Oral history interview with Brad Casanova and Steven Anan, 2019

Richard Cox: Okay. So if we can start, could you please say and spell your names?

Brad Casanova: Brad Casanova, B-R-A-D C-A-S-A-N-O-V-A.

Steven Anan: Steven Anan, S-T-E-V-E-N A-N-A-N.

Richard Cox: Great. And today it's Wednesday, February 27th, 2019, and we are in Archetype

Brewing Company in Asheville, North Carolina. I'm Richard Cox talking today

with Brad Casanova and Steven Anan. Have I pronounced it correctly?

Steven Anan: Close enough.

Richard Cox: Close enough. Anan, I heard it. Co-founders as part of the Well Crafted NC

Project. So if you could both decide who wants to go first, but tell us a little bit

about yourselves.

Brad Casanova: Go for it.

Steven Anan: Oh, man. Well, I've been in Asheville for about five years. I grew up in Northeast

Florida, lived in Colorado for a stint where I started in the industry. I have one

three year old child and a lovely wife, and it's hard to have hobbies when you're

a business owner, but I used to go fishing a lot and I have kind of an audiophile.

Richard Cox: Okay.

Steven Anan: Yeah.

Richard Cox: Awesome.

Steven Anan: Brad, what do you got?

Brad Casanova: New Jersey, born and raised. I've been in the south for about 19 years now.

Richard Cox: Okay.

Brad Casanova: I came straight out of school up to Asheville. I was a chemistry major, so I got

into forensics and stayed in that field for about 10 years until switching over to

brewing.

Richard Cox: What switched you over to brewing?

Brad Casanova: A want to get out of politics or politically involved government work.

Richard Cox: Sure.

Brad Casanova: It got a little tired and old. It was fun in my 20s, but it was time to move on to

something different and more fun that I could actually, you know-

Richard Cox: Enjoy.

Brad Casanova: Enjoy, yeah.

Richard Cox: Yeah. So that's sort of how you got interested in the brewing industry.

Brad Casanova: Yes.

Richard Cox: Yeah. And you were brewing in Colorado?

Steven Anan: Yeah. So I started at Ska Brewing in Durango. My wife and I lived in Fort Collins,

in Denver and then we moved to Durango. There was like definitely a defining

moment for me where I was like, "Yeah, this is what I want to do for the rest of

my life, maybe." So I was working, I was on a job site, I was laying a sprinkler

system in this field right next to Ska and they were like in the middle of a brew

day and their stack was just like pluming out delicious smells. We worked on

that site for probably a week and we went to Ska during lunch and had a beer

every day and I was like, "I think I want to do this." I was like, "I want to work

somewhere where it smells like this all the time."

Richard Cox: That bread smell, right?

Steven Anan: So probably a month later, I got a job there working behind the bar, and then

another month later I moved to their cellar and yeah, that's kind of it for me.

Now we're here.

Richard Cox: And did you guys meet after one of you decided?

Steven Anan: Yeah. So I moved to Asheville in 2014 and started working for another brewery

in town, Hi-Wire, and was with them for two and a half years. Brad came on and

was their quality manager, worked in their lab, set up their lab for their new

building, so that's how we met. I was their head seller man, he was there

manning their lab. There was a lot of crossover with work, so him and I worked

closely together and, I mean, we can dive into this now or we can-

Richard Cox: We can come back. That's fine, that's fine.

Steven Anan: Yeah. So that's pretty much how we met.

Richard Cox: All right. So you already knew each other at Hi-Wire. So what led you to decide

you wanted to go and open Archetype in 2017?

Brad Casanova: [inaudible 00:04:03].

Steven Anan: That's a you question.

Brad Casanova: Fernandina.

Steven Anan: Oh, sure. Well, I had plans to open a brewery down south in front of Fernandina

Beach, Florida, which is north of Jacksonville. That's where my family is around,

so I actually approached Brad with a business plan just kind of for him to review

and give input on. And, man, maybe what? Like two months later you were like,

"Actually, I have something in the works," and approached me with this

opportunity. You can take it from there.

Brad Casanova: Yeah. We had actually had a conversation about Asheville in particular and then

the answer was, "No, we don't need any more breweries," because we were

looking at it from a complete numbers' perspective. My neighbor's boyfriend

actually happened to be the land owner and developer of this corner. He kept

talking about this project and his eyes kind of lit up when he talked about it, and

this is around the time I was talking to Steven about his plans, and he said, "You

got to come see it." So I came and saw it. He told me about the vision of the

corner and all the complimenting businesses, and I really started looking at the

area and we talked about it. Asheville maybe didn't need another brewery, but

this area did.

Richard Cox: Sure.

Brad Casanova: So it's sort of a new perspective on it, and we came and saw it together and just

kind of dove in head first.

Steven Anan: Looked past the grime.

Brad Casanova: Yeah.

Richard Cox: It sounds like what you were doing was talking about the idea of the

neighborhood brewery, the neighborhood tap room as opposed to some of the

larger more older ideas of how breweries are done.

Steven Anan: Right.

Brad Casanova: Community-focused.

Richard Cox: Yeah, exactly. Hyperlocal.

Brad Casanova: Yeah.

Steven Anan: Yeah.

Richard Cox: Yeah. I guess let's talk about Archetype itself for a little while. What are each of

your roles as both co-founders for the brewery? What do you do?

Brad Casanova: We have a very fine thick like drawn between us.

Steven Anan: Yeah, we do.

Brad Casanova: In terms of our division of duties. I do mainly the business side of things. I'm in

the office. So legal, financial and sort of business forecasting and those sort of

things. It tends to take me out of the brewery a lot, sort of create contacts

outside and drum up some projects, maybe not necessarily beer related but

more Asheville and other business related projects.

Richard Cox: It's like community engagement type work?

Brad Casanova: Yeah.

Steven Anan: Yeah. For me, head brewer, managing production flow, and I guess over the last

year more people management, so just engaging with staff and a little bit of HR

and a little bit of everything else.

Richard Cox: Yeah. Good aside. Can you tell me a little bit about your brewhouse, size?

Steven Anan: Yeah. We have a 10 barrel three-vessel system. It's was from Dolce, 00:07:00a local or

semi-local company based in Charlotte. We have 10s and 20s in our cellar and

we have 16 wine barrels and four puncheons, so we do have a pretty decent

wood stock for our size.

Richard Cox: Awesome.

Steven Anan: Yeah.

Richard Cox: I heard a ding. Was that for you?

Steven Anan: I think that was my phone.

Richard Cox: Oh, okay.

Steven Anan: Yeah.

Richard Cox: So we'll continue and ignore the ding.

Steven Anan: Yeah.

Richard Cox: So, I think you already touched on why you select Asheville as the location and

you were talking more about something that's hyperlocal, something that's

more about this area as opposed to Asheville as a whole if that's accurate.

