Oral history interview with Jon and Carrieann Schneider, 2022

Erin Lawrimore: So I'm Erin Lawrimore. I am here for an interview with Jon and Carrieann Schneider at Sideways Farm and Brewery in Etowah. Today is Monday, July 11th, 2022. To start, can you both say and spell your name? Whoever wants to go first.

Jon Schneider: John Schneider, J-O-N-S-C-H-N-E-I-D-E-R

Carrieann Schneider: And Carrieann Schneider, C-A-R-R-I-E-A-N-N, all one word. Same spelling, Schneider.

Erin Lawrimore: There you go. So let's start off by having you guys tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from, and what was the circuitous path that brought you here?

Carrieann Schneider: Answer.

Jon Schneider: We're from Orlando, Florida. When we moved up, I think seven years ago, eight years ago? Eight years ago in October we moved up, to be where some of the best, if not the best craft beer in the U.S. was being brewed with a vision of doing this. So having the farm, having the brewery, but also trying to send a message and really connect agriculture back to beer, because it's been so industrialized over the last decade, century, you name it. Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah. Since, Asheville, Orlando area didn't have a real foodie movement, there's so many tourists that come through that just want the chain restaurant that they're familiar with. And when we came up and visited 00:02:00this area, there were farmer's markets without Chiquita banana stickers on it. I mean, that's what we had in Florida. And so we were like people here actually care about where their food came from. And so the idea to open up a brewery that grows some of its own ingredients just seemed to fit in this area.

Erin Lawrimore: So how did you build your interest even in craft brewing? How did you get into the area?

Jon Schneider: She had bought me a home brew kit. I can't even remember when 2009, 2008 something.

Erin Lawrimore: A long time ago.

Jon Schneider: And I had always told her I wanted to make wine and she didn't think that I had the patience to actually make wine. And so for Christmas...

Carrieann Schneider: Ironically enough, the year that I got it, we were in Belgium for Christmas and sitting at home underneath the Christmas tree is this home brew kit. And we were in Belgium, we were in Germany and we didn't go to a single brewery the whole time. And I'm thinking to myself, this is going to be 00:03:00the worst Christmas gift ever he isn't going to like it. This is going to be in a garage sale in two months. Yeah. But two months you were already outgrown it and starting to brew like the real brewers.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Do you remember what some of the early beers that you did, what you did at the very beginning?

Jon Schneider: Yeah. I really worked on a pale ale and an IPA, and those were at the time those were my favorite beers. And so that's what I liked to brew. And it was basically brewing the same beer over and over and over and over and over.

Carrieann Schneider: His first two were the kit brews that I'd gotten him. And there was a porter...

Jon Schneider: A porter and an IPA.

Carrieann Schneider: That was undrinkable. And an IPA.

Jon Schneider: Yeah, it was okay.

Carrieann Schneider: And the IPA was okay. And those were the syrup and all that. And he was like, "If I'm going to do this, I need to do this right." And so he scrapped the kit and started doing all green and yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. And that was when you were still in Florida?

Carrieann Schneider: That was still in Florida. And that was that repetitive, he wanted to be able to nail the numbers and do the same beer. And that's partly why we don't do a lot of the same beers now, because it was two years of the same two beers over and over and over again.

Jon Schneider: It was fun.

Erin Lawrimore: Well, how about the agriculture side? What led your interest there?

Jon Schneider: It was interesting because we actually, when we decided to put our house on the market, we were looking at either moving to the east coast of Florida or to the mountains and we were vacationing here frequently and we had a family vote and everybody agreed that we should be here. And so I always say that our business plan and everything else has just been ever-changing. And so when we came up here, we were like, "You know what, because of the food movement 00:05:00because of everything else, let's try to tie agriculture back into brewing. And maybe that would be a niche that we can carve out and just be something special that would bring that to light." And so we started looking for farms.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah. And it also, before beer as he said, he'd wanted to make wine and we would go and visit wineries. And when you visit a winery, it feels special. You go and you're usually out in the country somewhere, there's grapes growing, it's scenic. You have that tie to the land. And even though beer is an agricultural product just like wine, you don't have that. You go to an industrial area or a downtown area. And there's just not that same feeling. And so we really wanted to try to bring those two things together, bring our love for wine and the wineries that we've visited over the years into beer.

Erin Lawrimore: And you mentioned too, you mentioned a family vote and I know that y'all have other family who work here. Can you talk a little bit about 00:06:00that? Who all is involved in the process?

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah. So on the farm, we have our two children in addition to ourselves and my parents. I was an only child, and once I had kids, my parents were going to follow their two grandkids wherever in the world we landed. And so we all talked about it and we'd looked across the country. We tried to figure out for a while where we fit, where we felt at home. And we'd actually looked at New Zealand and my parents vetoed New Zealand. We looked at California and then my parents vetoed California. But this kind of felt like it fit all of us.

Jon Schneider: Well, I think it was also halfway between Florida and Buffalo, New York, which is where they're from. And still have family there and in Florida. So it was kind of a really nice in between, halfbacks.

Carrieann Schneider: Well, and I am a halfback, yes. But you also had family in 00:07:00North Carolina. So growing up, John grew up in Florida, but would come up for the summers and spend time in North Carolina. So he'd always told me from the start, when I met him that we were going to retire in North Carolina. And finally he brought me up here and I was like, "Why are we going to wait to retire? This is beautiful. We need to be here."

Erin Lawrimore: And I know I met your mom yesterday.

Carrieann Schneider: Yes.

Erin Lawrimore: She works here with you doesn't she?

Carrieann Schneider: She does. Grandma is our third business partner. So the three of us are legally the business partners and she was an accountant. And so it just makes sense, she's in charge of anything monetarily related as she has to figure out all the tax forms and everything for the state and the federal government. And then she also works the register. She loves people, and so people get to "Go pay grandma", it's kind of our thing at the end, they all get to say hi to grandma and meet grandma. And yeah, she loves it. She loves chatting with everybody and being everyone's grandma.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: And it's nice to have a person like that who will handle all of 00:08:00the tax forms and the scary things. So let's talk a little bit about the brewery, the name, how did you decide on the name or were there other names that came first?

Carrieann Schneider: No.

Jon Schneider: Interesting. It was we always had the S, so we had designed an S and it was a really cool S. And we're not using it, but we had designed this really cool S and it was, if anything, going to be Schneider. And then...

Carrieann Schneider: And then we'd been debating for a while already. We actually legally became a business entity in Florida in 2013, with the name Sideways Brewing Company. Didn't start a brewery down there, just had started the name, started using the name. But I was driving, we lived in the suburbs, 00:09:00cul-de-sac, the two kids, soccer mom's driving our SUV. I'm driving down to Target, and the song comes on and it's by Citizen Cope and Carlos Santana called Sideways. And in this song he talks about, these feelings are knocking me sideways, I just can't get away. And we had just gone on what was supposed to be a winery trip. And we had gone to the first winery and we had gone to Monticello. They had a special event at Monticello, and we had tasted a whole bunch of wine.

Carrieann Schneider: And on our way to the second winery, John's driving and goes, "are those hops?" And he turns and pulls in and we never made it to another winery. We went from brewery to brewery to brewery. So it was, beer just knocked us sideways. It took over our lives, we couldn't get away. It became every meal was, how would you either work this ingredient into a beer? Or what beer would you pair with this? It was all our friends talked about with us. It just, it knocked us sideways. It took over our lives. So I'm driving and this 00:10:00song comes on the radio, and I told him. I'm like, "The name is Sideways."

Jon Schneider: She got home. And she goes, "I know the name. Name of the brewery is Sideways. We can use S the still."

Carrieann Schneider: Yep.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. That works nicely. And so when was that trip? That was...

Carrieann Schneider: That was probably a 2012 trip.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: For wine and yeah.

Jon Schneider: To the Virginia area and just fell in love with everything that we saw there.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. So you've touched on this a little bit, but in the end, how did you select this spot as the place you wanted to lay the roots and build the business?

Jon Schneider: I would say it selected us.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah. We had definitely wanted the Asheville area, we'd want in North Carolina. And we were flying up from Florida probably as early as 2012.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: Starting to look at places and we would come up and we would look at a whole bunch of places in a weekend, go back down to Florida, and 00:11:00we were just confused. We needed to be here. And so 2014, we put our house up on the market in Florida and it's sold in days. We had nowhere to go, and we put all of our stuff in a Pod and shipped it up to Asheville. We're like, "Well, we hope we see you somewhere up there stuff." And we found a furnished rental that we rented for nine months. And we told our realtor anything within an hour of Asheville that was five acres or more we wanted to look at.

Carrieann Schneider: And we'd actually already seen this property. And this became that benchmark that every other property was compared against, but this had two houses. And we really didn't think my parents wanted the second house. The second house had been a farm hands house. It was in horrible condition and my parents were retiring. So, I didn't think they wanted to tackle a house. In December of 2014, we looked at this house originally in June of 2014, and 00:12:00December my mom called me and she's like, "Get the property with two houses, we're going to do it." And my dad came up and he gutted that house down to the studs. There's almost nothing existing except for the original 1800s wood floor. And he rebuilt the entire house and they love it now. But, I think he wanted to disown me for a little while.

Jon Schneider: Yes.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. So when you found this property, what was there at that time versus what do you have now? 'Cause I know you guys have built a lot.

Jon Schneider: We had the two houses and the farm itself was commercially farmed. So it was leased out to a local farmer that would run two crops through, he would do soy and then corn, soy and corn. So it was just an old farm. It has a really unique history. So I love history, and we did a lot of research on the 00:13:00farm and it was a horse farm at one point. And we found a bunch of really cool old horseshoe and things like that scattered all over. There's still, it's part of our logo. There's a corn crib that sits up here that is from the 1800s. And it's about to fall over.

