Miss Martin's Curious!

Miss Martin is curious about…

Manny Chau of Manny’s Pale Ale

Why? Manny’s Pale Ale is her all-time favorite beer! She wanted to meet the man behind the beer.

My first interview is with Manny Chau of the Georgetown Brewing Company.

Their first beer, Manny’s Pale Ale, is my all-time favorite beer. I order it wherever I go – and have doing this for the last 5 years.  I wanted to learn about the man behind my consistently tasty beer. Manny was kind of enough to clear some time in his busy schedule for an interview with me. Read on…

I went to meet Manny at his company. It is located in Georgetown – a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington. He started his company, Georgetown Brewing Company, 6 and half years ago which he founded with his business partner, Roger.

They had just moved into their new and much larger facility. Manny first gave me a tour of the beer-making process and the ins and outs of their new facility. After that, we sat down for a quieter one-to-one conversation. The interview, set up in a “question and answer” format is the following…

How did you decide that you wanted to go into beer business?
I was not a fan of beer in college because we were drinking kegs of Meister Brau(!). I drank it but it was not something I really enjoyed. When I first discovered micros, the first one that I fell in love with was Blackhook Porter, I tasted it and just thought “Wow, this is really good!”… I actually enjoyed it, I thought it was wonderful. It changed my whole perspective on beer. The idea behind that was Why would anybody drink something that they didn’t enjoy when there is something that is so beautiful like this craft beer? Right? So being a business major…I thought that this is something I should  be going into because I love it and I could make a career out of it – perfect.

How did you come up with your company’s name?
Georgetown actually came later because we didn’t know that we would eventually be moving into this neighborhood. When we started, we weren’t Georgetown Brewing Company. But we did know that we wanted to have Manny’s Pale Ale as our flagship beer. We didn’t name it Georgetown Brewery until we moved here. We actually didn’t know anything about Georgetown, we had a real estate broker who found it. Once we were here and were building, we started meeting people, checking out the neighborhood. We liked it and named the company after the area.

How many hours do you work a week?
Here’s a perfect example, last night I was in Bellingham, and was out until 2 am…was it work? Technically, but I was also drinking beers until 2 am. If you were to count all the hours I am out working? (laughter)… I hate to say it but maybe 60 or 80 hours but then it makes me feel like a total loser and I work all of the time.  I do try to have some balance…so maybe it’s more like 60 hours a week.  But take this weekend, it’s Oktoberfest. I’ll be at the event the whole time, the entire weekend.

How many employees do you have and how is the company doing?
We have 31 employees total.
We are growing every year. This year We grew 17% this year, not bad, we’ll take it in this economy.

Do people enjoy meeting “Manny” the man behind their beer?
Yeah, it happens, people get excited about the beer and the brewer…it’s fun, it’s fun for me..I enjoy talking to people because those are our customers. I still get a kick sitting in a bar and seeing a total stranger order a Manny’s beer, that puts a smile on my face, that’s the fun part.

How did you get the Georgetown Brewery logo?
I designed it. I’m a total hack graphic designer, just kind of learned how to do it. And I think it was more us not having any money and us being to cheap to hire a graphic designer.  We just decided to do it ourselves.

How do you make sure that a batch of beer tastes the same every time? Is it a surprise until the very end when you taste it?
Yes and no. The only things that we can’t control is the quality of the grain and hops that we get and some of that is mother nature. But when we are brewing, there are a lot of things that we can watch as far as numbers. We have instruments now that show us how much sugar is going through…we know how much sugar we are getting out..there are a lot of things that a brewer can do to control the quality of his beer. We look at all those numbers to make it as consistent as possible. So we often do know what we’re going to get in the end. But we still taste every single batch of beer to make sure.

Where can we find your beer?
In Idaho, we cover most of the state of Idaho. We cover all of Washington and part of Idaho. Eventually we’ll get to Oregon.

What about California?
Um…eventually…maybe…don’t quote me.

So it’s a big deal to move into another state?
It is, it’s not just buying a tank and putting it in place. There is a lot of equipment to buy in order to move into a new area, hiring a new salesperson, training that person. It’s easy to spend your money on capital investments as fast as you are making it. First, we have to make sure that we can afford the growth. We want to grow, that’s what we’re in the business to do. We just want to be smart and take our time doing it.

