Oral history interview with Sebastian Wolfrum, 2022

Erin Lawrimore: I am Erin Lawrimore. I am here today at NC State University in Raleigh. It's Tuesday, August 9th, 2022. So to start, can you say and spell your name?

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yes, my name is Sebastian Wolfrum. That's S-E-B-A-S-T-I-A-N, last name W-O-L-F-R-U-M.

Erin Lawrimore: Awesome. So Sebastian, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? Let's go on the long and winding road to get here.

Sebastian Wolfrum: All right, let's start way back. So yeah, I was born in the mid '70s in a small town called Zorneding, outside of Munich, so in Bavaria, Germany. And grew up until middle school, when out of total coincidence my dad 00:01:00got transferred to work into what was then West Berlin. So my middle and high school days were spent in Berlin, as it was still during the Cold War, and then in eighth grade then the wall came down. So I was in Berlin when the wall came down-

Erin Lawrimore: Oh, wow.

Sebastian Wolfrum: Which was a very unique experience in many ways. And then finished up school and went to the Ayinger Brewery like two towns over where I grew up, to do my basic initial craft-focused brewing education, which was work and school all at the same time. Yeah, and then I graduated from there, worked at Ayinger for a good long while, worked at a winery in Dreisen in East Germany, tried that out a little bit. And then went back to school and ended up meeting my wife, who was in North Carolina at the time, and obviously we still are. 00:02:00Yeah, ended up moving here, and that was 2005.

Erin Lawrimore: Awesome, so-

Sebastian Wolfrum: So that's the time before, and then like the U.S. 2006 is when I started working at Natty Greene's, my first job, right?

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Sebastian Wolfrum: In the U.S. '97 is when I started commercially brewing, right? I-

Erin Lawrimore: What led you to do that, though? What was it, other than being German?

Sebastian Wolfrum: So-

Erin Lawrimore: What led you to say, "I want to work in the beer industry"?

Sebastian Wolfrum: So right, so the culture is different, right? There was no groundswell of craft beer or home brewing. This was not something that was done for all kinds of reasons, I'm sure including that the beer you could get everywhere was already pretty good, so there was no pressure to kind of go for flavor and creativity and all that, in that same way. Although I have to say, at Ayinger for example, I know many of these breweries, they have long traditions. 00:03:00They've made the same beers, short of technological and sort of quality improvements obviously that everybody does, and still does. The same beers, right, for a long time. And so there's very little creative play, and so in looking back it was very interesting how confined you are. If you are a Belgian brewer or a German brewer, they would not make each others' beers. Maybe nowadays it's no longer as crazy, but certainly when I was there in the '90s it was very limited. And so coming over here, it was great. You come as a German-trained brewer and you can make any beer you want, like American, Belgian, British, German or whatever comes up, Nordic styles, whatever is now going. That was really a big driver in getting really into it, and then embracing, because it was clear there's exploration and just learning as you go, 00:04:00all the time. Yeah, and so that's how I ended up here, as I said.

Erin Lawrimore: The training ... You said you were at Ayinger for like a training work program?

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yeah, so it's the typical apprenticeship setup, right? Where you get hired in at a very low wage, but they essentially pay you to go to school. And then once you pass your exams, you're a certified brewer and maltster. In my situation where I did the ... Back then, it was brewing and malting as sort of the core craft focus. Now it's brewing and technology, or brewing and sort of cleaning practices, so there's two foci now to become a commercially, professionally-trained brewer. And then you get paid at a very different scale, so it's still ... The trades are still fairly protected in Germany, so same is true for a carpenter or a machinist or a bank teller or any 00:05:00of those mid-level jobs with a qualification. And then from that, you can either go to university and get like a full-on engineering degree, or you go to the trade schools and become a trade-focused master. So in baking or electric ... If you're an electrician, same thing. If you want to run a shop, you cannot just be at the base level of just an electrician. You have to get through the sort of master schooling that happens in trade schools within the trades, and so that's how the whole system is set up. It makes for very good tradespeople, right? But at the same time, it also makes things compared to say the U.S. very upwardly immobile, right? There's a lot of tradition and kind of waiting your turn, and 00:06:00so it's a very stagnant and yeah, very different system. I mean, there it is not possible in the same way as here that you just say, "Hey, I'll find some money and open a brewery next year," right? You have to really literally grow into it.

Erin Lawrimore: Interesting.

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yeah, and so talk about growing into it, when I was growing up in our circle of friends in the family was a brewmaster from Lowenbrau, one of the bigger breweries in Munich, who then went to Coca-Cola and did a different route. But through them, I always heard these stories of what's going on at a brewery. That always seemed super interesting to me, and so yeah, and that was then the route I ended up taking. Yeah, so that's how I got into that.