Carrieann Schneider: It's leaning sideways. So one day we were trying to come up with a logo and a friend was there and they're like, "Your corn crib's leaning sideways, why don't you just use that?" Okay.

Jon Schneider: So it became, yeah. So it was just a working farm and it still is.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah. It was equal distance really between Asheville, Hendersonville and Brevard. We loved both those little towns and we wanted to be close to Asheville. Not that far away, we're really close to the airport. So it fit all those things. And then there was an old railway line that runs through the property. And our realtor had told us back when we first saw it, she's like, 00:14:00"There's been talk for years about turning it into a bike path. I wouldn't guarantee it. You never know if any of that's going to happen. People are really against it in the neighboring county."

Carrieann Schneider: It is now being turned into a bike trail from Hendersonville to Brevard. They have funded it through just past our farm already. And so work is starting soon on the Hendersonville end and they're going to work that towards our way. So we will have a bike path going through the property, which was part of the appeal of it. We live next to a bike path in Florida and we used it all the time as a family and we got to meet neighbors on it. And it was community oriented. We loved that, and so the thought that could happen here a lot of people told us we were crazy for buying it at that point. They're like, "It's never going to happen. Nobody wants it. They want to build another paper mill and have a rail train come back through." Well, we'll take 00:15:00our chances.

Erin Lawrimore: Given the traffic in Hendersonville, a bike path is very good way to get anywhere.

Carrieann Schneider: Yes, definitely.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. So when you first bought the property and first got started, can you talk a little bit about that process and some of the fun and exciting challenges that happened?

Carrieann Schneider: We joked that someday we're going to write a book of farm fails because I came from Buffalo. I had been on a field trip to a farm in fifth grade. I had been on a field trip to a farm with my son when he was in kindergarten. And that was my entire farm experience. And both times I got pooped on by an animal both times. And so I had a lot to learn. He at least did some agriculture in high school, but it was orange groves and cattle, neither of which we have here. So there was a lot to learn and I was a teacher and a librarian in Florida. And so I went into research mode. We came up, we did 00:16:00Organic Grower School, which is an amazing, I think it's three day, two day, three day.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: Just class after class of learning, how to do things with nature. So we did that and I got every book. We started watching all sorts of videos, trying to figure out how to farm in the best way for the environment. The first thing we did when we moved on the farm was had our soil tested and we sent it off to this lab in California, because we wanted to look at more than just NPK, which is what all your local are going to give you. We wanted to really know the micronutrients what's really in this soil is there any life in this soil? What's really going on after the years of commercial farming and this lab gives you a score out of a hundred. Being a teacher, I knew it was going to be bad, but I was like, "At least give me a D, give me a 60." We got a 19, 19 00:17:00out of 100, there was nothing living. There was nothing, it was devoid of life. It was devoid of almost all minerals. It was horrible condition.

Carrieann Schneider: so we chatted with one of the guys from the lab and said, "what can I do? How do I even start?" And he told me anything you do is going to make it better. You can't make it worse at this point. So we cover cropped and we got the animals and started moving the animals around. we had nightmares with animals, trying to move animals, and trying to learn everything about animals. the animals all survived. Just point out that our sheep all made it, even though we didn't know how to herd them. They would just follow a bucket of food, we tried to herd them and they jumped over our heads and it was a whole interesting experience.

Erin Lawrimore: It's good times.

Carrieann Schneider: Good times. But we did eventually, the soil, it's living, it's things are growing. It's so much better than where we started and we're 00:18:00continuing to improve everything on the farm. But yeah, the first was just trying to get anything growing that would grow and get some animals on there. We dumped a ton of minerals, a ton of composts. Just trying to get things back to nature.

Erin Lawrimore: Corn will kill things quickly.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: I'm curious about the animals, what animals did you have then?

Carrieann Schneider: So the first ones we got were sheep. We contacted a local farm and they were culling some sheep. So some sheep that were not going to be bred for them anymore. And so they needed to get rid of them in some sort of way. And we...

Erin Lawrimore: Adopted them.

Carrieann Schneider: Adopted these sheep.

Erin Lawrimore: Four of them.

Carrieann Schneider: Four of them. So they'd been out in a herd, they were not sheep that were used to being around people. They had hundreds of acres that they roamed. So life was very different for them here. They were our first 00:19:00foray. Then our next thing was chickens, and telling friends back home that the chickens come in the mail, the post office calls you at 6:00 in the morning. They tell you to come knock on the back wooden door. And it feels like you're doing something illegal, and you sneak into the post office and they hand you a box of chirping, little day old chickens.

Carrieann Schneider: And we had to learn all about chickens. I mean, they can get poop stuck on their butt and die when they're day old. And there's so many things that we had to figure out. So chickens came next, and then..

Jon Schneider: Ducks.

Carrieann Schneider: Then ducks, my daughter really wanted ducks. Then the goats. So now we have three sheep, one of our old ladies has passed. All three that we have are all at that upper age limit for sheep, considering we've had 00:20:00them for seven years now. They were not young chickens when we got them. We have 16 ducks and six goats, and I couldn't tell you how many chickens, because they're always coming and going. We actually had one that successfully hatched a baby on her own. We thought she had passed. We couldn't find her for two months. And she comes waddling back with a little chick. So now there's a little chick there with all the chickens right now. They just moved back in and yeah, you never know.

Jon Schneider: We've had that happen a couple of times where a chicken has disappeared. Then the other one, she had nine I think.

Carrieann Schneider: The other one had nine, yeah. This one only had one.

Jon Schneider: Right.

Carrieann Schneider: But, yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: So, thinking about the farm and then specifically the brewery part of things, how would you describe kind of the mission of Sideways, the brewery aspect?

Jon Schneider: I think it is that connecting agricultural, what we do out there, with the beer. That Carrie alluded to earlier, where you're at a winery, you can look out and see the grape vines, at most wineries. You get that connection, and so that was our first goal. I think one of the first things we planted were hops, and of course we got hops from the Northwest and we've been trying to grow them unsuccessfully because they're just not bred and developed to do anything here. But we really wanted to have that out there so that you can see them and you're drinking the beer and you can look at the menu and say, "Oh, that's a hop that was grown here." We thought that would be pretty cool. 'Cause it's tying that together. So I think our biggest mission is tying the agricultural aspects of beer making, to drinking, enjoying it.

Carrieann Schneider: Historically it was the farmer's wife who would make the beer. It was the agricultural product. Or the monks in the monastery that would grow with the greens all local and...

Jon Schneider: That's how they paid a lot of...

Carrieann Schneider: Their workers.

Jon Schneider: Their workers with beer. A lower ABV beer that they would drink throughout the day also. So it was trying to just bring all of that back together and educate people.

Carrieann Schneider: So you mentioned the hops and we did when we started, we planted about 20 different varieties from Pacific Northwest, but also from around the world. Trying to fund ones that would grow here. We started working with the Mountain Horticultural Research Center up at Sierra Nevada. And they've since hired a hop breeder and he's been successful in breeding, some hops that really grow well here. We're growing two of his experimental varieties now. So we're super excited about where hops are in North Carolina, where they're going 00:23:00to be in the next few years.

Jon Schneider: I think he's doing groundbreaking work because it's interesting if you look at most universities, and it's through North Carolina State University, they try to fool the hops grown in the Northwest to grow in their region. Instead of actually looking back...

Carrieann Schneider: I know.

Jon Schneider: And saying, "Hey, let's make a hop that will grow in our area."

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah, most of the science has been devoted to light research and putting stadium lights on hops. And I mean the average farmer cannot afford something like that. Let alone the electricity bills to run those lights. There's just been a lot of looking into chemicals we can put on the hops to help with disease resistance. So North Carolina State and Dr. Luping is more 00:24:00about breeding hops that will grow naturally in this area. In fact, one of the hops that he showed us, he had forgotten he'd planted. So they never been fertilized, they'd never gotten any sort of care. He had just uncovered them from weeds a week or two before he took us to them, and they were growing like gangbusters and loaded with hops. Wops is a weed, it should thrive in neglect. You just have to figure out which version of it is going to survive in the neglect in your area.

Jon Schneider: Yeah, exactly. I think they've done a great job, and we use a lot of those hops in our beer. It's really cool because it starts to tie in the terroir and everything else and which is really what we want to do also. We don't treat our water for our beer or anything. We really want it to be specific to our area. Most breweries will modify the water to match the profile of whatever beer that they're brewing. Whether it's a lager, a hellis, or IPA, 00:25:00they're trying to match a certain water profile. Where we look at it a little differently and say, "Well, let's not match it, our water is terrific." That's why Sierra Nevada's here, that's why Oscar Blues is here, that's why New Belgium's here, because the water here is just extraordinary for beer. It's soft water, it works really well especially with some Belgian style beers. That was our other target was doing a lot of Belgian beers.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, you mentioned the hops that you're using the North Carolina strain of hops. Can you talk a little bit about those hops and the beers that you are using them?

Jon Schneider: We're primarily using those hops in our farmhouse beers and in 00:26:00some of the Belgian beers that we do. We really wanted to try to tie in that terroir and showcase those hops. And as I talked to Luping at NC state, and try to tell him, everybody's trying to grow hops for an IPA. And I told him, it doesn't have to be for an IPA. These hops that you're breeding are spectacular hops and can be used in all sorts of Belgian style beers, they could be used in lagers. I said, "We need to think outside of the world of IPA when it comes to hops." Because hops are antimicrobial, that's the primary reason we use them in beers because it helps hold back any infections or bacteria from growing in the beer. So, let's think past it, and let's use these hops for other beers and we 00:27:00have been using.