Brad Casanova: Yeah. I think our beer selection and style was more relevant to what Asheville

needed.

Richard Cox: How so?

Brad Casanova: In terms of bringing in a smaller Belgian styles in a smaller brewery. We've got

New Belgium of course and other breweries, do the one-offs on the Belgian

side, but there's not really anyone that really focused on that and that's what

we did to start. So that was more relevant to the community, but locally it was

just relevant to the area in terms of, you know, it's a neighborhood that didn't

really have anything up until two years ago for community members. It had

services like car auto body and things like that, but it didn't have places for

people to go and meet and hang out. This neighborhood is just geographically

isolated by the river and the interstate.

Richard Cox: Sure.

Brad Casanova: And that was it.

Richard Cox: So in some ways, it's almost like it's not Asheville in its own way.

Brad Casanova: Yeah.

Richard Cox: And it's interesting because you're also talking about brewery as a community

gathering space, a third space. Why did you name it Archetype?

Steven Anan: Oh, man, I hate this question.

Richard Cox: Excellent.

Steven Anan: Perfect. I guess a variety of reasons. Normally, the joke I throw out is that it

wasn't taken, it was available, so we went for it.

Richard Cox: Starts with an A. It's up top.

Steven Anan: Right, there you go, it's up top. No, I mean, beer in and of itself, like a fermented

beverage is historically an archetype. That's something that's been revered by

cultures pretty much across the board historically, like every culture has this

fermented beverage that they look at as like a divine gift.

Richard Cox: Right.

Steven Anan: So you could argue that any sort of like fermented beverage has that, is

essentially an archetype. Branding-wise, it left it wide open. We can kind of go in

any direction, that's why a lot of our names are tropes just to make them a little

bit more like culturally relevant. And then, just on top of that I was a literary

nerd in school, so it kind of made me happy.

Richard Cox: That's a good thing.

Steven Anan: Yeah.

Richard Cox: Did you have any input on the name or he covered it nicely?

Brad Casanova: Yeah, that was covered nicely. I'll just say a lot of what we do 00:10:00tends to have

multiple layers, whether it be the design or our events. There always seems to

be some sort of additional aspect to it, and I think that sort of branding

potential allowed for us to really be creative because we're both sort of braining

and thinking about how we can do things differently and just be more creative

and kind of make it more experiential than simply "it's a liquid in a glass."

Steven Anan: Yeah.

Richard Cox: Right.

Brad Casanova: It's meant to spur conversation and to get people's minds thinking and also be

inclusive, be approachable for everyone. So it added all those things.

Steven Anan: Yeah.

Richard Cox: Just in the name, that's great, that's awesome. Your answer sort of ties into my

next question which is you have someone who's never been here before in this

new area comes in, how would you actually, if they ask like what are you all

about, how would you describe Archetype to them?

Steven Anan: Obviously, I would probably start with the beer. I think we do a lot of creative

things while remaining approachable stylistically.

Richard Cox: For example?

Steven Anan: Well, a lot of our beers are not adjunct heavy, so kind of a quick aside, we try to

avoid chasing trends and that's the multifaceted approach and there are many

reasons for it. Yeah, I think we make really clean approachable balanced beers.

We have a lot of complex beers that are still approachable that maybe drink a

little bit more like wine as opposed to these kind of wild intense sour beers.

Richard Cox: Right.

Steven Anan: And then, going back to the idea of being community-focused and kind of

appealing to everybody and being inclusive, I think that's a large part of our

philosophy. What else you got?

Brad Casanova: Yeah.

Steven Anan: Good?

Brad Casanova: Yeah. Pretty well covered it. I Like that.

Richard Cox: So that's how you would describe it. It sounds like you're also dipping into what

your mission or theme is in the same way when you're describing it. Is that fair?

Steven Anan: Yeah, I think so. That's really our story.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: So describing our business is ... The goal is to get someone to align with our

values and actually align with the brand as opposed to just one beer in

particular.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: So yeah, that kind of ties it all together.

Brad Casanova: Yeah. I think that for the consumer, it becomes pretty obvious after a short

period of time what a mission is of a brewery.

Richard Cox: Right.

Brad Casanova: A lot of the production breweries that sort of take off is ... I feel like their focus

is finding a good recipe, something that connects with people and just making

as much as possible of it.

Richard Cox: Right.

Brad Casanova: And that's where they sort of stop that creative process, or at 00:13:00least dial it back

because, "Well, you have a good product. Let's get it to market." Ours is more of

a continuous loop. Our mission statement is "Explore, create and refine so that

others may share and enjoy of discovering better beer." It leaves it wide open,

and we're constantly coming up with new things versus just finding what hits,

and pushing it. We do a lot of beers that people will say, "I'm not a beer drinker,

but I love this," or, "My favorite beer is this," but it's always a different beer.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Brad Casanova: And it kind of separates us from a production brewery, from that standpoint of

not focusing on these core flagship beers. It's always making new stuff and then

people go from one favorite to another. It's sort of a different experience. That's

sort of our story and mission.

Richard Cox: And your mission also, yeah, seems to move even beyond the beer 00:14:00from what

you've been saying before whereas you're defining your mission through

basically everything that's coming out of the brewery as a business. Is that fair?

Brad Casanova: Yeah. We focus a lot on everything that we do has to sort of fit this mission, so

you never do anything halfway. If it's not there, don't do it. We'll save it and

we'll figure some way to make it something more engaging.

Richard Cox: Yeah, great. So talk about brewing for a minute. How would you say Archetype

reflects your brewing approach, interest or philosophy? And we already

mentioned Belgian style.

Steven Anan: Yeah. Well, again kind of going back to our mission statements, we have kind of

like a three word motto which is complex, mindful, living beer. All three of those

words are pretty deliberate. Starting with the first one, complex, complexity

requires patience, exploration and innovation so we're always trying to make

our beer better, we're always trying to figure out how we can improve, how we

can kind of push the boundaries of what we're doing in the industry without

chasing trends and without getting too far out in left field.

Richard Cox: Right.

Steven Anan: But doing our due diligence with all our processes and making sure we're doing

it properly. What were you going to say?

Brad Casanova: Wind malt, that's sort of a-

Steven Anan: Yeah, so to give a quick example of that, we worked with Riverbend to create

kind of an old world method of malting, and we're actually going to brew this

beer this week probably tomorrow. They created what's called wind malt which

is essentially, goes back to like a farmhouse technique for malting barley or any

cereal grain. So essentially what farmers would do is they would harvest their

cereal grain and then they would store it in a loft in their barn essentially, so

they would have open tops so you would just get a cross breeze that would

slowly dry and malt the grains. What you're left with is a semi-modified malt

that has just a really like grassy rustic flavor to it.

