirky flagship beers for any brewery. I mean, its a 6% Scottish Export Ale. Pete: You really don't hear of that as a flagship beer. Andy: No, and we'll probably do 6000 barrels of Kiltlifter this year. It's amazing. It's just taken off. I think what it is is that its balanced, it definitely leans towards the malty side, but it does have some nice balance to it. It is an easy drinking beer despite the alcohol content. It is just a friendly, warming beer. Kind of like us. How it has gotten so popular, I don't know. I guess word of mouth. Pete: What do you find most challenging about growing your business in a state dominated by fizzy yellow beer. Andy: Yeah, that alone is the biggest problem. The hardest thing for us in the beginning was brewing in a state that is full of transients since most people here come from somewhere else. No one is from here, you know? Pete: Yeah, its like the sports teams here. No support unless you are winning. Andy: And they come here and they had their favorite beer from Illinois or wherever it was, and no matter what they try, it isn't as good as what they had at so and so's place. That was the hardest thing to get over, getting people to accept us as the local brewery. You're here now. We're your local brewery. I think now that has turned around. The more tap handles that you see, the 8th Streets and Kiltlifters out there that you see. We even have people come up to us at the festivals and tell us that we've sort of become Arizona's brewery, and that makes us feel great. Pete: Well, you guys are as far as volume, you guys are the largest. Andy: Yeah, yeah. Pete: How many barrels would you say you are going to do this year? Andy: We're on pace to do about 7200. Pete: That is awesome, and about 80% of that is Kiltlifter, huh? Andy: Easily, about 80 - 85% is Kiltlifter. Pete: I thought you guys probably did more 8th Street, that there might be more of a balance between 8th Street and Kiltlifter. Andy: 8th Street is just a great beer. Its one of my favorites. Its what I go to when I want to have a beer after work. Its actually more decorated than the Kiltlifter is. Two silvers in the GABF and one silver in the World Beer Cup. Pete: We hear Four Peaks is opening up a new location in N. Scottsdale. Can you tell us more about that? Andy: Yeah, we bought the old Ice Breakers place. It's not going to be a brewpub. It's just going to be a satellite so it will have the same menu and same beers. We're going to brew all of the beer here. We have a good brewery here so there's no point in building another one. We've got a good distribution chain. Unfortunately, you're not going to be able to brew your own there, we're taking that whole system out. So, we'll do the brewing. Pete: As to be expected. Andy: We'll do the brewing, we can handle that. (laughs). Yeah, it's exciting. So, sometime between late October and late November, I think. I can't give dates anymore. It's so hard after this place. Pete: I bet a lot of people in North Scottsdale are happy to hear that Four Peaks is opening up shop. Can you tell us a little bit more about the brewers and other staff that make Four Peaks one of Arizona's leading craft breweries? Andy: Well, the two guys that work for me, Jim Roper and Craig Koontz. Jim, well he got into brewing just through sort of serendipity. He was surveying up in Alaska and I think the story goes that he answered an ad for some part time work at a new brewery. Well, it ended up being the Alaskan Brewing Company in Juneau and he ended up working there for 5 years all through the giant growth. Then he packed up and left, moved back home here to Arizona, worked at Pinnacle Peak Brewery, Tommyknocker, and eventually here. I'm extremely happy to have him. He's a great help. Pete: Yeah, he's a great brewer. He's been here for about 2 years now? Andy: Yeah, about one and a half. He's been a blessing. His official title is Head Brewer. Mine is, I don't know, Vice President in charge of Brewery Operations. Then Craig worked for us from being a bouncer, to cleaning kegs, to filling kegs, to working on the old Meheen bottling line. He went away, thought he wanted to coach football, came back, I had an opening so he came back. Pete: So you have three brewers right now? Andy: Yeah, just three of us. In about a month, month and a half, I'm going to rehire brewer Scott Bickert which will help us going into the busy months. Pete: Do you give your brewers some latitude to brew their own seasonals or are there guidelines that you try to stay within? Andy: No, absolutely. I don't see any point in reigning in the brewers or making constraints. The brewers are there to brew. Each brewer brings something different to a brewhouse. I'm not going to name names, but there are breweries that do that. That tell you you are going to brew this style. Like today, it was sort of Jim's turn, well, we all sort of got together to do the Barleywine, but he did the hops. Its crazy, something like five and a half pounds per barrel. 