Jon Schneider: Think past it and let's use these hops for other beers. We have been using them a lot in our Farmhouse beers.

Erin Lawrimore: I know, this might be a challenge to describe, but can you describe the flavor? The way they impact versus if you just grab some...

Jon Schneider: Flavor on a lot of them, they're grassy. They have a lot of grassy notes, floral notes. They're more Noble Esque. They're really geared for that old-world style beer or lagers even. I've told them, they're fantastic in lagers. We've used them several times. But you get that bitterness that you want. It's a softer bitterness, which is nice because harsher bitterness makes the beer unbalanced. They're woody, but some of them do have some fruitiness to it. But I tend to lose it, when I try to brew an IPA or a pale ale with it. 00:28:00We've been primarily just focused on Belgian/Farmhouse styles and lagers.

Erin Lawrimore: So has that from opening have... How have you evolved the styles? We'll back up. Let's talk about, you guys have a very unique system of numbering beers and production. Can you talk a little bit about the production? Both the size and how you go about doing it and numbering it?

Jon Schneider: Yes. Production-wise, we're on a three and a half barrel system, which is roughly 108 to 110 gallons at a time. The numbering sequence was derived as just the brew number. The order of which the beers were brewed. In my past, I was a software engineer and so I brought in a versioning system. 00:29:00Whenever we change a recipe, then we will add a point to that number, .1, 2, 3, and just keep going. I think our pale ale is up to, I think it's 97.6. This will be the seventh time we've brewed it.

Erin Lawrimore: Is that the one you brewed the most versions of?

Jon Schneider: Yes. That is the versions.

Erin Lawrimore: You're sneaking up in the numbering system too.

Jon Schneider: Yeah. We're at 153, I think.

Carrieann Schneider: 150 something, totally unique beers.

Jon Schneider: Totally different.

Carrieann Schneider: With the pale ale, it's a different hop each time, so it's a different version of that.

Jon Schneider: But then we're talking, if we go back to... We've used to date, four different hops in our pale ale. It's really to educate people on changing 00:30:00that one variable and how that affects the beer. We've been talking, if we go back to when we use Cascade, we'll probably just number it. Whatever that brew number was, because we're not going to change anything else on that recipe. We'll just use it as it is. I think, we've got a really nice base for that beer. Maybe, here and there bring in a different hop that we've never used. But I think the four hops that we want to use are the Cascade Centennial, Amarillo, and Simcoe. Those are all classic West Coast IPA ish hops. That we want to just rotate through on this beer. Maybe even ask a Facebook poll or something and say, what do you think? Which one was your favorite? Get people involved in it.

Erin Lawrimore: We talked a little bit about this yesterday, but can you talk a little bit about, you bottle your beers. You have been bottling them. We talked 00:31:00about how COVID impacted the business. How some of the regulations changed things. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Carrieann Schneider: I think, the place to start with that was, when we were home brewing. The reason we started bottling was, because we had great friends, who wanted to support us and try our beer. They would come over. They would be the kind of friends, who wanted to finish a keg. We had two very young children at that point. We didn't want a bunch of drunk people around our house all the time. John developed this motto way back when of, "Here, take some of the beer. Go get drunk at your own house."

Carrieann Schneider: So when we opened, not only was it a nod to wineries and having a more presentable bottle that you could take to a dinner party and share and pass around. It was still that, this is our home. We're welcoming you into 00:32:00our home to come and try some of our beers. In the end, we want you to take some bottles home. Go get drunk at your own house, if that's what you need to do. We started with that whole model.

Carrieann Schneider: And then shortly before COVID hit, we'd had a gentleman visiting from Florida, who sampled a beer that wasn't quite ready yet. He really wanted to purchase it. We said, "We don't have label approval yet. We cannot legally sell you this beer." He asked us to create an online store. And as soon as it was ready, he was going to buy it. Have a friend come pick it up. I figured out how to create an online store. It took me a little while. I put this beer on. He bought a case from Florida, had a friend come pick it up.

Carrieann Schneider: And when COVID hit, all I had to do was, put our other beers on this online store and hit published. Within a couple hours of the government mandate saying that we couldn't be open, we had an online store. 00:33:00We've got this great loop for a drive-thru here. We said, "Come on in. Give us a call, when you're out there. We'll bring it out to your trunk. Open up your trunk, contactless pickup." That started day 1.

Carrieann Schneider: And then within a few days, we were talking to some friends at restaurants. They're all in a panic. We talked to them about, let's do some meal pickups. We partnered with a different restaurant, every day of the week. Had pickups for a beer or two, and a family meal. It was a good way for the community to support us and to support local restaurants. It was a good way for us to tie in those restaurants. It just really brought the community to together in a time where, we were being pushed apart.

Carrieann Schneider: We actually doubled production during that time, because of 00:34:00the amount of people coming through picking up beer, which was a huge shock to us. And then when we were able to reopen, we actually opened up outside with a couple of taps outside, which was totally new for us to do taps. But we wanted to be able to serve outside. We couldn't drag that giant refrigerator full of bottles of beer outside, so we started doing a couple taps. That way people didn't have to come into a building and into an enclosed space. They could spread out around the farm, so then we grew some more. Since the start of COVID, we've grown quite a bit in our production.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Was your physical space already built out? Or did you do a lot more building of the outdoor physical space too? Because you've got a great outdoor space.

Jon Schneider: This is all new. The wooden platforms that are out there though, that was what we had in front of the door. Because to get our certificate of 00:35:00occupancy, we needed something outside the doors. Because when we first tried to get it, we had pallets out. They were like, that's not going to work. This is all new.

Carrieann Schneider: In the last year.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: It had been in the original plan.

Jon Schneider: Yeah, it was.

Carrieann Schneider: I don't know if we talked about...

Jon Schneider: No.

Carrieann Schneider: Blockades to opening. In the original plan, this was as is, now. We had a wraparound porch with a roof over it. Seating for a lot of people outdoors. We thought, we were going to open in November of 2017. We were running a little behind construction-wise. In October of 2017, we got a call from the manufacturer of our brewing equipment. Who, we thought was going to call us and 00:36:00tell us, "We're running a little behind too." We're like, a month or two behind. We're okay, because the building's not quite done yet. But it turned into, they were going out of business. There was nothing left. They took our entire deposit and just disappeared with it.

Jon Schneider: That was our patio.

Carrieann Schneider: That was the amount of money that we were going to spend on the patio, had to go to purchase new equipment. It was rather heartbreaking. We had done our research. We'd called multiple people, who'd gotten equipment from this company. It was an American company using American steel, employing veterans. It was like as a feel good of a story as you could get, until they ran away with our money. Not just ours, but several other small mom and pop 00:37:00breweries that were starting up in the US at that time.

Carrieann Schneider: It's still an active FBI case. They ended up at one point, shortly before they closed. They bought some Chinese equipment. Basically, stuck their name on top of it and shipped it out to some of their customers, so there was some fraud and along with... It's still an open FBI case, but it hurt. It took that money from the porch that we were going to do, to buy some additional new equipment.

Erin Lawrimore: How far behind did it put you with opening? When did you actually get to the point of being able to open?

Carrieann Schneider: We actually opened August of 2018. The building had been a little behind. We would have hired contractors to finish out the building, but we ended up doing all of the interior ourselves, because we didn't have any 00:38:00equipment to brew, so what difference? We ended up saving a couple dollars that way. Getting things done to a higher standard that way also, actually. It put us several months behind.

Erin Lawrimore: Were there any other regulatory issues that popped up at the beginning? I know sometimes those can be tricky.

Carrieann Schneider: Probably the most shocking thing was sitting in the permit's office. I don't even remember, what we were there to get the permit for. The building permit office in Henderson County. A phone rings.

Jon Schneider: We were going to do septic.

Carrieann Schneider: The main phone rings. Somebody stands up and says, "Does anybody know anything about these Sideways folks?"

Jon Schneider: This brewery out in Etowah.

Carrieann Schneider: That's us. He passes the phone down to the lady that we're 00:39:00working with. She has the phone to John and says, "It's for you."

Jon Schneider: It was the EPA. They told me that I couldn't have a septic tank for a brewery. I said, "You let wineries do it all the time." He goes, "It's a different fermentation process." I go, "No, it's not. It's yeast eating sugar. It's the same process." He said, "Son, I'm not a scientist. I'm telling you, if you have sewer near you, just hook up to it. Or I'm going to make you build a $100,000 water reclamation. We were like, "Yes, sir." I'll hook up.

Carrieann Schneider: Luckily the neighborhood over there had sewer. We were able to hook up to the sewer over there. But that was just a very interesting phone call.

Jon Schneider: That we were there.

Carrieann Schneider: What do you mean? How are you calling?

Jon Schneider: She had brought a check. I think, it was a $400 permit fee for the septic. She had already filled it out. We were about to hand it to the lady, when the phone rang. It was really weird timing. I think that was about it, though.

Carrieann Schneider: That was the biggest one.

Jon Schneider: She's a research queen. We had already done so much work upfront, before we even bought the property. Things are different here, then definitely anywhere else that I've lived. You can just ask a question. They go, "Yeah, that's good. We'll make sure it happens." There's no signing. There's nothing.

Carrieann Schneider: We bought a tractor that way too.

Jon Schneider: Yep. Before we bought the property, we had asked the zoning board, if we could do what we wanted to do. They tossed around for a couple of weeks. Called back and said, "Yeah. We've found a way for you guys to do it." That really just solidified us buying this property, because it was zoned as 00:41:00rural family occupation. We could run a brewery on it.