Erin Lawrimore: So at that point, how old would you have been when you kind of made that decision?

Sebastian Wolfrum: So my decision was right out of high school, so 17, 18, 19. 00:07:00In Germany at the time, you still had to do a voluntary service after high school.

Erin Lawrimore: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian Wolfrum: So you could either serve within the military somewhere ... That was sort of the original intention, right? That it's a voluntary force. That has since gone away, but at the time this was the reality. You could choose that or you could choose an alternative work for the public of sort, and so there was all kinds of things, like at hospitals or public institutions. In my case I chose ... I was an assistant park ranger for the national park up at the North Sea, right? Sort of facing England and Scandinavia and that whole pocket between Netherlands and Denmark, for an entire year. That was pretty amazing. There was a bunch of folks staying in a house in a little ... Almost like a remote island, really. We counted birds and did tours, and it was really neat.

Erin Lawrimore: It does sound neat.

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yeah, and then after that I started, so I was approaching 20 when I got into my actual apprenticeship.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. So you talked about your wife being who got you here to North Carolina.

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Can you remember what you kind of thought of the craft beer scene in North Carolina when you first got here?

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yes. Yeah, I mean it was totally surprising initially, because I came here as I think many people, especially I imagine from Europe ... Not just Germans come here. You have all these stories about, there's only fast food and crappy light beer, right? And I guess I came in on this whole wave that we all have since experienced, right? Where there's all of a sudden, there were farmers markets and Starbucks was underway, so this concept of an actual coffee shop, right? Although very pricey obviously, but you know, a coffee shop. That 00:09:00all was already happening, right? This whole cigars and chocolate, and then whiskey. This whole food was already becoming quickly when I got here in the '90s ... In 2000. Sorry, 2003, '04, and then '05, '06 really when I moved here, but I met my wife 2003. And so this was already changing rapidly, so by the time I got here you could already get food that was not that much different from what I was used to. So it was not at all true there was only light beer and fast food, right? That was not true. And so yeah, by the time I got here there were very few breweries still, looking back now. It was like 23, 24 maybe. There were like three breweries in Asheville and it was a lot, right? I mean, it was that 00:10:00kind of ... It was that time. There was like a brewery in Charlotte. I think it was Rock Bottom. And then there was really Edenton ... Top Gun, Edenton ... Or Tomcat, sorry. Tomcat, Edenton, which is now Big Boss, right? They were already there. Uli had already left Durham. I only would hear these stories about that there was a brewery in Durham at some point. Yeah, and so there was like Red Oak was a big player at the time, right? Yeah, and so right when I got here, Natty Greene's had just opened. Foothills had just opened, Duck-Rabbit, right? They were all in this 2003-2004 sort of universe, right? So yeah, and the Olde Hickory was already established at the time obviously, and then a handful. Mostly it's Highland and then Asheville Brewing I believe was already there, right?

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Sebastian Wolfrum: So there was a handful up there, and that was sort of the 00:11:00landscape, right? And Carolina Brewery in Chapel Hill, the top of the hill, that whole little corridor there. Those were the places that I applied to essentially, right? And it just happened to be working out with Natty Greene's. The minute I had my green card, I was basically ready to roll. Yeah, so that was early 2006.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about Natty Greene's and getting that place going. I mean, do you remember? Do you remember your thoughts about Greensboro when you first showed up at Natty's?

Sebastian Wolfrum: So, I mean right, so I mentioned a little bit that I grew up outside of Munich. It's really rural, but it has nothing to do with what rural means obviously here in the U.S. There's no wilderness anywhere, right? Or sort of corners where you can disappear and nobody's ever there, right? So that 00:12:00doesn't exist, but it was still like countryside. And then moving to Berlin, right, in middle school, I lived in one of the big and obviously from my perspective really cool cities in Europe. Certainly then when the wall came down, it was adventures on all corners, basically. So and then from there, coming to North Carolina, it was ... I mean at the time, and it's still true, it was very ... It was so different. It was really hard to make any connections and say, "This is not what I would expect," because nothing was, right? I mean, it was so different. If I would have come to D.C. or New York or some bigger city, there would have been most likely more things that I would have bumped up against, like public transport or all these things that are ... But here, it's really different from how I grew up or knew how things are. And so yeah, it was 00:13:00really ... No, nothing seemed that out of place. I mean, Greensboro is obviously a great spot and at the time, this was still so new. I mean, it's really exciting to be at any of these places, Natty Greene's or Red Oak. They still had a brewpub at the time, right? In Guilford, right, at Guilford College there were ... And yeah, up in Asheville, I mean this was really still something really unique and hard to get, and really, really odd. And certainly compared to now, the quality of the brewers, the equipment, the suppliers, everything has come a long way in those last, whatever, 17 years now for me, right?