Steven Anan: So looking at projects like that, and trying to emulate historical beers and kind

of bring them back to life, and not necessarily doing it just to do historical beer

but working on a project that highlights businesses that we align with on like a

philosophical level, which Riverbend is incredible. They went way out of their

way to make us 800 pounds which is a tiny amount of the small malt because it

was essentially a passion project for them, because it is pushing the envelope

and we're not really seeing anyone doing stuff like this. I feel like this takes a

little bit more effort than just kind of throwing adjuncts at a beer.

Richard Cox: Right.

Steven Anan: Yeah. Little things like that, small project focus and doing it 00:17:00with intention and

actual purpose instead of just seeing what sticks.

Richard Cox: Right.

Steven Anan: The second one, so again, complex, mindful, living beer. Talking about

mindfulness requires diligence, process refinement, and a sincere focus on

quality, so both Brad and I have a pretty strong focus on quality. That's what he

did at Hi-Wire. Cellar work is all quality focused, so it has to be super clean,

everything has to be tight. So making sure that our SOPs are tight and all of our

employees are trained upright and actually following SOPs and not stopping

there but looking at process points and asking ourselves how we can improve

those to make a better beer at the end of the day.

Steven Anan: And then, living beer means our beer's evolving, it's intricate and then it's

unfiltered and unpasteurized and that always kind of be. So like our Brett beers

we had a lot of fun with because we can package them off and pour them on

draft and they're great, but we can also store them in a cold storage for six

months to a year and it continues to develop as opposed to traditional ales

which have a shelf like of 60 to 90 maybe 120 days.

Richard Cox: Right.

Steven Anan: We're not trying to avoid that, but these are beers that age and develop in a

positive way as opposed to degradation.

Richard Cox: Yeah, and it says something about the product.

Steven Anan: Right.

Richard Cox: So what's your favorite part of brewing then?

Steven Anan: Oh, man.

Richard Cox: There we go.

Steven Anan: I like the whole thing, I don't know. It's a cool balance of mechanical inclination,

there's an artistic side to it.

Richard Cox: Absolutely.

Steven Anan: There's a science-based side to it, and there's always more. There's so much

research going on in this industry so it's like almost every week there's

something like crazy that comes out. We're not doing anything because we

don't have a lab and that's not our goal, but there's a lot of good research going

on out there. People like Riverbend who are up for experimenting and doing

these cool projects as opposed to the pump and dump style breweries that

really go for quantity over these little cool projects.

Richard Cox: Right.

Steven Anan: That's probably my favorite thing. It's really just a blend of everything. What

about you? What do you like about this?

Brad Casanova: Everything. I like that it is constantly evolving as an industry because the feel

that you get is we're all in this together. Working with Riverbend, it wasn't they

were the experts and they were telling us how to do it, it was let's figure this

out, let's try it and have fun. That to me is what gives me that passion of new

and exciting things, of trying different beers, of collaborating. It's just exciting

and there's a lot of energy in it, and it's a very unique industry from that

perspective.

Richard Cox: Yeah, yeah. Great. Awesome. So, when you were opening Archetype and

starting it, and you're now growing it, what resources do you each draw on in

your specific areas to help you with that sort of thing?

Steven Anan: Oh, man.

Richard Cox: Or are you winging it from the ground up?

Steven Anan: As far as the startup?

Richard Cox: Well, yeah. When you're starting up Archetype, you're like, "Okay. What the

heck are we doing?" Who or what?

Steven Anan: I feel like we were lucky enough to experience and to see things ... this is more

of a blanket statement, but seeing things done the wrong way.

Richard Cox: Sure.

Steven Anan: That's not to say that previous breweries I worked for didn't do anything right.

They do a lot of things right, but seeing the common pitfalls of just opening a

space, not necessarily process or product or quality but more about setting up a

functional space to allow you to do what you need to do and do it efficiently. So,

when I came on with Hi-Wire, I started at their South Slope location, which is

this really small brewery, and I was part of the build out for Big Top which is

their Biltmore facility. And seeing that growth and what it required and the

attention to detail and seeing things on the front end and the back end and

being like, "Okay, we could've done this just to avoid this."

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: That really helps. Brad also has a wicked keen eye for stuff like that. Even

though he wasn't ever in a cellar physically slinging hoses around, we would

bounce stuff back and forth, ideas, and he would be like, "No, let's do it this way

so it's cleaner, so it's more functional." He has a great eye for that and we're

pretty open to each other's ideas and input. I think that helped build this place

out. We haven't had any major issues or mechanical failures or anything,

knowing how to maintain certain pieces of equipment and what that takes to

avoid something catastrophic helps kind of a lot.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: Yeah.

Brad Casanova: I think that's the nicest way anyone's ever called me anal retentive. Self

admittedly.

Steven Anan: I would expect you to say the same about me.

Brad Casanova: I'm in a good spot now because I'm getting older so I'm always looking for ways

to improve, but I'm also getting a little tired, so I kind of prioritize what's really

important but always being able to see those things I think is really important in

this industry, is always keeping an eye on what's a risk or what could break,

what could put us out for a week, having backups and working on these things

and making sure that's part of our company culture too. Our philosophy has to

incorporate that through all levels. If you're behind the bar pouring beer, you've

got to have those things in your head too, and that's just from our perspective

because that's who we want to be and that's kind of what we're creating here.

Richard Cox: yeah.

Brad Casanova: But also in terms of the startup, being in a town like this, it really helped,

especially for two guys who'd never been in business before to have the

resources, professional resources, a contractor and an architect that had

worked together on several previous breweries.

Richard Cox: Sure.

Brad Casanova: That was an amazing leg up for us in terms of being able to have them in here

and say, "Actually, you might consider doing it this way because I've seen this

before and it didn't work out."

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Brad Casanova: That's something that someone in a town that only has one other brewery, they

can't rely on those professionals to have that sort of experience. We're just

really blessed with that.

Richard Cox: Yeah. And actually, what you just said is things others have told us when we've

asked this question is. It's either like you're saying that people were the first

ones in their town or when you're getting back to the 80s and 90s when people

were first starting with brew pubs, that was like no one even knows how to run

the plumbing for a brewery. And so what happens? So yeah, there's a lot more

resources in Asheville than they ran into. So along the same lines, were there

any specific challenges you did face when opening Archetype? Usually it's the

licensing thing or what people's mentioned at that point and permitting.

Steven Anan: We've said this before, I don't know how, but we didn't experience any huge

challenge or roadblock, and I think that's because we knew when something

wasn't in our wheel house and we knew when to acknowledge that and to

outsource for that stuff.

Richard Cox: There you go.

Steven Anan: And it may have been a little bit more expensive upfront, but it saved us time so

it ended up balancing itself out.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: But I can't think of anything in particular, no.

Brad Casanova: No. I would say that the biggest challenge was after we opened, things like HR

management.

Richard Cox: Oh, right.

Brad Casanova: That's not something that you can just wing and it works out.

Richard Cox: Managing people.

Brad Casanova: Yes.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Brad Casanova: And we're in a service industry town, which kind of makes things a little bit

more challenging in terms of staffing on the tap room side.