Jon Schneider: Everything was, I don't want to say easy. We always tell people that come to us and ask about opening a brewery, read what every entity is asking from you. Give them exactly what they're asking for. Don't give them more. Don't give them less. Give them exactly what they want and all of your process will go extremely smooth and extremely fast. I think we got our TTB permit...

Carrieann Schneider: TTB permit in a couple days. Part of that goes back to, so when I taught in Florida, I taught Science Olympiad, which is a national competition. It's very much about following the rules and knowing what rule is written. And then being able to interpret that unwritten and say, what can I actually do? If it tells you can bring a field guide into this competition, it 00:42:00doesn't tell me I can't tape additional pages into this field guide. It doesn't say an unedited field guide. It doesn't say a non highlighted. I was the queen of trying to figure out exactly what the rules say. Exactly, what I need to do to comply with those rules. So with TTB, I read through every single rule. I read through all the laws and all the things. I gave them exactly what they needed and it passed.

Jon Schneider: They came back with one comment, which was weird. They said, we didn't show a demarcation between the tasting side and the brewing side. And it did, we basically just uploaded the same file again. They passed it.

Carrieann Schneider: They passed it.

Jon Schneider: It was there the whole time, because you could view it on the TTB website. We're like it's right there. I go, we'll just upload a new one. And then they passed it.

Carrieann Schneider: Filing all the state paperwork, filing all the paperwork, if you read through and figure out exactly what they want, you can do it. We also got the trademark for Sideways Home Brewery. I didn't hire a lawyer. I did it all myself. If I can read and figure things out, I can do it.

Jon Schneider: We did get kicked back on the name, because of a winery in Greece had...

Carrieann Schneider: Had the word "Sideways" in it. I found another trademark. It's all public record. I found another trademark, who had received the same feedback. I looked at how they responded to it and responded very similarly. We got it approved.

Erin Lawrimore: So you got around the Greek winery?

Carrieann Schneider: We got around the Greek winery. We tend to be a do-it-yourselfer. John built this roof and the railings. We tend to figure everything out. Our numbering system for the beer legally, the name is Beer 00:44:00Number 151. The name is Beer Number 98.2. You can't trademark a number, so I don't have to do research with every new beer that we release. As to whether that name has been used before, because it's just a number. That's made my life tremendously easy.

Jon Schneider: You can't trade market description, so the description is what the beer is.

Erin Lawrimore: Makes sense. We talked about this a little bit with the COVID time. It's hard to separate that from everything else. It's still ongoing. But can you talk a little bit about how the business has grown? How the brewery has grown, since you first opened? Maybe even how you see it continuing in the future? Hope to see it continuing in the future.

Jon Schneider: It's kind of strange. I always tell people that I'm the world worst capitalist. I'm really not into doing any more than what we're doing. I want to make enough money, so that we can brew another beer tomorrow and pay all the bills and feed our family. That's our goal as far as growth. But it's interesting, because when growth starts happening and when your production goes up, you really get tied up in that mindset of, what are we going to do? What's that next step? Are we comfortable where we are? Or do we need to hire people? What do we need to do?

Jon Schneider: Since the beginning, that first year as in any business, it's a 00:46:00real rough year. You're learning so much. You're also learning that your plans have to be flexible. That you can't be rigid. The industry changes, everything changes. You have to be willing to change and make changes in order to continue to grow at a small... We've always talked about growing just on small scales. I think our first year, we brewed 50 barrels. Our second year, we brewed 53 barrels. And then it ballooned up to a 125. And then 167. This year, we're actually brewing less than we did last year.

Carrieann Schneider: But we're selling more. We had a lot in barrels that we had in barrels from previous years. Those are finally starting to get released. Our sales have not decreased at all, if anything they've continued to increase month 00:47:00by month by month.

Jon Schneider: Definitely. We're diversifying a little more and doing events, doing weddings. Trying to make it a destination. I think, that's where our growth is right now. Not necessarily growing as in the amount of beer that we brew, but just looking at how we can bring people in different ways to the brewery.

Carrieann Schneider: I think, I see farm to table dinners out here. I feel like this is a special place that we can do different things at. Without trying to produce more and trying to get into the rat race. When we started, we were distributed. We were on some shelves all the way out to Raleigh in different bottle stores. And when COVID hit, we didn't have enough beer and we pulled back. We have no plans to go back and try to do that again. I think, we just want to be comfortable.

Erin Lawrimore: Building off the idea of this being a destination place, can you talk a little bit about, where you see Sideways fitting in within the broader community here? And some of the community engagement projects that y'all are doing?

Carrieann Schneider: I think from day one, we started a program called Tip Our Community, because we are all owners that are working. We didn't feel it was right to take tips, personally. We've donated our tips back to different organizations every month. Last year it was 25, $27,000, something like that. That we donated back into different local organizations. Not only tell all of our guests about that, so that organization gets mentioned a 1000 times a month. But we also tell the organization, they can come out. They can hold a gala here. They can do a special event here. They can do, team building, community building here.

Carrieann Schneider: We do a farmer's market once a month, the first Sunday of every month. That's been really popular, but we let those organizations come out to that, so they can talk about what they do. We've just really tried to link the communities together in any way that we can.

Carrieann Schneider: This month has been a lot of fun. We've done this in the past too, but this month they've seemed to really get into it, where we've done guest bartenders with our organization that we're supporting this month. They've gotten into it, where they've dressed up. They've told all their friends. It's just been fun. We really just want to support the community that supports us. I think, that's been our biggest thing.

Jon Schneider: It's neat to see that grow. It's really neat. Especially, having the volunteers come in. Because we have had some that, they didn't do anything at all. Except expect that check at the end. It's like, you could have at least 00:50:00come out and held an event to help us tell the public what you're doing. But with the Blue Ridge Humane Society, we've done them since day one. Every year, we've done it for them. They've really gotten into it this month. That's really exciting for me, because they get it.

Carrieann Schneider: It's been one of the probably weirdest things was the first two years. I had to beg organizations. I'm like, I want to give you 1000s of dollars. Like, can we tip you? Can you be a part of this? They were like, I don't know. I don't know, if I want a brewery supporting us. I'm like, are you crazy? This is Asheville. There's a million kids in our brewery every weekend. What do you mean, you don't know if your organization is right for a brewery? Now, that has changed. Now, I have an email list a mile long of people, who want 00:51:00to be a part of it and want our tips to go to that. And then want to work with us.

Jon Schneider: I think, we've already started on next year's...

Carrieann Schneider: Next year's already half filled, if not full. But in the beginning, it was weird. I actually went to several different special events. Chamber of Commerce meetings and said, I am looking for organizations to support locally. Who? Hello? Can you connect me with some people to give money to?

Jon Schneider: It's free money.

Carrieann Schneider: But it's changed now.

Jon Schneider: Yeah, it has changed.

Erin Lawrimore: Let's talk a little bit about, the physical space in the tap room aspect here. Because one thing, y'all do that I thought was really cool is the guided tasting. Can you talk a little bit about that? I'm assuming, that comes from the wine background. But can you talk a little bit about, how that works? What led you to want to go that way, instead of be just grab a flight of whatever?

Jon Schneider: I think it goes back to education. Especially, Carrieann's thirst for educating people. We were always disheartened at breweries, when you go in and it's so impersonal. It almost feels like you're burdening the bartenders, when you get a flight. We decided at the very beginning that we were going to do this weird guided tasting. You get the glass at the end just like a winery, but we were going to tell you a story about the beer. Just like you do with wine, they talk about the grape year. How the weather affected it. All of these different things. We found that to be an intriguing aspect of doing it with beer, because no one does that.

Jon Schneider: Usually on a flight, you get back to your table. You're like that doesn't taste like an IPA. Is that the IPA? Well, this one's really hoppy. Maybe that's the IPA. It was always, you never knew.

Carrieann Schneider: Or you thought, they poured you the wrong thing and you weren't sure. Is there a problem with the beer? Or did they just give me the 00:53:00wrong beer? I don't know how to feel about this. We wanted to make sure that people got what they asked for. We talked them through it and told them about it.

Jon Schneider: It also helps I think with the tasting. Because if I hand you something and you walk away, you don't really have a description to read. Or somebody to tell you what it is, your mind is going to develop its own. You may not like the beer, but if you actually explain some aspects about the beer, then it becomes clear. These are the things I should be tasting. I think, it's more educational. Actually at the very beginning, we had a sheet that we would give our guests. They could write notes just like at a winery. You can write notes and everything and we would collect them. We still have them.

Carrieann Schneider: Some people would want to take them home, but others would 00:54:00want to give it to us. We would hang them on the wall.

Carrieann Schneider: ... people would want to take them home, but others would want give to us. We would hang them on the wall.

Jon Schneider: Yeah. So we still have all of these, and there's hundreds of them...

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah.

Jon Schneider: ... that we have. And we were going to do a mural, or a decoupage or something, of them.

Carrieann Schneider: You never know, it may still happen.

Jon Schneider: But it was really cool, because they got into it.

Carrieann Schneider: I think it was also, when you look at beer education. Anytime you go somewhere to learn about beer, the number one thing that they teach you is the flaws.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: And, they teach you off flavors. And so there was just, I feel like there's not an appreciation of beer education. So we wanted to be able to talk about, "Well, historically this may have tasted like this, or it may have used this process." We wanted to bring an appreciation of beer.

Jon Schneider: It's the craft...

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah.

Jon Schneider: ... of what's going into it, because it's not there. People just don't know.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah.

