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 Founders Brewing has been open for just over 10 years now and in that time they’ve garnered national acclaim for many of their beers. The Kentucky Breakfast stout has an almost cult following selling out before it even hits the stores in many cases. Our trip out to the Midwest certainly wouldn’t be complete without a trip to the brewery. We stopped by a day before our interview with Dave Engbers just to relax and try some of the beers only on tap at the pub. Our bartender, Melissa, was great and let us sample a variety of their tap offerings. For those of us not fortunate enough to live near Grand Rapids, Michigan, let's just says we’re missing out. We found a Frangelic Stout, a rich stout with hazelnut tones that was incredible, along with one of the best porters we’ve ever had. We returned the next day eager to ask about some of these offerings and if we’d see them in a bottle. It’s here where we meet up with one of the owners of Founders Brewing Company, Dave Engbers.
 DCB: How did you end up at Founders?
Dave: Well my parents were pretty cool; I started stealing my Dad's beer when I was about 15, so I drank some lousy beer. I don't remember how old I was, around 16 years old, and I went to visit my older brother in California who I didn't know too well... he was 12 years older than me. Anyways, so I went out there for spring break and he picked me up from the airport and we went to the store. One of the first things we did was get some Mendocino County Red Rail Ale. So that was the first micro brewed beer I ever had. Like I said, my parents were pretty liberal, when I was 17 I got to go to Europe and said any time we sat down if you want to order a beer that's fine. So we were all over Germany and the Netherlands and Belgium. So I had some pretty good opportunities to try some beers when I was young that most people don't get. So then I went to college and I was drinking malt liquor, everyone's on a budget. Then I went to work for a Miller Distributor, not because of any other reason than the beer was cheap. We could get a lot of beer that was out of date and they would give it to us. When you're in college it's free beer, and that was nice [laughs]. Then I got into home brewing and I'm messing around. Everyone always says do what you love. When you're in college you have no idea what you want to do, you have a million ideas running though your head. Mike and I talked about opening brew pubs. We'd get back from the bar and say what do we want to do when we get out of here? And we'd say, "Oh we'll open up a chain of brew pubs," not knowing at all what that took. The initial idea was to open up brewpubs in college towns. The problem with college towns is that only about a quarter of the population of college students are of drinking age. So we got out of college and Mike went to work for his dad and I became an elementary school teacher. After my first year teaching I thought I really didn't want my summers off, I didn't want 3 months of free time, I kind of look at that a little differently now [laughs]. We almost always work 6 days a week now. I called Mike and said look, we're young and we may as well go for it. The last thing I want is to be on my death bed and say "I wish I had done this," or "what if..."
So we started it, and it's not like we had a huge bank account. We kind of scratched and clawed and we hired a head brewer who had gone to brewing school and went over all our flavor profiles that we wanted to hit and we started from there. As the flavors evolved we knew the flavors had to get bigger. We knew we were making good beer, but they were very transitional beers. It wasn't until we really started pushing the envelope that we started getting some notice. We sat down and said all the beers have to get bigger and more complex. That's when things really started skyrocketing for us. So things are good now.
 Dave at the construction site
DCB: Yeah it looks huge
Dave: It's really not that big, but that's the architects job to make it look good. It's actually gone pretty quickly right now, last time I heard we were about two weeks ahead of schedule, but it'll be cool.
DCB: When are you looking to move in.
Dave: If we stay on track right now the plan was October 28th. But we're 2 weeks ahead of schedule right now. Plus, someone’s going to be responsible for transferring all this equipment over there. We need to drain all the equipment and then wash it and clean it and ship it over there. The goal is to get the brew house over there first so we can start brewing and we'll have our new fermenters... we're getting 100 barrel fermenters and right now we have 30's and 60's. Last year we did just about 4000 barrels. Capacity is going to 13000 when we open and the goal is to continue to grow about 40%. After next year we plan to do 10-12K and then grow about 40% every year. I'm pretty excited about 2008. It's been a little frustrating not being able to fill the orders, but our hands have been kind of tied here.
 I'm seeing a big change in the industry where some guy in the retail store has to position the beer to the customer. People come in to the store and are like what's this farmhouse ale? We’re in such a cool time in the industry. Years ago it was difficult to get your beer on tap... not saying that it's easy now because we're in a business where AB and Miller and those bigger companies are distributed by companies that have a lot of money. But the bottom line is stores make more money, higher margin on our product. Obviously they sell a lot more volume with them [AB, Miller, etc.). But you ask them how much money are you making on that case and they are selling it 10 cents over cost and it's ridiculous.
DCB: Coors is launching a special super premium beer business, how do see that affecting the industry?