Richard Cox: Just finding people?

Brad Casanova: There's just so much opportunity that it's really hard to push people to say,

"Let's make this place better," and them not think, "But I can make just as much

in a place that's not going to push me to be better."

Richard Cox: Right, right.

Brad Casanova: And they can get a job within three days because there's five new places

opening up down the street. There's so much activity here that it's easy for

people to just jump when they get a little stressed out. I think that makes it a

little bit more difficult to manage.

Richard Cox: Yeah. I think I already asked that one.

Brad Casanova: But we have amazing talent.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Brad Casanova: That's the upside of that, is that people are so experienced. I don't want to paint

that negative picture. It's a really great town to be in for talent.

Richard Cox: Yeah. It really ties together with what you were just saying, too because then

you're going to have the ones who are really talented who do want to be

challenged because it's their thing.

Steven Anan: Right, right.

Richard Cox: Yeah. So you mentioned community outreach work that you do. Are there some

examples of fundraising or community engagement work that you've all done in

the community?

Brad Casanova: Yeah. Well, one of our biggest, most exciting to me, is our thanksgiving potluck.

It's a chance for people that don't normally come in and the community to come

in and sit at one big long table and share dinner. It's an awesome experience

and I think that's part of it. It's not always about fundraising or big projects.

Sometimes, it's just about getting people together and it's people from all

different walks of life, and you know, that you normally wouldn't catch

together, and I think that's a really cool aspect of it without any agenda.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Brad Casanova: It's just to sit down and share a meal. That's been one of my favorite things

throughout the year. We've also decided to partner with Green Opportunities.

So we did a lot of work in the beginning, our first year and a half of finding great

organizations and doing a project, an event. It took a lot of time and effort and

we decided to sort of focus our effort, someone at a craft brewers conference

referred to it as throwing confetti in the air. You're doing a lot of little things but

you don't really feel like you can see a huge impact, and so we kind of recently

found that Green Opportunities align very well with our mission and

philosophies and values. And so, going forward they're going to be sort of our

first go-to for anything, and after that if we want to do side projects we can. But

hopefully make a bigger impact and find different ways to be able to do that

whether it be in-house, or exposure, or fundraising, or everything.

Richard Cox: Right.

Brad Casanova: Giving them opportunities, because they have an amazing amount of programs

there that reach so many different parts of the community. That's perfect for us.

Richard Cox: Yeah. Great. So how do you see Archetype growing in the future?

Steven Anan: We just talked about this.

Richard Cox: Oh, good.

Steven Anan: Thankfully, Brad and I got a chance to hit the road for a few hours and that was

like our annual meeting, owners meeting that we haven't had in a long time. I

think going back, again, going back to our core values, I think we're shooting for

more of an experience-driven brand as opposed to ... How do I say this? Not

necessarily production-driven so not looking to hit a certain quantity of barrels

per year.

Richard Cox: Right.

Steven Anan: But if we're able to ... This expansion that we're doing now isn't really expanding

our production capacity at all. It might down the road expand our portfolio as

far as beer offerings, but what we're really looking to do is fulfill a need

especially in that area to have a neighborhood pub, to have an affordable event

space that people can enjoy and use and trying to target those locals as

opposed to just reaping the benefits of this being a huge tourism town, which is

a plus, but we're here and we want to serve our community. I think that's what

we're trying to do, so growth for us looks more like that. Where it's experience-

driven as opposed to just production-driven.

Richard Cox: Sure.

Steven Anan: So if that means multiple locations that all offer different things venue wise,

then that's great. Down the road, if we need to expand production then great.

Richard Cox: Great.

Steven Anan: Yeah.

Brad Casanova: And that's another differentiation from a production brewery I see is our core

model is pints across the bar, so it's direct from maker to consumer. It allows us

to keep quality high, to keep control over things, and that's the experience we

want people to have first. I think moving, expanding distribution wise is relevant

to that in terms of our beer tourism, and that's why you will see growth from us

from a distribution perspective but only to drive that experience right here. And

you see the larger production breweries opening up multiple tap rooms now,

and I think they're just capitalizing on that distribution base versus doing it to

kind of create more focus on that experience and that sort of drive. So growth

will be deliberate and focused on bringing people here eventually.

Richard Cox: and based on all that, can you talk a little bit about the second location and

what you see for it?

Brad Casanova: Sure, yeah. Okay.

Steven Anan: You've been immersed. Go for it.

Brad Casanova: Well, unfortunately we saw one of our local breweries shut down a couple of

weeks ago, Habitat Brewing. We were doing startup at around the same time. I

would go in there on my way to work here to just check in with them, see how

they were doing. I watched that process take place. They restored a beautiful

1920s brick building, hardwood floors, punched tin ceilings, they did a great job

restoring it and they created a great space. It's just north of town next to the

Moog building and foundation, a cool spot, a little tough for a single location

brewery in terms of they had to make all their beer there on wooden floors in

an old building. Not a lot of industrial elements that would help that, like we

have concrete and hard surfaces.

Brad Casanova: And so, it was a challenge for them. They shut down and we've decided to sort

of take over, carry on their community mission, because they did a lot of great

community work, but also be able to feed the beer from here helps with that

process. So we'll do some production over there at some point once we can get

some permitting going. It's essentially a very different style tap room to here.

The elements are different, the feel is different, and that's sort of that

Archetype experience is. It's going to resonate with some people more than

others and just like this place does.

Richard Cox: Right.

Brad Casanova: We had a Google review that said this place was-

Steven Anan: Too clean.

Brad Casanova: Yeah. It was a low review because it said it was too clean and well lit.

Richard Cox: Okay. It's not a speakeasy.

Steven Anan: Yeah, we're not a dive bar.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Brad Casanova: It just goes to show you there are people that don't want to be in this really

bright open air new material building. They'd rather be in some creaky old

building with half the lighting that it should have because that's what speaks to

them. And so it gives us a really cool chance to show people that we're not one-

sided, not Jekyll and Hyde, but diverse.

Richard Cox: Is that how you see the experience at that location being different from this one

as like you're sort of taking what the building gives you and build around that?

Brad Casanova: Yeah.

Steven Anan: Yeah. I would say so.

Richard Cox: Yeah. That's interesting. That could be fun.

Brad Casanova: It's going to be very different from this.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: I'm excited about it.

Richard Cox: I can tell. When are you thinking you're going to be in? I mean, you said you

didn't have your permits yet.

Brad Casanova: We hope to open by St Paddy's day, a soft opening, which is just around the

corner obviously, but it'll take some time to do some of the projects we really

want to do. But the point is just getting it back open again and creating a space

as people are starting to get out for the spring. We want to make sure that they

know we're going to be there, but it doesn't have to be perfect. We have a lot of

things we'd love to do, but I'd rather pour some beer and get some people in

there and excited about it.