Jon Schneider: And we run into that every weekend, and it kind of gets me a 00:55:00little angry, sometimes. Especially with tastes. And I understand. But I always, I asked a customer, a couple of weeks ago. I was just feeling cheeky. And he came in and he was like, "Hey, could I have a taste of this?" And I go, "Have you ever gone to a restaurant and asked for a taste of the steak before you ordered it?" And he's like, "I never thought about it, but no." I go, "Why do you do it for breweries? I'm just, genuinely want to know." And he goes, "I honestly don't know." And then he said, he goes, "Forget the taste. I'll take a full pour." And I gave him a full pour.

Jon Schneider: And Carrieann has gone as far as, somebody wanting a taste of a lager, and it's like, "Of all the weird things we have, you want to sample the lager? It's a lager."

Carrieann Schneider: It's like, "That's your backup beer, try something more adventurous. I'll give you a sample of something different, and then if you don't like the Fun Funky Farmhouse, then get the lager."

Jon Schneider: Right.

Carrieann Schneider: "Why are you going to do a sample of the lager?"

Jon Schneider: It's a lager, it's a porter. It's going to taste like a porter.

Carrieann Schneider: But I think part of that goes back to beer quality. It's disheartening when you go to breweries and you taste a porter and you're like, "This does not taste like a porter. What is this?"

Carrieann Schneider: And there are still breweries out there that have some quality issues. And there are still restaurants out there, and bars out there, that don't clean their tap lines. And so you get a beer, and it tastes off. And then that customer thinks, "Well, I need to sample this beer before I get it, because it's might not be right. It might be wrong."

Jon Schneider: Yeah. "I had this beer at so-and-so bar, and it was terrible."

Carrieann Schneider: Sorry.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Jon Schneider: And that was another reason why we started bottling, is because I feel I have more control over the beer. So if it's in a bottle, I know when it leaves here, I don't have to worry about a tap line being dirty. Or anything 00:57:00else, because it's going to be exactly how I wanted you to drink it. As long as you don't leave it in the sun, or anything else, which people do all the time. But, yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Well, I know, you touched on this earlier. But I wanted to talk a little bit more about connecting the farm to the beer. And can you talk a little bit about how you bring those two together? The way you incorporate ingredients, and...

Jon Schneider: It's really cool. When she starts doing her seed orders for the next year, we start talking about beer ideas. And so we have a document that we share, and we start talking about what type of ingredients we may want to use from the farm that would give a beer a certain flavor, aroma, characteristic. Or even yeast. So I'd say the primary ingredient that we use off the farm is yeast. 00:58:00We have approximately 49 different strains of yeast going that we've harvested from a number of things on the farm. And some of the herbs and spices that we use, we definitely plan for the beers. Doesn't always happen, but she'll grow fennel, and we've been growing fennel from the beginning, but we'll do a porter or a style of dark beer. It gives it a little bit of a licorice note, which is really nice.

Carrieann Schneider: We've done one with the fennel flowers.

Jon Schneider: Oh yeah, yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: There's so many different aspects of what you can use. And I think part of the fun thing with the farm is the collaborations where...

Jon Schneider: Yeah, oh yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: ... another brewery will come with an ingredient and then, we'll have an idea of the base beer, but before we even finish that day, we'll be out on the farm tasting with them. Things fresh, that we could possibly add to this beer. And that's just, it's a fun day for brewers to have a field trip, 00:59:00and to go out on the farm and see all the things growing. And figure out, "Oh wow, this is what this tastes like, fresh. And if we dried it, we'd get a little more of this aspect." It's a play date.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Can you talk about some of those collaborations, and what came of them?

Jon Schneider: Yeah. We have...

Erin Lawrimore: Some of your favorites, maybe?

Jon Schneider: Man.

Erin Lawrimore: Or at least, most memorable. I know you don't want to play favorites.

Jon Schneider: We've had so many cool...

Carrieann Schneider: We've had a lot of cool collaborations.

Jon Schneider: ... collaborations. I think the lime leaf was really cool. It wasn't something that we grew, but a local farmer had. What kind of...

Carrieann Schneider: It's a lime...

Jon Schneider: Kaffir...

Carrieann Schneider: A kaffir lime.

Jon Schneider: Kaffir lime.

Carrieann Schneider: Kaffir lime.

Jon Schneider: And it's known for the leave. And so, he actually brought, he's been growing this tree for I think he said 25 years or something, and it's in a pot. And he...

Carrieann Schneider: Because locally, you can't grow citrus.

Jon Schneider: Right.

Carrieann Schneider: It's the ground out here.

Jon Schneider: He puts it inside, and he takes care of it. And so he brought the whole plant one winter, and it sat inside the brewery for months. And we were just clipping. The day we brewed that collaboration with a brewery down in Florida, we were clipping leaves off of it, to ferment. And it gave it such a wonderful citrus flavor and aroma. But that was a really cool project.

Erin Lawrimore: I like, collaborating with a Florida brewery, and y'all brought the citrus.

Jon Schneider: Exactly. That was the cool aspect of that. And you can take the limes also, and grate them. So we had, the Biltmore was also going to donate a lot of the fruit that we were going to zest. And I think they ended up... They did.

Carrieann Schneider: We ended up, we got...

Jon Schneider: They did.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah. We got some, they brought the lime.

Jon Schneider: So they brought some limes in, that we zested and used in the beer, as well. So we used their... They were part of the collaboration. So it 01:01:00was cool to integrate the Biltmore into it. And then, the brewery down in Florida. We have worked with several breweries down in Florida. The last one was the pineapple beer that we did, where they brought up pineapples from one of the oldest pineapple farms in the US. And then we used marigold flowers and goldenrod from our farm. And it was just one of the most unique flavors that we've ever had, and it sold extremely well.

Jon Schneider: And I love it, doing things like that. I mean, I love doing things like that, educating people what we can actually do with beer, using ingredients that are unconventional. But it also makes me happy when I don't have an IPA. And you have a hop head come in and say, "Oh, what IPAs do you have?" And we're like, "Actually, we don't have one right now." And then they're like, "Oh, um." And we're like, "Hey, taste this." And it was the Pineapple Farmhouse.

Carrieann Schneider: Yes.

Jon Schneider: That beer, we would give it to the hop heads, and they would love it. And it was like...

Carrieann Schneider: It was like, 18 IBUs. There was no hops in it, at all. It was so low.

Jon Schneider: But it was all the marigold flowers and the goldenrod that really, and then when it started warming up, you got some of that pineapple character. And it's so cool, when you can make somebody who just wants that hoppy beer, try something they've never tried. Or never would have tried. And then they're like, "Oh yeah, that's really good."

Carrieann Schneider: And that was the other thing with the guided tastings was, one, we put them in an order specifically not to kill your palate. So we actually look at the flavors and look at where you're going to get out, and make sure that something's not going to contrast with the one before it, and that your hoppiest thing is at the end, so it's not killing taste buds.

Carrieann Schneider: But it also doesn't allow for flexibility. So someone comes 01:03:00in, we're like, "You can try this guided tasting, and we'll walk you through." And they're like, "Well, I don't like this beer. Can I supplement this one with this one?" And we're like, "Why don't you give it a try?" because nine times out of 10, somebody will go through and they're like, "Oh, that actually wasn't bad. I kind of liked that."

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: And they walked in the door having this preconceived notion, and then they ended up like, "Well, maybe I'll try another dark beer, another time."

Jon Schneider: Right.

Carrieann Schneider: And we've converted so many people into expanding their palates, where if they were to just order a flight, they would've never ordered that particular beer and never tasted it. And not realized, "Oh well, brown is so much different than a stout. Maybe I like browns, and I only see a color and think I won't like that beer." And so it's that educational, experiential thing.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: I know with the constant new beers, it's probably hard to say, 01:04:00but do you have something you would consider to be a flagship beer? Or at least, a flagship style?

Jon Schneider: I think our pale ale would be the closest thing right now, because we do brew that multiple times during the year.

Erin Lawrimore: And you said you brew that with a different hop?

Jon Schneider: Yeah. We do mix it up a little bit. Our Belgian dubbel is probably one of the best beers that we produce. That one, we do twice a year, but it goes through a six month bottle maturation process that it has to go through before we release it. And so, it's not always available, but when it is available it's one of the fastest selling beers that we do. And that makes me extremely proud, if that Belgian dubbel can beat out IPAs. I love it.

Carrieann Schneider: We, most weekends, one of our Farmhouse or our Belgian beer 01:05:00will be at an IPA, here. And I think that's more, instead of saying a flagship style, I think you could say what we're known for is, we're known for our Belgian-French farmhouse style beers. We're known to have something different and unique. We're the place where a lot of the local brewers come and have beer that they wish they could make at their own brewery. I can't tell you how many brewers have said, "Oh, I wish I could have a menu like this." We hear that comment multiple times a day, from brewers.

Jon Schneider: But they're controlled by owners that want money over...

Carrieann Schneider: Taste.

Jon Schneider: ... taste.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. You mentioned the dubbel. Would you say that, is that your favorite, of the ones?

Jon Schneider: Yes. By far.

Carrieann Schneider: It's his favorite.

Erin Lawrimore: Can you talk a little bit more about that? What goes into that one?

Jon Schneider: Love. Lots of love. We've been working on that recipe for a couple of years now, and we've done different things. And we've actually gone 01:06:00back to an old world process where we do an inverted sugar, but it's kind of like cooking down a sugar for candy, or something. So we typically will boil sugar for about three and a half, four hours at roughly 245 degrees. And it just gives that beer something special.