52 pounds of hops just in the hop back alone! Pete: That sounds like my kind of beer! If you had to start your brewing business over again, what are some things that you might have done differently, and what have you learned from your experiences and trials over the years? Andy: God, it is so easy in hindsight. I guess the brave thing to say would be that I wouldn't change a thing. Pete: Been a great ride so far? Andy: Yeah, we made tons of mistakes, but somehow they worked out and we haven't buried ourselves because of them. There are a few partners that are no longer with us that I probably would have rather started without. Um, that's another issue. No, it's been a heck of a ride and its not over yet. Really, its just beginning. Pete: Are there plans to start exporting the great Four Peaks beers outside of Arizona, and if so, where can they be picked up? Andy: No plans. It's always been my philosophy and my partner's philosophy that you have to own your own back yard before you go into someone else's and we're not even close to that yet. I mean, what is the population growing in Maricopa County, like 9000 - 10000 residents a month? We have plenty of beer drinkers moving into the valley so we don't have to go seek them out. We're lucky in that regard. Pete: What about expanding into a better beer market though? We know this isn't the best craft beer market compared to some other states. Your brewery, in my mind, should be(producing) like 25,000 barrels with the great beer that you guys brew. Andy: Sure. This is something that we just grasped about 6 months ago. Because we had 42% growth last year, which is great. A lot of breweries had 42% growth last year but we had 42% in our original market so that's fairly remarkable. Pete: Yeah, it's starting to snowball and catch on. More people asking for the beer? Andy: Definitely. And if we can maintain that, I'd rather not fling the beer so far a field. Keep it here and keep control of it, and keep it good. So, yeah, we have designs about getting out of state but we're not in any hurry. We've got a great state and yet we're not everywhere. Pete: So, you guys have taps down in Tucson and up in Flagstaff too? Andy: Oh yeah, we're got taps all the way up in Page and as far south as Bisbee. Yeah, all over the state. Pete: As far as bottles, where can people pick up Four Peaks in bottles? Andy: Well, I heard good news the other day that Fry's is going to pick us up. Not all of their stores because of the demographics, but we got authorization for 100 stores. So that's great. We're in the majority of the Safeway stores, Bashas, all of the AJ's. Um, just tons of liquor stores around town. But more and more, we're getting into the chain stores. Pete: How many barrels do you do in bottles as oppose to taps? Andy: We don't do them in barrels; we measure them in cases so these last 3 months were our deadest months and we did about 1300 cases a month. We anticipate, especially with the launching of a new beer, probably to do 2300 cases a month. Pete: And this(Hopknot) is going to be a regular? Andy: Yep, this is going to be our fourth beer. Pete: The "Hopknot"? Andy: Yes, Hopknot with a "k". (laughs). Pete: Can you give us a little description of the beer? Andy: Everyone asks us that and immediately wants to know what style it is. It's not really a beer that fits into any style, it's a beer that we created to sort of fill a niche. We all thought that the IPA would be our fourth beer out, but we got to talking to Ted, who is in charge of our sales and marketing, um, Ted Golden, and he said, "You know what I could really sell is something lighter in appearance as people drink the beer with their eyes first". So we lined it up and brewed it with those guidelines in mind. Pete: What is in the future for Four Peaks? Andy: You can expect to see our beer in more places and more satellite locations opening up around the valley. Of course, we'll keep brewing great beer! Pete: That is good news to hear. Thanks for taking the time to speak with us at Celebrator Andy. Andy: My pleasure. FOUR PEAKS BREWING 1340 E. 8th Street, #104 Tempe, AZ 85281 480-303-9967 www.fourpeaks.com