Richard Cox: Yeah, absolutely. And Archetype was awarded Best In Show at the 00:34:002018 North

Carolina Brewers Cup. How does that make you feel? Can you elaborate on

that?

Steven Anan: We were pretty stoked.

Richard Cox: You were offended. It was horrible.

Steven Anan: I was like double excited because a Belgian style beer took the entire

competition, so I was like, "This is what this is about."

Brad Casanova: Yeah.

Richard Cox: What was the beer?

Steven Anan: We don't have it on right now, but we could throw some ... We'll throw some

on. We'll thrown some on for you guys after this.

Richard Cox: Tell me about it. Tell me what it is.

Steven Anan: It was our Belgian dark strong ale.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: It's about 11.2%. I think that version was 11.2. We have a new one in the batch

that's slightly higher. But yeah, we brewed that late 2017. Let it age for a while

and all those alcohols just kind of mellowed out and it turned into this beautiful

Trappist style beer. Yeah, so there were 624 entries in the whole competition so

that beer took gold in the Trappist style ale competition, and then that was

matched up against 32 other gold medal winners and it beat that out. The fact

that it was a Belgian style beer I'm like, "Ah."

Richard Cox: You're waving a Belgian flag, right?

Steven Anan: Yeah, that was cool. It was nice. It's always nice to be recognized, and that

solidifies, I think, how I view our SOPs and our processes and what we're doing.

It's nice to get that feedback from actual experienced trained tasters. We try to

get as much feedback as we can and we have very thick skin. If you don't like a

beer, I would hope that you would tell me and tell me why. So something like

this, it's nice to see that happen. And then when we went to go accept the

award, everyone was drinking and I was like, "This is so surreal." So yeah, we

were excited about that. It's hopefully just the beginning of many.

Brad Casanova: Yeah.

Richard Cox: Well, you've won awards since then too, right?

Steven Anan: Yeah.

Richard Cox: Yeah. Like what? This is your moment to brag. Go ahead.

Steven Anan: Go ahead.

Brad Casanova: This is a fun one. We went to Brew Horizons, sort of a new beer festival in town.

I went to the event, it was great. It later with my wife sitting down, got a text

and said we won two awards and I just started smiling and laughing. Corina, my

wife, turned to me and said, "What's so funny?", and I said, "Well, it turns out

we won some awards at the festival," and she goes, "Why'd you win an award

for?" I said, "Best dark beer and best light beer," and she goes, "What'd you

bring?" I said, "A dark beer and a light beer." It's fun to have that sort of

affirmation of the things that we're feeling about our beer.

Brad Casanova: It's not about boasting or bragging, it's about being proud. The best part of that

Best In Show award was going to the Craft Brewers Conference that the NC

Guild put on and sitting down at lunch and everyone kept looking at my name

tag and looking at me, and then finally someone said, "I just have to tell you,

that was an amazing beer that you all submitted. There was no question and

that was the best out of the gold medals." So, to me, it wasn't the award, it was

the excitement that the people had for it, and that just refills my tank and I can

keep going for a year because I know that all this hard work and the late nights

and the time that we give up with our kids and our wives is worth it because

we're creating something that inspires people and gets people excited about

beer.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Brad Casanova: And that's the best part for me.

Steven Anan: Well said.

Brad Casanova: Thanks.

Steven Anan: That means we have to win one a year, man to keep you going, get the tank

full?

Richard Cox: No pressure on you.

Brad Casanova: Yeah, no pressure.

Richard Cox: No pressure on you at all. So Archetype is young but you've both been in the

business for a while. So how would you say the brewing scene has changed

since you first each went into the business? And you're coming from Colorado.

Steven Anan: Man, I got lots to say about this but I'll withhold some of it. Man, when I started

it was a totally, from my perspective it was a totally different industry.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: It wasn't focused on, and you know, this perspective might be hyperlocal. It

wasn't so much focused on what do you have that's new, do you have the Hazy

API, do you have a pastry style, whatever. It's like what's your story, what do

you guys do, what are you all about. I feel like the consumer perspective has

shifted a little bit. We experienced some of that here as far as seeing consumers

come in and stay for one beer and then bounce to the next place. A lot of that

has to do with the congestion and the saturation of breweries here, so there are

a lot of options, and I don't mind that so much but it's when people come in and

they don't see a Hazy IPA on our board and they're just like kind of bummed

about it. Like, man, we have 12 other options on that I think beats the pants off

of Hazy IPAs.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: So another shift I've seen and it kind of goes along with that is the actual

business is having to continually pivot to match consumer taste and to match

trends and just to stay relevant. There are ways to avoid that. It takes a lot of

energy to avoid that, and I think you have to have a strong philosophy and a

strong mission statement to be able to avoid getting sucked into that weird

vortex that is just like pure consumer-driven. There's nothing wrong with that.

Every industry for the most part is consumer-driven to some extent.

Richard Cox: Right.

Steven Anan: But when it's steered in a direction that is maybe a little uneducated, I think

that's where businesses need to come in and be like, "This is how things should

be done."

Richard Cox: Yeah. I just actually made a note right before you said uneducated. It sounds like

a lot of what you're talking about is educating the consumers here.

Steven Anan: Right.

Richard Cox: I didn't mean to interrupt, but you hit something I was thinking.

Steven Anan: Yeah. And we've experienced that the second our first Brett beer hit the board,

the next day we were like, "Okay, we're going to have to find some

workarounds for this." There are some consumers where if you have to explain

a product as simple as a beer, something consumable, you've already lost them.

But there are those people that gravitate towards those more complex like

unknown styles of beer or production methods or whatever, those early

adopters that latch onto these things.

Steven Anan: There's a lot of misinformation. We heard a lot of, "Oh, I don't like sour beers,"

when they saw Brett on something. Okay. We don't do any sour beers, this is

what Brett means, this is the profile that we get out of this. So honestly, getting

someone to try a specific style is the issue. It's not getting someone to drink that

or order another one. It's getting them to initially try it.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: So we've done things like hosting private tastings, like Brett tastings specifically

where it's a private event, we pull special bottles or kegs and we talk about

what the difference is between this alternative yeasts and these alternative

brewing processes, things like that. Knowing where to draw the line where

you're not overloading people with information and you're not insulting them,

because everybody has their taste. I've had Hazy IPAs that I love.

Richard Cox: Right.

Steven Anan: We don't do that here from a longevity perspective. Again, chasing trends isn't

part of our business model.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: It might be easy to get some quick attention by doing that, but 00:42:00from a longevity

perspective, again, we've tried to avoid doing things like that and really tried to

carve out our own niche and stay true to our philosophies.

Richard Cox: Yeah. You have, what? Three IPAs up right now anyway.

Steven Anan: Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah. Come on, if one of those three doesn't do it for you, I

got nothing. I got nothing for you.