Jon Schneider: I play around with yeast, a lot of yeast. And so over the past two years that we've been working on that beer, we've really honed in a yeast blend that's custom in, that we came up with. And it's just a blend of commercial strains that really just make that beer, along with the inverted sugar. And it is just spectacular. We've had so many people tell us how delicious it is. We've had people from Belgium in that said, "Wow, you guys 01:07:00really have done an amazing job."

Jon Schneider: One of my favorite beers is Westmalle dubbel, and Chimay. And I think we're kind of right in between those two. In fact, we wanted to send them to the Brussels Beer Challenge last year, but shipping costs due to COVID, made it impossible. It just wasn't, financially, it wasn't doable. We're hoping that the shipping costs are down this year, maybe we can do it. Actually, I don't think we have any left. We've sold out.

Carrieann Schneider: We've sold out.

Jon Schneider: For everyone.

Carrieann Schneider: I think one of the cool things though, about us having so many different beers, and this even started back in Florida. With, we would have an annual beer competition, where we would invite all of our friends and they would spend the year on their travels, and they would get the most unique beer they could find and bring it back. And so for, that started in the '90s, at some point.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: So for years we've had people bringing us beers from around the world, quite literally, that they think is the best beer for us to try. And when we moved up here, we happened to pick this little place of Etowah, who has an international beer judge that comes daily, pretty much, with different beers. He'll go judge a competition in Belgium, and bring back some beer from Belgium for us, or some beer from Germany.

Carrieann Schneider: And brewers from all over, when they come and visit, they bring us their beer. And so we quite literally have refrigerators full of some of the best beer in the world, that we get to sit down with beer judges and super tasters, and sample these against our own. And say, "Oh this has just a tiny bit more of this." And so, it's not just educating the public, but educating ourselves. And finding that community of beer people locally, to help 01:09:00us refine palates and to help us figure out how to have the best beer we can have.

Jon Schneider: That's actually something that we've always wanted to do, is to bring, maybe one night a month or something where we do a tasting here. And bring in people, sort of invite only, to go through this with Steve our good friend, kind of running it. So that way he can help people taste things and describe what you should be tasting, because it's really fascinating. And it's one of those things where there's no wrong answers, when you're tasting something. You should just freely explain what you're tasting, because we've done experiments where you've taken a couple of different aromas. And you have one beer, and you smell this, and then you take a sip of that beer. And you 01:10:00smell something else, and take another sip. And that changes the entire beer. And so it's really educating how your olfactory is working, and how you can influence things.

Carrieann Schneider: There's so much education that can be done in beer, that's just not being done out there yet.

Jon Schneider: Right.

Carrieann Schneider: And I think that's going to be one of our goals, and one of our growth, as we move forward, is beer education. Beer tasting, beer sampling. We're not just looking at, "Let's put some baby vomit smell in this, and try it. And, oh, this is an off flavor." Let's actually look at what the good flavors are.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: Let's get the good characteristics of beer, instead of creamed corn and all the off flavors that seems to be the focus of beer education.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: And you've talked a little bit about kind of your beer and terroir, and beer being of the place. Can you talk a little bit more about that, and how you feel place factors into beer? And whether you think there's something unique about this area, and the beer, something that directly ties to 01:11:00this place?

Jon Schneider: Right.

Carrieann Schneider: I think that's as simple as water. I mean, base ingredient. And less brewers are adjusting for their water, which we know a lot of brewers do. But you're going to get so many different nuances with the base waters, the different mineralities of it, the different makeup of it. And so there's definitely a sense of place that can be achieved in beer, whether it is, whether it's looked for or not yet. I think wine is the great expectation, the place to look up to, and they love what they have. They work with what they have. They want to feature what they have. And I think breweries still want to feature what someone else has. But I think there's a reason why there's so many breweries here, and it's because of the water.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: Because it's not because of the hops that grow here, yet.

Jon Schneider: Working on it.

Carrieann Schneider: We're working on it. But I think sense of place is a growing thing in beer, I don't think it's quite there yet, but I think that as there's more and more breweries, I think people are going to start to become proud of what they have and what they can use. And they can make their beer taste like their area.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. So thinking about kind of the industry as a whole, especially in this region, where do you see that trend going? And how do you kind of see you all, not or going with it?

Jon Schneider: We tend to go the opposite direction of any trend.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Jon Schneider: Because trends and fads are... It's just what they are. And we have seen a lot of breweries, especially, even breweries that we've looked up 01:13:00to. Go to having 10 or 15 IPAs on, and three or four lagers. And then two or three really high gravity, darker beers. And we...

Carrieann Schneider: I mean, there's still that aspect...

Jon Schneider: What? Nothing.

Carrieann Schneider: ... in American brewing, of topping each other.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: Of adding more hops, of adding more ridiculous breakfast cereal, of just, "How can I outdo the other breweries?" And a lot of the brewers are sick of it. They complain to us all the time about it. They don't enjoy brewing what they're brewing, and I think that is reflective. I mean, as he said, one of the secret ingredients is love. Whenever you hear somebody talk about cooking, their secret ingredient is love. You have to love what you're doing, and so many of these brewers are hating what they're brewing right now.

Jon Schneider: They're trying to react to the consumer whim, and as a business, it's so difficult to try to rely on that because it can change in a heartbeat. Lagers are becoming so big right now, and it's like every craft brewery in the US is just reacting. And, "Oh my God, we've got to make a lager," and a lot of them are not coming out very well. And it's because they don't have the equipment, or they don't have whatever they need to do it. But because that's a catch that the consumer is now asking for, they're trying to push it. And then they're pushing it too fast, because they have to try to be ahead of the next guy. And I don't know, I sit on beers forever, until they're right.

Carrieann Schneider: Yes.

Jon Schneider: We were talking to somebody last night, who was so mad. Oh, Jim. Jim used to be a brewer for one of the breweries down in Florida. And he said 01:15:00that he would go on vacation, and they would release beers that he told them not to release because they weren't ready. And then he would get negative reviews. And I think that's sort of the tail wagging the dog at that point, where you're trying to get something out too fast and you're not... The love is not there.

Carrieann Schneider: The craft is not.

Jon Schneider: No, it's just reaction. And we've actually joked. I think it was last, not this past Sunday, but two Sundays ago during our market. I think our entire refrigerator was almost empty, and we looked at each other, it was maybe five o'clock... Or no, 4:30. And we were like, "You know what?"

Carrieann Schneider: We close at 6:00, and we're like...

Jon Schneider: "If we run out of beer, I think we're just going to tell people, we've run out of beer. I'm not going to restock the fridge." And that's sort of where we are. "Sorry, we don't have any more beer right now, we'll reopen next Friday."

Carrieann Schneider: And there's all those people that come, and they see our coming soon menu, and they're like, "Oh, when is this going to be released?" And 01:16:00we're like, "As soon as the beer's ready. It'll tell us when it's ready."

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: They're like, "But when's that going to be?" "I don't know. We have to taste it. We have to make sure that it's starting to get to its peak, in order to release it. We don't want to release something... " Bottle conditioning things will continue to change and evolve with time, and the vast majority of them get better with time.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: We've had beers that we didn't even think were going to age that well, like a 3.8 London brown, our first beer...

Jon Schneider: Aged extremely well.

Carrieann Schneider: ... it aged so well. Three years later it was more delicious than it was when we started. But we want to make sure that things are at least starting to get on that upswing, that it's ready. It's going to be...

Jon Schneider: That's where Steve, Steve will come in and taste beers with us, and help us come up with descriptions. But also say, "Eh, don't release this one yet."

Carrieann Schneider: "It needs another couple weeks."

Jon Schneider: Right.

Erin Lawrimore: What's Steve's last name?

Jon Schneider: Morgan. Yep. And he's a local beer god. He has been so involved in every aspect of beer in Asheville, Western North Carolina, since the very beginning. So he's a valuable asset to us, in making sure that we're putting out the best quality beer that we can.

Erin Lawrimore: And I would assume that the broader consumer education that you were talking about, ties into kind of...

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: ... people being more willing to not let the tail wag the dog.

Jon Schneider: Yeah, exactly.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: So you kind of had mentioned this, but I would ask you too, is the dubbel your favorite of the beers?

Carrieann Schneider: No.

Erin Lawrimore: Or do you have others that stand out to you, as your...

Carrieann Schneider: No. So...

Erin Lawrimore: Fond memories.

Jon Schneider: She doesn't like beer.

Erin Lawrimore: Oh, no.

Carrieann Schneider: I actually like wine much better than beer, and so for 13 01:18:00years now, however long he's been trying to make beer. That makes me happy. So you'll find several of our beers have wine-like characteristics. We're actually fermenting one beer right now, in wine barrels.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: And we've done several beers with wine leaves. The yeast, we've done it with grape, crushed. We've done several kind of beer-wine hybrids, and those tend to be where I go to. I like the things that remind me of a red wine.

Jon Schneider: She likes the Wild Farmhouse Wheat, right now.

Carrieann Schneider: Oh, yeah. That's so good, right now.

Jon Schneider: And it's interesting because, when you look back at history, a lot of those Northern France and Southern Belgium breweries were trying to compete with the wine markets, directly. And so they were brewing and making very vinous beers. And so when you look at, for some reason in the US, brewers tend to overdo or overthink certain beers like sours. Sours are a byproduct in 01:19:00the US, a byproduct of trying to get something out really fast that has a similar quality, but they're kind of doing it on the hot side. And they can release that beer really quick.

Jon Schneider: And what I really like is the souring of an aged beer, over time, because it's smoother. It's not as aggressive. I don't need a bottle of Tums and only do a 10 ounce pour. And it has an acidity, those Belgian and French farmhouse beers, they have the acidity of like a white wine, and that's the tartness level that you're really looking for. And so we want to compete with that, and I want her to have beers that she might like. And so, I'm always trying to figure that out. It's a lot of fun.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah. So I like wine, and I bought him the home brew kit, and started this whole thing when he wanted to make wine.

