Need to get caught up? Part 1 can be found here.
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| Be looking for this if you want to find creative southern beer. |
Let’s talk about your
beer for a bit; I know that you have introduced four of them on your video (see below). Tell us a bit about them?
Lucas:
Absolutely, our first beer and our staple is our maple and brown sugar oatmeal
stout. We thought of adding that in there one day and started playing with
recipes and took it down and won a competition with it. It turned out to be a
really good beer. You don’t get as much sweetness as people think when you say
that because we actually put the maple and brown sugar in the bowl so most of
it ferments out, so you get a little bit of sweetness but you get a lot of
additional flavor out of it.
Chip: That one is
the Flare Incident.
Lucas: On top of
that we have our Ballistic Blonde which is a Belgian style blonde. It is a very
simple beer but we stay slightly true to form with the Belgian style but we
added more hops to it because we love hops and it was just not hoppy enough. It
does have some fruity notes, the yeast gives off some nice esters. We have our
Lizard Tail Pale Ale which was kind of an accident one day, but it turned out
really well. It is dry hopped, again we love hops so we use them more than we
should. Then there is our Hop Fiasco that has been evolving ever since we have
started it. The reason we call it the Hop Fiasco is because we dumped over half
a pound of hops in a five gallon batch. It was a little intense for what we
wanted so we backed it off, we changed up the hop schedule a little bit, and it
has gotten to be a really, really good beer.
What is on the tap for future styles?
Lucas: We are playing with a lot of things, of course
seasonals, we have an Octoberfest, we have an amber that was designed by
Brandon Blacklidge our R&D manager. It was his first designed beer and it
came out extremely well. The boy has the best palette I have ever been around
when it comes to beer tasting. He has come a long way with his recipe
formulation. Saisons, I’ve got one sitting right now that we are messing with.
That one is going to be something that will constantly change. Of course we
eventually want to get in to doing sours and all the weird, funky stuff,
because we love it and there is not one style that we all enjoy so much that we
don’t want to drink anything else. So we want to play with everything.
Chip: We also did
some experimenting with the holiday porter which had…
Lucas: ...vanilla,
fig, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, it was a smorgasbord of holiday spices.
How has the reception
been with people in the area in regards to the beer?
Lucas: Very
positive. As a brewer it makes you feel better than nothing else when you see
somebody and you know by looking at them that they have never tried anything
unique and they drink it and they love it. We had such a good reception for
that stout because most people down here when they think of stout they only
think of Guinness at best. Guinness is just not for everybody, so when they
drink ours they are really surprised and you can see it in their face. They are
not used to something like that so we have had an extremely good reception and
I hope it keeps up that way.
Any particular style
a favorite of yours?
Lucas: I’m
typically a stout guy, I love oatmeal stouts , that is why we have one on
there, but I don’t stick to one thing on any evening so that is kind of hard to
say. I just love beer.
Chip: I tend to
go either one of two ways, I like hops a lot so I like stong pale ales and
hoppy IPAs, but also there are times that I prefer a smooth creamy porter or
stout. It kind of depends on what mood I am in.
Tell us a bit about
why you chose Kickstarter for the Lucky Town Brewery project?
Chip: We didn’t
know about Kickstarter for awhile until after we started the business. We
actually saw another brewery that was starting up use it which was Wilderness Brewing, which is Mike and Nate out of Kansas City, Missouri, so I gave them a
call and we talked and about what our goals were and what we were trying to do.
I asked him how was it and how was the reception because they were successful
in their Kickstarter project. I brought it to the team and said that I think
this would be a really good idea for us to get people involved not only on the
startup side of it, from the ground up, but also because it attracts people
that want to be involved but they don’t have the means to drop a big investment
in a new company. It kind of gives them a little bit of pride and passion,
especially for local people.
Lucas: It gets
our name out there and like Chip said, it allows people to be a part of
something for very little investment. It helps us in several ways, for the
first phase of our business plan it allows us to get a little starter with
minimal capital risk on our part. It will jump start us, I guess kickstart just
like the website is called. It helps us get involved with people that want to
be involved with the brewery. We have met so many people that want to be
supportive of this since we have started so from every aspect this has been
helpful to us.
What do you see as
your projected output?
Lucas: We would
like to start, and this is part of the plan now, we are projecting to start with
a 15 barrel system. That allows us to not be too big starting off, but we can
also add larger fermenters and upscale our output without completely changing
the brewhouse size. We don’t want to go any smaller than that because we feel
that with the market we are sitting in we will overrun the system very quickly.
It may be a little larger, but I doubt it. I think 15 barrels is our target
size to start off with.
Will you be
distributing in bottles, cans?
Chip: Starting
out we will be on draft and only on tap. It will be distributed throughout the
central Mississippi region. In Mississippi, the law requires that all
manufactured beer from a production brewery must be distributed by a
distributor so we won’t be able to self-distribute anything and we also cannot
have a taproom right now.
Lucas: Yes, that
is another thing that hasn’t even attempted to be changed yet, but we would
like to make a good business case to some of the legislature around here to see
if we can’t do something about that. No one has tried to change that because we
only have one brewery and they are kind of located out in the country so a
taproom is really not that enticing for them, but we have gone places, I have
personally visited Yazoo Brewing in Nashville and you can sit on their front
porch and drink in the afternoon and take a tour which is just awesome. It is a
great part of the community, so through this year we are going to see if we can
get the legislature on our side to change that law for next year hopefully, or
at least get it brought up because that will influence us when we go straight
to brick and mortar on where we put the brewery. There is no sense in getting
in the middle of Jackson if we can’t have a taproom. It is not going to be that
conducive to us.
What can folks expect
from Lucky Town Brewing in 2012?
Chip: Beer.
Lucas: We should
have two styles flowing by the end of this year.
Do you plan on having
a grand opening, or is that too far down the road?
Lucas: We will
when we get to that point.
********
That wraps up our interview with Lucky Town Brewing. A big thanks to Chip and Lucas for taking the time to talk with us.
Check out their Kickstarter project and chip in a few bucks
to help make a better beer world.
For more information on Lucky Town Brewing check out their
website, facebook page, follow them on twitter or see what they are enjoying on Untappd.
Want to help change the beer laws in Mississippi? Go check out the efforts of Raise Your Pints, or if you are in Mississippi contact your local state representatives and state senators.
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