You mentioned that kegs were a challenge?
Yes, one of our big challenges for us right now is kegs.
Every kegs costs us about $125 (just an empty keg) to buy right now. And each time a new bar wants to carry our beer, we have to buy new kegs to service that bar. And it’s not just one keg, rather it’s the full kegs kept at the bar, then the empty one to be refilled at our brewery, then a back-up keg. So every time we get a new account, there’s an investment that we have to make. Every year, we buy more and more kegs.  When we started the business, kegs cost $80 each and now they are about $125…at one point they were $150. Prices are coming back down a little bit because of the economy. Funny enough, our kegs mostly come out of Spain…it’s kinda a weird place to buy kegs but there are no U.S. manufacturers. They also come out of France, Germany, Spain..now you are starting to see Chinese kegs and Mexican kegs.

We buy a container at a time, it shows up at our dock and there’s usually about 1,000 kegs in there – 600 big kegs and 400 smaller kegs.

How often are you on-call? You think you’re leaving for the day and then you get a call that something is broken – How often does that happen with your job?
It used to happen a lot more.  We now have a great crew, a great manager. He takes the majority of the calls and that’s his job. I get mostly calls regarding beer issues, parking issues. I’m still beer master, so all the beer issues fall on me. We’ve got such a great crew, they take care of things so it makes it easier.

We are very fortunate. I think it’s one of the things that we’ve done well: we really hired well. And I think we try to have good relationships with our staff. Last night, we had a meeting with the retail people and we were all hanging out, eating sandwiches and drinking beers at 8 o’clock at night together. It’s those little things, I think that really matter, when they see that we are still very involved, that we care. And they also see that we are re-investing in the company, buying new equipment, the build-out of this facility – they know that when we re-invest in the company they’ll have more opportunities – instead of us taking the profits home with us.

Is this work dangerous at all?
Yes, but we try to make it as safe as possible. We run safety classes for these guys. Heat is very important. We have 80 barrels of boiling hot liquid, that’s why we are always wearing safety protection. There’s also a forklift and machinery running everywhere. One of the hard things is what we still do “kegging by hand.” Last year we probably ran 50,000 kegs by hand, meaning we are filling it by hand and moving it by hand, as opposed to using a machine to it. That’s one of our next purchases:  buying a kegging machine, but you’re talking about another huge investment…so we can only do it when we can afford to do it.

What do you do with liquid waste?
We capture every single bit of our waste water…we neutralize the PH and then we remove the solids, then we give it to King County Waste. It’s part of the infrastructure, part of making beer. We give all of our spent grain, spent yeast and hop trub to a local dairy farmer so we have very little solid waste.

What is the most satisfying part of this business?
The people that work for us…when they are happy at work, it shows by the way they treat customers, the way they carry themselves. We are responsible for their livelihoods. We now have people working 4 and 5 years, this is what they consider their career and I would like nothing more than to provide a fun place for them to work that gives them everything they want in life. And that is satisfying to me, seeing people enjoying their jobs. Sometimes I might come to work and watch this place run ..just step back and see all these guys doing their job, making  the decisions, taking on responsibilities…that’s fun. And they’re young, we’ll I’m not that old, but a lot of these guys are younger than me and they are runnin’ with it, they’re running the company’s processes. There’s a lot of satisfaction in watching and realizing that.

What is the most challenging part of your work?
The calendar -  just looking at it when it’s overwhelming. Right now it’s particularly tough because of all the beer festivals and I’m traveling…I don’t have another free night for the next two weeks.  Then you want to schedule something fun but you don’t want to put anything more on your schedule because it would be nice to have a completely free night. And you do it to yourself, because you can’t say no, you just say “Ok” but then the next thing you know, you’re looking at your calendar scratching your head wondering how you’re going to do it all.

How much does your company advertise?
We don’t do traditional advertising, I mean, we’ll sponsor things here and there. But we really try to do things that are community-based. We give away a lot in donations to non-profits because we believe in that, and it also gets people trying us and talking about us. It makes us feel good that we’re doing something for the community and it’s also marketing for us.

Do you drink other types of beer?
Oh yeah, absolutely, that’s the fun part about being in the biz. We do this because we love beer.