Erin Lawrimore: It's all your fault.

Carrieann Schneider: It is all my fault.

Erin Lawrimore: Well, I think one of the beers that's on the menu now that I thought was just fascinating, and the story behind it was fascinating too, was the Complicated Beast.

Carrieann Schneider: Complicated Beast.

Erin Lawrimore: Can you talk a little bit about that? What it is, what it was supposed to be, what it started as?

Jon Schneider: It's really fascinating because... Well, to start, we had this program that we started called Adopt a Barrel. We couldn't afford to go out and buy a bunch of barrels. And so what we did was, we kind of threw this idea together that, our guests can purchase a barrel for us and quote, "adopt it," and they get to help design the recipe. And then they come and brew the beer with us. And they get four bottles of beer off of that run, and then they get a bottle off of... Each time we use that, they'll get a bottle off of it.

Jon Schneider: And so a lot of them, I could... I don't want...

Jon Schneider: And so, a lot of them I could, I don't want to say it, but I could manipulate the person and say, "This is what I'm thinking for this barrel." But one of them in particular was a home brew store down in Florida. And so, they knew a lot about beer, and it was what they wanted to brew. And so I was like, "All right." They wanted to brew basically a hazy, fruity IPA. And I said, "Okay, this is not going to turn out the way you think." And so, we brewed it, and we had a great time. They came up, we brewed the beer. In fact, they were here last night, and we brewed the beer and it aged for 14 months in a Brown-Foreman rye whiskey barrel. And it is actually one of my favorite one-offs that we've done. I love the woodiness character, the Brettanomyces yeast. It's just wild. It's kind of refreshing. You get some of that passionfruit that we 01:22:00used. And it's just a fascinating beer. It's very, very complex. There's a lot of layers to it, but it didn't turn out-

Carrieann Schneider: I mean, we released two kegs of the passionfruit IPA, hazy IPA. And so, for a brief moment in time, we had a hazy IPA, which is something that was such a trend. But we just don't chase those trends. So, it almost made us cringe to even have it on our menu.

Jon Schneider: But it went fast.

Carrieann Schneider: It went fast. I mean, people love it. It's what people love.

Jon Schneider: So, they home brewed the same recipe down in Florida and brought us up two cans of it to try. And they did a very nice job.

Carrieann Schneider: They recently re-brewed it.

Jon Schneider: Yeah. Recently, like-

Carrieann Schneider: So, it doesn't have aging at all.

Jon Schneider: ...we drank one last night.

Carrieann Schneider: So, you get to see the fresh hazy IPA versus the barrel aged.

Jon Schneider: And it was delicious.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah.

Jon Schneider: And it's fascinating because we did a side by side, and there are some aspects that are there still, but they're kind of in the background layered by other aspects of that barrel.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Was it the fruit that mainly carried through?

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Schneider: Yeah. It was the sweetness of that passionfruit that came through on the barrel.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: And so, it started as a beast of an IPA, and it just became more and more complicated.

Jon Schneider: Yeah. That's when Jim-

Carrieann Schneider: And it, yeah. Complicated beast.

Jon Schneider: This is the complicated beast.

Carrieann Schneider: And so, it's got a jackalope on the label because it's a cute little bunny rabbit. It's not that in your face IPA anymore, but it still has the horns because it's still a little, I don't know. It's just a complicated beast.

Jon Schneider: Yeah. It's interesting how that came out. And with that project, I mean, you really don't know what that end product is going to be., Because again, it has a life that it's going on, and it's going to go wherever it wants to go. And you kind of cross your fingers and hope that it goes in the right 01:24:00direction. And that one really did.

Carrieann Schneider: It's one of the things with so many of the beers that we do with using wild yeast from our farm.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: We frequently will open ferment, and we designed the building to be passive solar. So, it actually will pull in air from the lower windows and head out the upper windows on the front of the building.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: So, it helps with cooling, it helps with breezes, but it also pulls that farm air across an open fermentation vessel. So, when we do open fermentation, there's going to be wild yeast that gets in there and you never know. It's that-

Jon Schneider: And it'll always be different.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah.

Jon Schneider: And a lot of people will ask, "When are you going to brew that beer again?" I go, "It's not going to be the same beer." It's going to be different microbes that are flying through the air at that time. And so, you look at, "Okay. When did we brew that beer? When did it ferment? What month? 01:25:00What day?"

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah.

Jon Schneider: And if we were to try to replicate it would have to fall on that.

Carrieann Schneider: But even then, you look at weather conditions, and it's-

Jon Schneider: Exactly.

Carrieann Schneider: ...so many factors that some of these beers, you just won't be able to replicate. And I think that's the beauty of it. And in the wine world, you don't expect a 2002 to taste the same as a '92.

Jon Schneider: Right.

Carrieann Schneider: You expect there to be changes based on it. And so, as we grow and as that whole local flavor terroir becomes a thing in beer, I hope that can be an educational aspect for us, too, of-

Jon Schneider: Right.

Carrieann Schneider: ...this one, was it a different time? It's going to have different flavors. It's going to have even the hops will vary slightly year to year, or the fennel could vary year to year, depending on our weather, so.

Jon Schneider: But I think in the brewing industry, because of the industrialization of brewing and the macro breweries and what they've done with consistency, it's fascinating. And I commend them for being able to consistently 01:26:00make that product the same around the world. Wherever they're making it's going to taste the same. But I like the thought of... Well actually, it skewed the public. And so, the public expects small breweries to be able to do the same thing. And we just don't have the equipment, or especially the equipment. Millions of dollars worth of equipment that are constantly testing to make sure that is the same number coming across. But it also makes me excited because you don't know quite if that beer's going to taste like it did last time because the malts going to be different.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah. Especially we use North Carolina grown and malted barley.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: Part of our thing from the beginning was to use as much local ingredients as possible. So, if it's not on our farm, it's from as close as we can humanly get it. And so, the vast majority, it was funny because I was looking, and there's like a little malting certificate you can get that you use. 01:27:00I think it's like 20% local malter. It's something ridiculously low. And I'm like, "We use like 90% in pretty much every beer." There may be one or two specialty malts that we need to get from somewhere else. But the vast majority is from grown and malted North Carolina.

Jon Schneider: Yep.

Carrieann Schneider: And so, that's going to change every year. That's not these huge companies getting it from all over and blending it and making sure that it fits their exact specifications. This is small local farms growing this malt. And yes, the maltsters are doing their best to make sure it's as high quality as they can get it, but it's going to change. And so, even though we have this pale ale recipe or this Belgian double recipe that we love, it might tweak a little bit every year because our ingredients are going to be a little bit different every year.

Jon Schneider: Yeah. And on that double, I mean, I use one German malt and the rest of it's all local. And so, it's neat to be able to match some of those 01:28:00flavors and aromas of a traditional Belgian style beer with local ingredients, so. I mean, it can be done. It's really the yeast. The yeast is such an important aspect of the flavors and aromas that you get on any beer.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: So, thinking across this area, it sounds like a lot of the beers that you like are German Belgian styles.

Jon Schneider: Yes.

Erin Lawrimore: Are there other North Carolina breweries that you have worked with or seen something reflecting?

Jon Schneider: I mean, one of my favorites is probably, he doesn't do anything wild, but it's Burning Blush. Whit and I do a lot of stuff. And whenever he wants to do something wild, he'll come over and do a collaboration here, and we'll get crazy and do something cool.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah.

Jon Schneider: But that's one of the only breweries that I actually go to.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Jon Schneider: Plus they are right down the street and I don't get off the farm very often.

Carrieann Schneider: They're right down the street, and they, yeah. Part of our life is that people run a farm full time. People run a brewer full time. People hire marketing people and people to design the labels, and we do everything ourselves. And so, 12, 15 hour days are our life seven days a week. And we honestly just don't get off the farm that much. We get to taste a lot of other people's beer because they bring it to us.

Jon Schneider: Yes.

Carrieann Schneider: But, yeah. Every once in a while, you get to do a fun trip, but it's much more people coming here to brew with us here than us going to other breweries.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: And, yeah. Plus people want to see the farm, and we get to show off our stuff. They get to do something fun and different from what 01:30:00they're... They don't want to brew the same IPA over and over again. So, they come here to do something fun and different.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Speaking of the farm, can you talk a little bit about the, I guess, other aspects of the farm that we haven't talked about so far? We've talked about how it integrates with the brewery, but I know like-

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah. So beer makes him happy and flowers make me happy. So, I said, "If I'm going to grow ingredients for the beer, I'm also going to grow a lot for pollinators." And so, we grow a ton of flowers. We do you pick flowers. And a lot of the things that we grow are things that could theoretically be used in a beer. I mean, sunflowers are edible. Even their whole blossom, not just their seeds. And so, we could roast sunflowers one day and toss them in a beer. You never know. But we also have people that can come out and pick sunflowers. And so, we do a lot of things that are multipurpose. And 01:31:00then, we also grow a ton just for pollinators. I add more and more milkweed to the farm every year. I think this year I'm up over 500 milkweed plants that I've added this year.

Carrieann Schneider: Every year, it gets eaten down to the ground by Monarch caterpillars. And it's a struggle to keep up with them as more and more find our farm. But I love that. And so we grow a lot. We've got a whole pollinator meadow, which is now our event center. So, we've started to do weddings in it, and it's a field of goldenrod in the fall. It's just gorgeous. And, yeah. So, lots of flowers on the farm to bring in pollinators, which will help pollinate the squash that we grow for our beer or the zucchini we end up putting in a beer or-

Jon Schneider: Everything.

