Building a brewery with Brian Mathias

 

I am thrilled to share my conversation with Brian Mathias who is the founder/owner of a Powell-based micro-brewery called Ill Mannered. For this conversation, I went in person to meet Brian who also gave me a tour of his brewery which was so interesting to see & learn about. I am sharing our summarized conversation and my experience of understanding the process to make beer. Brian was very kind to spend time with me to share his experiences building his business.

1. What inspired you to start your own brewery?

Brian fell in love with craft beer and the process of making craft beer. With his engineering background, he got together with a couple of friends who started the Ill Mannered Brewing company. Two things that have helped Brian succeed through his journey is understanding that building a product is one important part but the second important part is selling it and you can achieve a lot with less. You need to creatively solve problems.

2. Why did you choose the name Ill Mannered?

He and his partners wanted to name the brewery in a way that had some association to each one of them. It was hard coming up with something but as they were mixing letters from their names like anagrams, they had a moment where one of the partners' names with mixed up letters spelled “Ill Mannered”. That played nicely with the craft beer culture too. Brain said that the word Ill has a lot of meaning because that word is used in some of his beer names as well.

3. What is the process of how you and your team decide on new beer flavors?

He says it’s mostly from customer feedback. Brian and his team also look at what other breweries are doing around the country. He also uses social media to see what beer flavors are trending. Every once in a while there will be a new ingredient that will impact the beer flavor. He and his team noticed that in the last few years people have gone back to liking light beers rather than hoppy flavors.

4. How do you think about new ideas for your overall business so your customers keep coming back?

Every 1 or 2 weeks they come up with a couple new beer flavors, for people who are interested in craft beer to taste different varieties and give feedback to them. This has been an advantage for them compared to larger companies who cannot experiment at a faster pace. For the last couple of years they have started to do movies and sports. They are an official Cleveland Browns Backers location. A lot of their beer names have sport references and they are loyal to that concept. 

5. What are your day to day problems or challenges that you work on?

Brian says the brewery is basically like a production environment, or like a factory. The equipment might break down or something might boil too long. It is better to be hands-on so the team can fix these problems as soon as possible and not cost them a lot of money. Another thing he said is to keep the staff happy so that they are engaged in solving problems and helping customers. Another challenge is social media. The team is trying to respond to the customer comments really quickly while running other parts of the business.

6. How do you decide the prices of various beers?

Brian and his team start by looking at the cost of the ingredients. In the market a normal beer would cost $5, $6, $7 or even $8. They also think people are willing to pay more for beer outside of breweries because you're getting more than just the beer, you're getting the experience of being in the place where it is made.

7. Do you have any mentors and what advice do you seek from them?

While growing up Brian, watched his family members run businesses. That gave him a lot of inspiration and confidence to know that he could go out there and work on his own business. He and his partners have an open line of communication that allows them to bring their individual strengths to solve various problems in the business.

8. As a brewery entrepreneur what advice would you give to other entrepreneurs or general advice about doing a business?

Brian says start small and with a little you can accomplish a lot. Before Brian had a giant brewery he had a small area that could only fit 8 people. So from starting small he and his team achieved so many things. It allows you to be creative with the constraints you have. He also advised not to give anything for free. After all, you are running a business and have to be aware of that. I think that’s a really inspiring message.

The beer brewing process:

To start, the 4 main ingredients to make beer are water, yeast, hops and barley. First, you use the brew kettle to boil the wort during the wort creation process. Then in the fermenter is where the sugary solution is made from barley in the warm water. The mashing process is where the enzymes in the grain convert complex stretches into sugars which turn into alcohol. Then the hops are added. Before this transfers into the fermenter there is a pipe that makes it cold. Then finally the yeast is added and fermented at a certain temperature. The beers can then be stored in kegs or cans.

This was such an inspiring conversation I had with Brian. I learnt a lot about how he is building his business and I learned the process of brewing beers. I hope many people are inspired by his story. I really want to thank Brian for giving me that wonderful tour and taking out time to talk with me. 

If you would like to reach out to him or his team, here are his social media links down below.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/illmanneredbeer/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/illmanneredbeer

Twitter: https://twitter.com/illmanneredbeer

Website: http://www.illmanneredbeer.com/

I would really love to hear your feedback and comments. Please reach out to me@hanikachhajer.com.