Dave: I don't mind it; the only thing is I hope Coors puts their name on it. I feel like your getting duped when AB puts out beers that don't say AB on them and they are just trying to fool the consumer and that pisses me off. And the truth is AB has the means, some of the guys that work for them are bright guys, and they are getting the top level guys in the industry. When we do beer festivals there were a couple brewers from AB standing behind our booth almost the whole time, which I take as a huge compliment. Even though they work for a company that I don't agree with everything they do I know that the guys that they have working for them are there for the beer. You get in to this industry because you love beer.
DCB: So what's the deal with the Porter? Any plans to bottle that? We asked Melissa (our bartender) about it and she said to ask you.
Dave: It's real interesting that you brought that up. Did she tell you any more? We used to have a porter and it was called Founders Porter, pretty label, beautiful label and it just says Porter and underneath it says "dark rich and sexy". When we started having capacity issues we basically ran all our numbers. Porter was a seasonal product it was on about 4 or 5 months out of the year and not a huge seller. Great product but ,like any dark beer, there's not a huge following for it. People who are porter fans tend to be pretty serious fans, but we pulled it out of our portfolio just because we needed the excess capacity to fill Dirty Bastard and IPA. I was doing a tasting with some of the other brewers from the state. One of the brewers said, “You have the best porter hands down in the state. Your porter is better than ours; I can't believe you got rid of it.” But that's what you had to do at the time. I wouldn't be surprised if we resurrected the Porter.
DCB NOTE: We hope they do, then ship it to MA!
DCB: One cool thing lately is how the consumer is changing. Have you seen a big change in how people taste beer?
Dave: I’ve noticed people's palettes have changed and they've changed pretty dramatically. I met with a couple young ladies who wanted to do something for their office and they thought they'd do a beer tasting, you know something different. Sometimes I stereotype too and think "OK, what kind of beer are these girls going to like, like a bud light or a Corona?" And I'm like great... this is going to be tough. So I brought them both a Blushing Monk and one girl goes “Oh my god this is amazing.” The other girl was like "ughcchh" so I gave her a Dirty Bastard which was a little too heavy for her, but she ended up drinking Red's Rye which is a big bitter IPA. She was like "I love it! This is phenomenal!"
 DCB: Where do you see “Extreme” or “big beer” going?
Dave: Some of it is an attention getter. We've been labeled an extreme brewery and I really don't like that moniker because then you need to live up to it and, to me, being an extreme brewer means you're innovative, maybe your brewing techniques are little different than most. We're not trying to kick beers out of here in 12 days. Our average beer is 20 to 22 days from mashing to bottle. So we're not the most efficient brewery. But anytime someone puts a label on you it kind of sucks... but you can't really stop it. Some of it is a novelty to get some attention. In the sea of craft beer how are you going to get that consumer for the first time to pick up your beer? We’re about balance here, though.
DCB: We aged some Kentucky Breakfast Stout and actually noticed it was better before we aged it, do you see that happening?
Dave: Someone gave me a bottle (not breakfast stout) one time that was about 10 years old and they told me it'd be good in about 2 years. So I waited for a special occasion and made this big deal about it. When I opened it up it tasted like vinegar. I know some people are cellaring Breakfast Stout but I personally think it tastes much better when we ship it out.
DCB: So any new beers in the works?
Dave: Actually we just brewed our Wet Hop Harvest Ale. We used to do an Oktoberfest and everyone was like "We hate that beer," but we're like "Well, we have to have an Oktoberfest..." and we're like, "Wait... no we don't we can do a harvest beer!" The hops pretty much go from vine to kettle in less than 24 hours. You have to pay through the nose for the shipping.
DCB NOTE: We were lucky enough to try some that was still in primary, this beer is out now and based on what it tasted like in primary it should be amazing.
DCB: Have you always done Harvest Ale?
Dave: Started doing that about 4 years ago.
DCB: Is it bottled or is it just in house?
Dave: We'll see....we're waiting on our graphic designer right now but it's still kind of up in the air on if we're going to bottle it and there's only going to be about 500 cases of it if we do.
DCB NOTE: This interview took place in September. The Harvest Ale was since bottled, but only distributed at and near the brewery.
DCB: Aside from the Harvest, anything else in the works?
Dave: I'd love to have the Harvest as a production beer next year. The Porter as well, I hated losing that, it's like not saying hi to your kids anymore so I'd love to see that back. We've had a lot of success with the bigger IPAs that we've never packaged. I've wanted to do a smoked beer for a long long time as well as the Belgian styles that we haven't done.
DCB NOTE: We parted ways with Dave after a stop to the construction site and a trip over to Logan’s Alley a local Grand Rapids bar. We’re very excited to see the changes with Founder’s new capacity increase and can only hope the Porter comes back. The Porter is truly great and it needs to come back.
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