Brad Casanova: And that's on the low side of what we normally have, and still it's not enough for

some people that just want that hazy.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Brad Casanova: Yeah.

Steven Anan: And that's fine. There are a lot of good ones around town. At some point, it

becomes redundant. It's like do you want us to do a Hazy IPA when there are

other people doing great ones, or do you want something new and fresh that

you've never had before?

Richard Cox: Something that fills a niche that's not there, yeah. Do you have anything?

Brad Casanova: I would say a local challenge is that, I think in general, the consumer's becoming

more educated about styles, about all flavors, but on the other side, we're

seeing such an influx of tourism that I think, you know, ... I used to be able to

see that trend happening and then it kind of died back off because we had so

many people coming in that really didn't have access to a lot of craft beer so

they just naturally were less educated. You had a lot of people coming in that

said they were BJCP certified and then Cicerones, and this and that, and now it's

back to sort of that huge tourism from these areas that don't have a developed

craft beer market in their neighborhood and we're back to having to educate. I

think that's an extra challenge being in Asheville because people just come here

from these less developed craft beer markets.

Richard Cox: And they're like, "Just give me a beer."

Steven Anan: They just want to drink, yeah, yeah. Beer City, USA.

Richard Cox: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Similar question. What's it like for you all to work in the

industry today?

Steven Anan: That was my note for that was that it's cool to see the consumer education

going up.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: And people realizing what high quality beer is as opposed to just 00:44:00not a quality

product or something that's really just chasing trends. I think people are starting

to notice what actual true innovation is as well, which is kind of cool. I think

things like awards help that, just help expose that sort of thing. In the industry

in general, there's a lot of comradery but there's also like some silent

competition. It's like everyone's friends but we all know that we're like in

competition with each other.

Richard Cox: It's still all businesses, yeah.

Steven Anan: Yeah. And so, it's kind of fun to be a part of that. It's fun to go to these ABA

shindigs for Christmas parties and whatever and hang out with all of your peers

and then everyone's best friends and then you leave and you go to work the

next day and you're making your product and you're trying to do it better than

anyone else and you're trying to stand out. There's a little bit of a duality there,

but we all help each other too.

Steven Anan: John Silver over at Homeplace has bailed us out with Hops before and vice

versa. He was using our keg washer for a while, so if we can lend a hand to our

peers we do and I love that aspect of it. Other than that, it's just kind of

watching the trends and watching the market growth and watching how the BA

responds to that stuff and how they react and how that trickles down.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: I think the next few years might be kind of interesting.

Brad Casanova: Yeah. Constant struggle to stay I think relevant. I think there's an overall growth

here thankfully with that growth and tourism too, it's really kind of expanded

our means here. People talk about a saturation point. How can there be a

saturation point if you've got twice as many tourists as you did three years ago?

You've got all these ancillary businesses popping up. They're driving this, they're

marketing it, they're advertising, they're bringing people to town so it keeps

growing and growing and growing, but I think one of the big keys is to stay

relevant and exciting. And so long as you stay within that pool, you'll keep

growing but some are going to fall by the wayside. Habitat closing is definitely

not the last in town.

Richard Cox: Sure.

Brad Casanova: It's going to keep happening, but that's healthy and that's good, and I'm looking

forward to just that growth and strengthening up our local market, and if it

means some of these businesses that aren't doing these things to stay up with it

could sort of fall by the wayside. It's a sad side of capitalism and business.

Richard Cox: Right.

Steven Anan: Yeah.

Richard Cox: Cool. We've been talking about trends. Are there any that you actually

particularly like or dislike? You mentioned IPAs as being something that's ... Are

there any you'd like that you're interested in?

Steven Anan: Yeah. I think enough people have talked about the whole Hazy IPA, Pastry

Stouts thing.

Richard Cox: People have opinions, yeah.

Steven Anan: Yeah. I like the fact that lagers are making a strong comeback just because that's

... I mean, you ask almost anybody in the industry, and I think that's what they

prefer to drink as a daily drink, so I dig that. Brett is kind of making a name for

itself so that's pretty cool to see that. It's in line with what we're doing. It's

taking a little bit to get some momentum behind it, but it's definitely gaining

some attention. Yeah, those are probably my two favorite ones. I really like

drinking lagers.

Richard Cox: Yeah. Well, I mean just a couple years ago, how many people would know what

a schwarzbier is?

Steven Anan: Right, right.

Richard Cox: And now you see them. Brett's another interesting one because people seem to

assume it's always a really sour beer just because of the yeast. Interesting.

Steven Anan: Yeah.

Brad Casanova: Yeah. I think the trends of mixed culture and lagers, now styles that you can't

hide behind as much as throwing hops at something or adjuncts where you're

sort of forced into really looking at the quality and how you're making it and

your ingredients. Anything like that, I'm excited about because it really brings

you back to really just core well-balanced beer that doesn't have to blow out

your taste buds or make your stomach upset because you've had 20 ounces of

sour or super sour beer. Essentially, you're just drinking acid at that point.

Steven Anan: Right.

Brad Casanova: I appreciate that. I think there's a delicateness that goes with this sort of trend

of staying really focused on your process.

Richard Cox: And what role do you see breweries such as Archetype playing in changes that

have been happening in Asheville, which you've already touched on with your

neighborhood?

Steven Anan: I would like to think we're a big proponent of quality beer and not making lazy

beer, and if we can challenge our peers to do the same, I'm not going to sit here

and say we make the best beer in Asheville, but I think we do a good job at what

we do, and if we can inspire people to do better, then at the end of the day

that's great, that's awesome.

Brad Casanova: Trying to maintain a healthy ABV I think is a big part of what we do. It's beer

that's meant to be consumed and enjoyed not pounded and not meant to be

overwhelming your senses or meant to be abused. Yeah. I think it's creating

more of a ... This is a kid friendly space and we try and push that during the day.

We have story time, things like that. It's different, we get some flak sometimes,

but the people that have come to story time see a bunch of parents sitting with

their kids listening to an actual teacher read some books and teach something.

It's daylight, it's bright, it's open in here, and that to me is a healthy way to

incorporate that craft beer experience into lifestyle in a healthy way.

Brad Casanova: Some breweries have taken the wrong direction in terms of just allowing it to be

just a madhouse. They sort of foster that by saying, "Here's this area over here."

I mean, I've heard of breweries having like little corrals and kids just go in.

Richard Cox: Lock them up and-

Brad Casanova: We're not trying to separate that. We're trying to say have a 00:51:00healthy experience,

have something that you're really focusing on and tasting versus just drinking to

have an effect, and I think that's the difference. You're always going to have the

critics, but I think that's sort of what we always try and keep in mind, especially

when we're designing our board and keeping those ABVs long enough that

people can have that experience. We stand behind it by our product, and that's

sort of-

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: Yeah. If we can deglamorize the heavy drinking or over consumption culture,

that's a big plus for us too. Having a sign or a sandwich board as you're walking

out saying like, "An Uber or a taxi is cheaper than a DUI." That's on the back of

our sandwich board, being responsible about it. I think that's where people get

lost with allowing kids in here because they're like, "Oh, people are getting

trashed and their kids are right here observing." It's like yeah, but you're kind of

missing the point a little bit. We don't want to be a daycare but we want this to

be a space for everybody, and if you're in here slamming beers and you're super

drunk at 5:00 PM, that's kind of your own problem. This is not the space for

that.

