Sunday, June 29, 2008
Food, "Behind the Bar"
Going with the flow
The rise of SweetWater Brewing Company
Spark St. Jude
Freddy Bensch, co-founder of SweetWater Brewing Company
By Hope S. Philbrick
Since its inception in Atlanta 11 years ago, SweetWater Brewing has grown into one of the nation’s leading independent breweries. With a new restaurant and new equipment to help increase brewing capacity, the award-winning brewery is positioned for continued future growth. For insight, The Sunday Paper recently chatted with Freddy Bensch, co-founder and “big kahuna.”
Q How has SweetWater Brewing changed over the last 11 years?
A When we got started, it was pretty much three people and four dogs. Today, we have 25 people working strictly in the brewery and, if you include the tasting room, we have 44 employees. Eleven years ago, we sold 17 kegs the first month we were in business; we sell about 3,000 kegs a month now.
We set out with the core values of making good beer and, while we’ve grown, we’ve added more people and more tanks, but philosophically, we’re still doing the exact same thing the exact same way as when we got started.
What was involved in your recent expansion project?
We’re constantly making investments in the back [brewery]. We recently put in six new 400-barrel fermentation tanks to increase our total potential capacity to 100,000 barrels of beer. These are really tall, one-piece tanks, so in order to get them in, we tore the roof off and then put the roof back on around them. The total cost was about $1 million. It doubled our capacity.
Our first venue outside the brewery is the SweetWater Draft House & Grill, which is in Concourse B at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. I’m not a restaurateur nor do I want to be one, but this is a great partnership—our partners actually run it. They’ve got our five SweetWater beers on tap and a solid menu. The motivation was to give weary travelers in Atlanta some good beer. We’re not looking at other locations right now and tend to move fairly conservatively, but we’ll keep our options open.
Where is SweetWater beer distributed?
Our goal since Day 1 [has been] to remain in the Southeast. It’s not our goal to distribute nationally. We want to preserve the quality of life for everyone who works at the brewery. You create a whole lot more work for yourself if you distribute elsewhere, and we want to maintain the quality of our beer and make sure it’s fresh. It’s all about the quality of life for us. We think we can be pretty impacting in the Southeast. More money doesn’t buy more happiness.
We’re only selling in 13 cities. We just opened our first market in South Carolina last month in Greenville. In North Carolina, we’re only in Asheville, and, in Alabama, we’re only in Birmingham. We’re also in Knoxville, Chattanooga and Nashville, Tenn., Gainesville, Fla., and the Florida panhandle. It’s pretty limited, so there’s plenty of room for growth.
What kinds of beers do you brew?
The best beers in the Southeast! Our beers are very aggressive, flavor-wise. We’re brewing beers we like to drink. We do five [beers] year-round: Blue, which is a blueberry wheat ale; 420 Extra Pale Ale, our most popular brew; Georgia Brown, a mild brown ale; Hummer, a Belgian white ale; and IPA, which is India Pale Ale. We also have seasonal beers that rotate through the course of the year in what we call our “Catch and Release” program. Right now, there’s Road Trip, a crispy, hoppy pilsner ale. There’s also Festive Ale, which is a higher-alcohol dark beer with cinnamon and mace spice flavors that’s available around the holidays. Happy Ending is a triple dry hop imperial stout. And we’re working on developing Motor Boat, a brand new beer. I can’t tell you what it is because we’re working on it, and I don’t know yet. We’ll drink a lot of beer and see what we come up with. It will come out mid- to late August. SP
SweetWater Brewing Company hosts brewery tours on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, 5:30-7:30 p.m. For more information, call 404-691-ALES or visit www.sweetwaterbrew.com.