Do you have a favorite beer?
That’s a good question, I’m always trying different ones. I’m a big IPA fan…I just had this one called Pliny the Elder I thought was awesome, that was fabulous, it was really good. I just had a really nice stout when I was Bellingham…I love Big Times beer, Billy is the brewer there and he makes great beers there. There are a lot of good brewers out there.

I usually try to choose Washington beers. I think a very little known fact is that only 5% of the beer consumed in Washington is actually brewed here, which is very small when you think about it. Most people don’t know that. If I’m not drinking one of my own, I should probably try to choose one that’s Washington brewed, so I try to stick to that, although I sometimes have moments of weakness.

For a bar that uses a lot of your beer, what does that look like? How many kegs will that bar go through a week?
7 kegs a week. We have some places that might do that like Garage – that’s a big account for us. Linda’s…was, we are no longer on tap at Linda’s…that broke my heart. They like to rotate things around so we had a good run for about two years at Linda’s. The Red Door is a good account for us. Safeco Field – we have 6-7 hand pulls there but there over a 100 that you could have.  Snoqualmie Casino…

Interesting Fact: Plumbing is a big deal at a brewery! Massive amounts of water and other liquids are moved all around the facility.

How many salespeople do you have?
3 full time..our guys travel a lot. Matt is our sales manager. And Andy, he’s a road warrior. It’s not all fun and games sometimes you’re forced to be out at night socializing when you’re tired, but I guess there are worst jobs to be had.

Did you buy this? (a complex mechanical system used for beer making)
We customized this whole system…and designed it. We brought people into help us with some things and then we did the rest of it ourselves. This system doesn’t look like anybody’s else system because we created it. The nice thing about doing it yourself is that when it breaks, you can fix it. Pumps, motors, pipes…

Where did you grow up?
Spain, I was born and lived there until I was 5. Then we moved to the East Coast in the U. S. Then to Oregon outside of Portland, 3^rd grade to high school. After that, I attended the UW and majored in business in ‘94. In college, I was really into beer. I wanted to start my own brewery but felt like it was necessary to start working and getting experience in the industry. So my first job out of college was working at Liberty Malt Supply in Pike Place Market. It was owned by the same people who own Pike Place Brewing Company. They were really nice. It was a great experience for me. I got to learn about, not just home brewing, but also importing. They were awesome importers. They had a lot of German beers, a lot of Belgian beers. Charles Finkle who was the owner…he was very influential, still is…he exposes people to other beers and other styles. He brought in a lot of fun, interesting beers. That job gave me a great knowledge of beers in general. When I left there, I ended up working at Mac and Jack’s, that was my first job in the brewing industry. I guess my only other job in the brewing industry. I was with them for 5 and ½ years.

How do you and Roger, your current business partner, meet each other?
We were drinking buddies. We just drank beer together and played ultimate Frisbee…he ended up renting a room in my house, then we became housemates for awhile. I was working at Mac and Jack’s and he was getting his masters in school. When he got out of school, we’d always go and have a few beers together and that’s when we’d be talking about ideas for  businesses, we weren’t necessarily talking about a brewery at that point, but Roger was very persuasive, thank god, he kept saying “Let’s start a brewery, let’s start a brewery…”

How do you divide your responsibilities?
Roger runs all the finances of the company and bookkeeping, works with our bank. My jobs are more production, brewing and sales and assisting retail.

Interesting fact: Manny and Roger started working on their “brewery idea” when they were only 29 years old.

What are your plans for the company in the next 5-10 years?
That’s a good question, I think we are going to continue to re-invest in the company … we sort of have this unstated goal to become the size of Redhook before they moved out of Fremont, which was somewhere around 80,000 barrels. If we want to get there, we have to go into packaging (selling beer in bottles), that’s the reality. So, we’re going to take a good, hard look at it in 2-3 years, decide whether it makes sense or not for us. Our other option is  then to expand geographically and just do draft beer. It has  to be a financial decision…whether it’s worth making the investment and whether or not we want to keep pushing. And part of it is lifestyle too, how hard do you constantly push?

How many types of beers does your company brew?
There are 4 main beers: Roger’s Pilsner, Chopper’s Red Ale , Manny’s Pale Ale, and the Nine Pound Porter. Super Chop – we do all year around but we just released it on our retail shop. Also Bob’s Brown Ale. And our newest one is called Lisa’s Chocolate Stout. She’s our retail manager, she’s great. She loves stout beer. Her favorite thing in the world is Theo Chocolates. So we decided to make a beer for her. We actually buy Theo Chocolate for the beer.
So 7 beers total.