Richard Cox: There's another issue there.

Steven Anan: Right.

Richard Cox: Right. Yeah. If you had a crystal ball, where would you sort of see the brewing

industry going in three to five years, or where are you seeing it heading maybe?

More lagers?

Steven Anan: Maybe, maybe.

Richard Cox: Maybe. Who knows.

Steven Anan: I don't know. Yeah. Who knows what the trends are going to be. I think trends

are probably going to move faster. They're going to come up and die faster than

they have, and I think social media and marketing has a lot to do with that.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: That's steers the industry in some weird direction sometimes. And then, this

industry's gone to an extreme and I think we're at that point or maybe coming

out of that point where creativity kind of gets lost behind novelty.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: And I think consumers are starting to see that, so you see a lot of breweries

starting to backpedal on some of these novelty beers and actually change their

format a little bit. I'm hoping that stays in that direction. Other than that, I don't

know. InBev is still taking shots at us with weird commercials. I don't know. I

can't wait to see where that goes next Super Bowl.

Richard Cox: We should be more worried if they stopped.

Steven Anan: Yeah.

Richard Cox: Anything from your side?

Brad Casanova: Business wise, I think I see a lot more collaboration and consolidation from less

of a conglomerate or corporate aspect, but more of maybe some sort of groups

or co-ops being created by multiple breweries that can pull their resources and

lower their overhead and kind of gain strength by saying, "We're actually a

partnership of three or four breweries in this region. So hey, come see the next

place when you come into town next weekend."

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Brad Casanova: I see that happening over this sort of buyout big pump and dump, sort of get big

and sell. I don't see that happening as much.

Richard Cox: Yeah. So, some general questions. What do you see as unique about southern

beer and maybe North Carolina beer specifically, if anything?

Steven Anan: I tend to go back to people like Riverbend. It's not a brewery obviously. They're

a supplier, but I think there are a lot of suppliers here that are trying to shift the

brewing culture to more of a local experience, and the terroir

thing, that's super relevant here and in the south. We can grow great barley in

North Carolina, and we have people like Riverbend that are heading a lot of that

research and development working with universities, et cetera. I think that

makes North Carolina pretty unique as far as southern beer. I see the south as

kind of being, not necessarily North Carolina, but some of the south, being of

slightly behind areas like Colorado, Denver, the New England area. It's not

necessarily a bad thing, but I think it's an idiosyncrasy of the south.

Richard Cox: Yeah. And some of the legislation and law as well.

Steven Anan: Right. And that's really what caused all that, yeah.

Brad Casanova: I sort of see it's tough for us to look beyond our backyard.

Richard Cox: Right.

Brad Casanova: Yeah. There's so many breweries here and beers here that just to stay relevant

up to date on what's happening in town - there goes your beer budget.

Richard Cox: True.

Brad Casanova: Luckily, a lot of it's friendly here.

Steven Anan: Yeah.

Brad Casanova: I'll pour you a pint but still you got to spend time and energy really seeing

what's going on here, and at that point to reach beyond it it's like well, it really

makes it difficult to get a good feel for what's happening, what's happening in

the northeast, what's happening in the west coast. Until it becomes a general

trend and people start asking about it or talking about it here, in our local area,

that it's tough to see that. So I think we're pretty isolated when it comes to that.

We don't have as much travel back and forth. A lot of people wind up here and

then stay here, so they might bring some information with them, but there

tends to not be a continuous exchange of sort of new ideas and taste. It's

difficult. So it's important to go to things like CBC and really get out there and

make connections outside of our little world in North Carolina.

Richard Cox: Right. Yeah. Makes sense. So for you, what would you say is your favorite recipe

that you've created that you're most proud of? Not necessarily the one you

most like to drink but when you came up with your recipe.

Steven Anan: We got, we got ... Which yours?

Brad Casanova: Timely. Timely.

Richard Cox: We'll start with you then. Tell me about it.

Brad Casanova: No, you tell.

Steven Anan: We did this mixed culture Saison called Timely Surrender. We actually just did

another batch. It takes quite a while, it's a three to four month beer

conditioning wise. Yeah, that one was ... I was just looking to make a really

intense kind of rustic Saison. I think the initial goal was to make a Saison so like

intense that people didn't want to drink it so I just could end up drinking the

whole thing. It ended up working pretty well. We kind of partnered with

Riverbend again on that one and did 100% Riverbend malt beer, and using those

really super fresh ingredients I think it definitely carries over and you can tell in

the end product.

Steven Anan: That was only in stainless. We didn't do any barrel aging on that but it was just

like this, I think it was about 5.5%, maybe high fives, nice little bone dry super

crispy light Saison. It was really intense, it had a lot of Brett character and not

necessarily like barnyard funk, but a lot of floral notes, a lot of like citrus tropical

notes, so it was really intense upfront and then it just finished super clean. So I

wasn't anticipating it being like a consumption beer, but it ended up being like,

"Oh, man, I could have another pint of this because the finish is so clean." It's so

dry so that those residual sugars aren't there to kind of fill you up. So it was a

really nice pleasant refreshing beer. It was a hit here.

Steven Anan: I wasn't really expecting it to take off. I thought it was going to be like a sleeper

hit where we had a few regulars that would come in and just crush it, but we

purposefully didn't use the word Brettanomyces or Brett when we put it on the

board. We just called it Saison and it sold really well. People really loved it,

Riverbend guys were going nuts for it so we're doing another batch. This round

we'll bottle maybe half of this batch.

Richard Cox: Awesome.

Steven Anan: So bottle condition, we'll just make it a little bit better.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: Yeah.

Richard Cox: Would that be your favorite recipe too? That was yours.

Steven Anan: Man, I think so maybe. The strong ale was cool but yeah, I've used these

ingredients that were in the strong ale quite a bit whereas the Saison, it was

new malts that I don't have a ton of experience with as far as the supplier. And

then Brett kind of does its own thing sometimes. It's harder to anticipate the

end result with certain Brett strains and we just kind of let it do its thing. The

primary fermentation was the Saison strain and then we dropped that out when

it was done and hit it with Brett and it just kind of trickled along for three more

months. It was just a pretty good beer. I think the way I described it it was like a

liquified grapefruit, like the whole thing in a glass, and I just wanted to take it

down to Florida and sit on a beach and drink a keg of it.

Richard Cox: That's good marketing, man.

Steven Anan: Yeah.