Carrieann Schneider: ...who knows what I'll grow next year to put in a beer. I've actually got tomatoes out there this year, which I'm still not sure what 01:32:00we're going to do with those. They were some very fruit like tomatoes. So, not the tomato flavor as much as more hints of cherry and pineapple. And we've got a couple different varieties. So, we'll see what those taste like. You never know. Or they'll go into a farm's table dinner.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Is there anything you guys want to talk about that we haven't talked about so far just in telling your full story and-?

Jon Schneider: You know, one of the things that we didn't talk about was the way we actually conditioned the beer.

Erin Lawrimore: Yes.

Carrieann Schneider: Ah, yeah. That's huge.

Jon Schneider: And that is huge. So, it started in Orlando. We would go to the farmer's market, and we became friends with a local honey guy. And just in conversation, we found out that he loves beer. And so, Carrie and I went back and thought, "Well, you know what? We should buy some of his honey and bottle condition a beer using honey instead of corn sugar and give it to him." And so 01:33:00we did that. And he was like, "Oh my God. This is amazing. Here, take this quart or-"

Carrieann Schneider: Gallon of honey.

Jon Schneider: "...gallon of honey home." And we're like, "oh my God. He just gave us a gallon of honey for a six pack of beer." And so, we started using it in all the beers that we packaged. And so, it became a thing for us. And so, when we decided to do this, I think one of the first things we did was reach out to all the apiaries in the area and ask them if they could get the quantity that we needed to bottle condition and keg condition all of our beers.

Jon Schneider: And we found Bee Masters, and he has been with us since the very beginning. And so, from the very first beer, every one of them has been bottle and keg condition with local wild flower honey. And I think that's such an 01:34:00important tie in. So, we have the bees on the farm, we have all the pollinating plants, and so it's kind of the symbiotic thing that we want all of our stuff to kind of be tied back to honey. We started brewing a beverage called Hard Junk Kombucha, which is a 100% honey and green tea. And so, it was really just embracing the honey and making that the central point of what we're doing because I think the bees really tied everything in.

Carrieann Schneider: It was also that local flavor.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: Having that terroir, using as many local ingredients as we could, and wanting to have beer that could age. Beer that could be natural. Having the yeast in your beer is healthy for you. It's got vitamins and there have been studies that show you have less of a hangover if you drink beer with 01:35:00yeast in it. So, we wanted to have that natural living product and corn sugar just hurts to use, especially when you're into real food and knowing where your food came from. So, the fact that he'd been using honey for a long time-

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: ...just made so much sense for us to have the bees here on our farm and have that additional local tie in. The natural carbonation is a little bit softer of a bubble.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: Not saying it's any less carbonated, just a different type of carbonation.

Jon Schneider: It's a different mouth feel.

Carrieann Schneider: Different in your mouth. Yeah. Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: You mentioned the kombucha.

Jon Schneider: Yes.

Erin Lawrimore: That's another thing I wanted to ask about. Can you talk a little bit more? Because we tasted it, and it doesn't taste like most kombuchas I have tasted before.

Jon Schneider: Right.

Erin Lawrimore: Can you talk a little bit more about how you got started with that? Why? And-

Jon Schneider: We had met somebody at a local farmer's market that we used to do. And she did a non-alcoholic version of it, and we fell in love with it. And 01:36:00it was so refreshing and delicious and different. And so, Carrieann started trying to brew this beverage. And of course, we wanted it to be alcoholic. So, we wanted some level of alcohol. And so, she started at the beginning. And a lot of the kombucha brewing techniques are a lot of... It's more open, and it's just going to do what it does. And me coming from the beer world, I'm like, "No, we need to test things. We need to know what the ABV is. We need to make sure." And so, eventually I took it over. And because we also, during that trying to make it alcoholic, I mean, we went through a lot of honey that ended up unfortunately dumped. But it was really trying to figure out, and it's not like you could just 01:37:00go on the internet and find anything.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah.

Jon Schneider: Because nobody's brewing it.

Carrieann Schneider: So kombucha. Start at the beginning. Kombucha is black tea and table sugar.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: And it's a slightly different mother than the jun. So, jun is green tea and honey. It ferments a little bit faster, ferments at a slightly different temperature. The mothers look a little bit different. Jun mother's whiter. So, it's a little bit different beverage than kombucha anyways. And when we started brewing this, there were very, very few alcoholic kombucha makers out there-

Jon Schneider: Right.

Carrieann Schneider: ...even. And almost none making the jun that was alcoholic. Almost none making jun on the east coast period. So, there really wasn't any references for us to try to do. So, it took us a couple years to really try to figure out how to make this beverage that tasted good that wouldn't explode.

Jon Schneider: Oh yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: That still had all the probiotics and all the good for you stuff with green tea and local honey. It took a while to try to figure it out. But having drank kombucha for years and tasting this jun at a farmer's market, I was like, "This is so much better than kombucha. It doesn't have that vinegar note. It's lighter." Jun is referred to as the cousin to kombucha. The champagne of kombucha. Kombucha's lighter cousin. There's a whole bunch of different euphemisms for it. But it's delicious and light and refreshing.

Jon Schneider: Yep.

Carrieann Schneider: And during the hot summer, extremely difficult to keep up production with demand.

Jon Schneider: Yes. We were running into that.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah.

Jon Schneider: But yeah, I think we've got something special. And it's interesting because I feel that it has taken on a sense of terroir in that it's 01:39:00open fermented. I mean, there's a cloth over it, but that doesn't stop microbes from getting through. And I do think that it has evolved from when we first started. And one of the things that I've learned is a lot of the large kombucha brewing companies, what they've done is they've sent yeast to labs to have isolated things so that they have a particular flavor profile.

Jon Schneider: And we've been working with this strain of yeast two years now. And we have developed new mothers over that time. So, I just started that process. We'll build a new mother. It takes anywhere from a month to month and a half, but we'll replace the mother and then keep it going. So, every time you do 01:40:00that, it does alter the flavor and aroma a little bit. But I think we have a truly unique flavor profile now that it would be difficult for anybody to even match. But I think we've come so far with it that we've become a winery now.

Carrieann Schneider: We have. So legally, which is a whole weird thing. When I called the state of North Carolina about Jun, they said, "Well, you're fermenting with yeast, right?" Yes. And they, "Oh. So, then it's beer. You're okay to make it under your current license." And I wasn't about to argue because I have the current license. So, I said, "Okay." Even though cider, wine, everything ferments with yeast. Whatever. But federal government saw it differently when we went to apply for our formula approval. They said we were a winery. And then, when I went to apply for the winery approval, they said, "No, 01:41:00this should be under beer." And so, it took a little while with me going back and forth with showing, "Okay, well this is what this person said. And this is, and where are we?" But we are now legally a federal approved winery in order to make the jun.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah. It's a beverage that very few other people make the way that we do also. So, there are a few places that make jun but they're getting their alcohol from sugar. So, they're still using table sugar, which they're starting with a jun and basically making a seltzer out of it.

Jon Schneider: Yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: And so, it's still considered beer. Which is why the TTB had no idea what we were, and the vast majority of customers have no idea what it is. When we try to explain it to people, we're like, "Just have a sip of it." And they're like, "Well, what is it? Is it mead?" No, it's nothing like mead. It 01:42:00tastes different than kombucha. It's not related to beer. It's its whole own beverage.

Jon Schneider: Yeah. It is.

Erin Lawrimore: When did you get it to the point where you put it on the menu basically?

Jon Schneider: Oh, we had it on the menu-

Carrieann Schneider: Pre-COVID.

Jon Schneider: Yeah. I mean, it wasn't as good as it is now, but it was on the menu. But again, nobody really knew what it was.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah.

Jon Schneider: And so you didn't have a frame of reference to say it's bad.

Jon Schneider: I just felt like it wasn't our best that we could do.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Schneider: And just doing a ton of research on fermentation of honey. And that's what really led us down the path, and I think it's truly something special now. And I think we've also gotten it a lot more shelf stable. So, for the longest time we were having issues, and it's because we were trying to leave a little bit of residual sugar in there. And anytime you do that, the yeast, 01:43:00because they're wild yeast, they're going to continue to consume those complex strains of sugar and be a little more effervescent than the ones that we have now.

Jon Schneider: But it definitely has taken some time, and I was trying to brew it to a taste that I wanted. And I think I've finally released that, and it's no longer trying to make something that I like, but trying to make something that's different that I might not like it, but other people enjoy it. And so, we've been doing it drier and leaving out any residual sugars. So, we take it down pretty low so that way it can sit in your refrigerator for a few weeks and still be fine. Whereas before you couldn't leave it in there for a week without it wanting to get out of the bottle. And we've had pictures sent to us and videos, and-

Carrieann Schneider: It was an interesting learning process.

Jon Schneider: It was, it was. And calling people that had bought it. "Oh, be careful opening that because it gets excited.

Carrieann Schneider: Put a towel on top when you open it.

Jon Schneider: It gets excited.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah.

Jon Schneider: But it's definitely something very unique to us, and I'm very proud of where it's at. And our son actually helped a lot with that process. So, yeah.

Carrieann Schneider: Yeah. Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Can you think of anything else that we have not covered that you would like to talk about?

Carrieann Schneider: I don't think so.

Jon Schneider: No, I think that covered it.

Carrieann Schneider: That's us.

Erin Lawrimore: Awesome. Well, thank you both so much for your time. I appreciate it.

Jon Schneider: Thank you. Yes.

Carrieann Schneider: Thank you. Yes.