All we do is draft beer right now. The brewery runs 7 days a week, we’re brewing beer 5 days a week.

What would you like to accomplish in the next 5-10 years?
See this? (Manny grabs a Rosetta Stone box:  “Learning to Speak Spanish”). My Spanish and Chinese are horrible. In 5 years, I hope to be more proficient in those languages. I have one of these (the box) for Chinese too.
I love traveling.  Last year, I was in Spain, the year before that I was in China. I just think that being able to understand and speak somebody’s else language really helps you immerse yourself in that culture.

Those were the first words out of my mouth – Spanish. My parents are Chinese and they moved to Spain. My

god-parents are Spanish. They named me, Manwell. My parents owned a restaurant in Spain.

I would love to visit South America for sure. I would also love to buy a little piece of property in Mazama, it’s right on the foothills of Highway 20, north cascade highway. There’s a little, tiny community called Mazama, I think it’s the most beautiful place to stay. I would love to buy a little piece of property and build a cabin. That would be awesome. Cross country skiing during the winter…it’s not overrun, it’s really beautiful.

If you weren’t doing this for a career, what would you be doing?
I sort of feel like it would be fun to be a doctor because then you could really travel and go to clinics and do something worthwhile. I have a friend of mine who is a doctor and he travels to the Philippines every year and he spends 10 days fixing cleft palates  – what an amazing gift and thing to do.
What am I going to do if I travel to some third world country, teach them how to make beer??
It would be nice to have some skill like that where you could pass it on to somebody else.

What is your favorite non-profit or cause?
We give a lot to the Ronald McDonald House. That was by association with a friend of mine who passed away from cancer – Bob.  The way we became involved with that was through Camp Good Times which is a camp that I volunteered for – it’s for  kids with cancer. It’s on Vashon Island. I was a counselor there for 9 years, a week each summer. You just work with kids  and make sure that they have fun – it’s kids with cancer and their siblings. It’s great.

What would people be surprised to learn about what you do in your job?
How much beer we drink? (laughter).
We have a lot of meetings. I don’t think there’s anything too surprising about what we do. We spend a lot of time talking and thinking and planning. It feels like my job has become making 10 decisions a day, you have all these people coming at you with questions and it’s my responsibility to say yes, no, why…let’s go this way, that way. It’s lots of decisions to make everyday and then making sure that we are all moving in the right direction.

Very favorite sports figure?
Probably Tiger Woods

What are your favorite movies?
I love movies. I don’t watch TV, but I watch movies.
Caddyshack, Swingers, I love the Lord of Rings series, it’s fabulous. I’m a big Harrison Ford fan, Bladerunner… Scarface – it’s a classic…Schinder’s List was incredible,  so was Saving Private Ryan – it was epic. I saw this great movie recently called The Diving Bell and the Butterfly – this man, who couldn’t move, wrote a book just by blinking..he wrote this book and they turned it into a movie…The Lives of Others..about the 1980′s secret police, the Gestapo in East Germany, they had an interesting fact: 1 in 8 citizens in East Germany were involved in the secret police.  So if you were in a room of 8 people, 1 of them was listening and reporting on you.  Isn’t that incredible?

What would someone be surprised to learn about you?
I play ultimate Frisbee, sometimes I play golf but I’m so discouraged by that sport – I want to quit. I ride a motorcycle. I once spent a month on my motorcycle traveling from national park to national park.

What is your guilty pleasure?
Ice cream, any kind of ice cream…Ben and jerry’s…although I’ve recently discovered Molly Moon’s ice cream. She’s local, when you walk into the place it just smells like butter and ice cream. There are two of them. Last night I couldn’t sleep so I woke up at 3 in the morning and finished off a half carton of strawberry ice cream.

What are your favorite groups / musicians?
I love music! David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, I’ve been on a Rush kick lately and I actually bought a Journey’s Greatest Hits – I actually thought that was fun – it’s great singing-music. I love The Police.

Pearl Jam for sure – how could I forget them? I’m going to their concert next week. They also have a studio right down here in Georgetown. I’m still waiting to run into Eddie Vedder to say “Hey dude, what’s up?”