Richard Cox: You like working with Brett? Aside question. People seem to be-

Steven Anan: Yeah. It's fun to experiment with. We're not afraid of it here. We haven't had

any issues yet.

Richard Cox: Let me back up. Can you tell us what Brett is for those, what we've been talking

about because we talked about Brett a few times.

Steven Anan: Yeah. It's not a guy.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: It's not sour, it's not a sour agent. It's yeast. It's in a different class than

Saccharomyces. It's not technically brewer's yeast, it's a wild yeast strain. It can

break down longer changed sugars than Saccharomyces can, which gives you a

dryer beer. That's something that you may have noticed about all of our beers,

is they're very dry but not in such a way that they're unbalanced. I think it

makes them more sessionable and I think it's makes them more balanced and

more complex. We've gotten that a lot that our beers are ... Some of these

beers I finish with literally no measurable sugar in solution.

Steven Anan: They finish and they have a little bit of perceived sweetness because it's a

balanced beer and because of our processes or recipe formulation or extended

aging, et cetera, knowing how to manipulate those things. It took some time to

really get comfortable with certain Brett strains and every one, every Brett

strain is different. There are some Brett strains that can't ferment maltose so

you can't use it as a single strain. You use it in a co-fermentation and use it with

a blend of other Brett strains or other Sacc strains, et cetera.

Steven Anan: But I think it helps us stand out as created products that are very unique to us. I

think we have a very unique - I wouldn't call it a house flavor, because all of our

beers are very different, but there's a consistency amongst them that I feel like

we're pretty good at achieving and that separates us from a lot of people.

Richard Cox: Awesome. Brad, let's start over here again. Do you have a favorite beer from a

North Carolina brewery other than Archetype?

Brad Casanova: Let me think about it for a minute.

Richard Cox: Sure.

Steven Anan: Does New Belgium count?

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: 1554 is like my go-to. It's such an incredible beer.

Richard Cox: I'm so shocked that you like the dark lager.

Steven Anan: It's so good. That might be like one of my top five island beers, 01:03:00like deserted

island beers. That one's a solid one. Yeah.

Brad Casanova: I kind of rotate. Fat Tire, original Fat Tire, we're talking back in 2001, was

definitely the beer that got me into craft beer and this was back when you

couldn't get it here anyway. I was in Arizona at the time and it just blew my

mind and it was fresh and just incredible. But I'm always changing. 1554 is one

of my favorites.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Brad Casanova: I used to really Hi-Wire's brown, but I think it was less of a thinking beer and

more of just like a mindless sort of like barbecue beer, but that was the age I

was at when I was like that, so it's always changing but yeah.

Richard Cox: So if Archetype had a flagship or signature beer, maybe not necessarily your

personal favorite, but if there's one that maybe you have that when people

think Archetype, that's the beer they think of, like a Fat Tire for New Belgium for

example.

Steven Anan: I've always wanted our witbier to be that beer, but it's hard to get people to

drink a witbier because there's a lot of poorly done witbiers out there.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: When you get like a fresh balanced witbier it's like the best warm weather beer

you can get. That kind of goes against what we're trying to do in that we don't

identify with one beer as a flagship.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Steven Anan: But personally, I want to get a witbier in their hands first because if they aren't a

witbier drinker and they have a witbier, they're probably going to like it and

that'll kind of open them up to some of these other styles that we're doing.

Richard Cox: Yeah. Absolutely. Any you would think of?

Brad Casanova: Cowboy Poet or Unruly Mystic, so our light lager, American light lager, and our

coffee porter I think speak to the most people in general.

Steven Anan: Yeah.

Brad Casanova: And the branding and packaging on them is probably the most appealing to

everyone overall in terms of the feedback that we've gotten.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Brad Casanova: Yeah. It's sort of hard to use the term flagship with the philosophy that we have.

Steven Anan: Yeah.

Richard Cox: That makes sense. Yeah. That's a great answer honestly. So what are your

favorite Archetype beers?

Steven Anan: Again, I could drink witbier every day.

Richard Cox: Every day.

Steven Anan: I could drink it for breakfast.

Richard Cox: Talking to plants, right.

Steven Anan: I don't have a drinking problem. Yes, talking to plants, it's just such a good, like

almost feels like a light meal sometimes but it's just a really nice crisp thirst-

quenching beer. I really like our Liber Novus which was our 14 month barrel-

aged Belgian red ale. It's really good. It almost drinks like a champagne. It's

darker so it doesn't look like one, but we did bottle-condition that, very highly

carbonated and it's a really, really nice light barrel-aged non-sour beer.

Richard Cox: Yeah. Awesome.

Steven Anan: So I really dig that one.

Brad Casanova: I have to bring the blonde back out. They haven't had it on, yeah the blonde.

Steven Anan: All right. Okay.

Brad Casanova: It's incredible in the summer, it changes about three times as you're drinking it

and it's-

Steven Anan: Yeah. It blooms.

Brad Casanova: Yeah. It's a really cool beer. And then Timely of course, but things like even

something some people might call boring is the English Bitter on Nitro.

Steven Anan: 3.9%, it's just like a really, really nice light flavorful nitro beer. It's ordinary

bitter. That was a fun one.

Brad Casanova: Yeah. And that's a beer that I love because it surprises people and they try it and

they go, "Wow. I didn't know I'd like this."

Richard Cox: It's a style a lot of people still don't really know.

Brad Casanova: Right.

Richard Cox: Yeah. Great.

Brad Casanova: We put a pilot batch on just to test it out. And we had a guy come in the next

weekend said he had driven like 40 minutes to get here to have that beer, and

we had to tell him sorry, it was just a one keg. But it's experiences like that that

really drive us and say if people are that passionate about it, we need to at least

give it some attention.

Richard Cox: Yeah. And that fits more with your mission about flagship beers.

Brad Casanova: Yeah.

Steven Anan: Right.

Richard Cox: Yeah. Great. Awesome.

Steven Anan: Cool.

Richard Cox: That's all I have.

Brad Casanova: All right.

Richard Cox: Is there anything I missed that you want to talk about or want to add before we

call it a day?

Steven Anan: Do you all want to shut this camera off and drink some beer? I'll chill down a

bottle for you guys.

Brad Casanova: I'll say one thing, and that's the unspoken true heroes of small business and

breweries are the wives and the families and the support that comes with this

because starting a small business is not easy, the pressure, the work and what

you give up and the constant just struggle to be a stand out. So having a

supportive wife at home and kids that are understanding and just love to see

you is just, that makes that possible.

Richard Cox: Absolutely.

Brad Casanova: And we're both lucky to have amazing families.

Steven Anan: Absolutely.

Richard Cox: Awesome.

Brad Casanova: Yeah.

Richard Cox: Thank you both.

Brad Casanova: Thank you.

Steven Anan: Thank you.

Richard Cox: I appreciate it.

Brad Casanova: Appreciate it.