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Sebastian Wolfrum: If you look at it. So it hadn't been there, because all, like 00:14:00the whole chain including the folk who made it, were still kind of developing into something that you would get every ... Good ingredients, the right service, they had the right equipment with the right technology to it and all these things, right? And so, but it was already pretty neat. And so when I arrived at Natty Greene's, they already had Scott Christoffel, who was the head brewer right when I got there. They had just gone into the baseball stadium there, with the Greensboro Grasshoppers, right? They had just finished the stadium, so that was another thing that I discovered when I got here, that somehow these downtowns had been abandoned for 40 years or something, right? And for all the wrong reasons, obviously. But they were all coming back, right? Durham, Greensboro, they all were doing similar things in terms of how to kind of bring people back. And so the brewpubs in this case, right, were a key piece. Out of 00:15:00the 700 breweries in the U.S. at the time, right? It's now 10 times as many, right? It's really mind-boggling. Most of them were brewpubs, right? There was probably 400 or 500 brewpubs and 200 were production breweries, right? It was far from what these production breweries are now, but it was a totally different world and the brewpub was sort of the thing. And then people were super excited. They came in and they were like, "I can't believe you all make this beer here." That was really a lot of fun. Yeah, and that's how I got going. And so I had a real benefit in coming into a place that was ambitious, right? And wanted to go somewhere, and had the entire community of Greensboro behind them because it was such a fun, different place in many ways. And then Scott Christoffel being there, who had been really a veteran by that time already, even though that's 00:16:00now going on 15 years ago or whatever, right, 17 years. And so that's really cool to think back, because he had worked ... He started in Florida in the early '80s or something as a young man, and then out of his own curiosity and drive to figure this out, right, with craft beers, he moved out West. He worked at Left Hand, and so he came really with a lot of knowledge and experience and stories to Greensboro. It was really cool to work with him for the many years that followed, basically until I left. And that was-

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Do you remember some of the beers that y'all brewed then?

Sebastian Wolfrum: So yeah, so I mean there was ... So I was obviously completely out of my comfort zone in many ways around all these hoppy beers, 00:17:00right? There was IPAs, and he already knew all these West Coast IPAs and double IPAs, and so he came with all that knowledge from Colorado, obviously. But it was all, like I started like you would expect with the very basic English golden ales and pale ales, pretty much sort of my piece. And then the brown ale that we made, Old Town Brown at Natty's, was another really cool beer. It was filtered, so I still believe to this day, against all the other fun brown ales that were around at the time, there were within the industry multiple blind tastings, right? Because there was always this like, "Who's making the best brown ale?" And ours always landed on top, and I don't think it was necessarily just because we had it down so much more, but we brewed it and filtered it and nobody else did. That step just made the beer so much more sort of brown ale-ish, you know? 00:18:00Just took out all the hop, the yeast and fermentation aromas and pulled it back to let the malt really play out. It just made a really smooth, round beverage, and so that was fun. Anyway, so those were sort of my early discoveries. With the brewpub, there were 12 taps and we would just play all over the place. We had always German wheat beers, Belgian wheat beers, some Belgian pale amber or a double or something, and then certainly IPAs. But at the time it wasn't like it is now, where basically you have to have three, four, five IPAs on tap to kind of count as something. And so that wasn't so fully established at the time.

Erin Lawrimore: Did you find that you were brewing ... Were all of these beers 00:19:00you were brewing more just you and Scott were brewing things that y'all liked, and people would taste it? Or were you brewing towards the palate of the ... Did folks even have a beer palate really to...?

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yeah, so they definitely were similar to I think how it is now. There's a huge majority that did how I got going, right? The golden ales and pale ales, and there's a whole cadre that likes these what beers, right? Where it's really yeast and aromatic and fruity. Those already existed, it was clear, like Blue Moon was already a thing then. And then there's the, what I would call the dark ales, right? So we always had a stout on tap, like an Irish stout, and then this brown ale, and often an imperial stout of some sort, like a big one. And so we had something for the dark folks, the wheat folks, the light 00:20:00folks, which was still true for many breweries, right? The lightest beer still sells the most, especially if you have a restaurant associated with it. And then a few of those IPAs, but and then what I would call these sort of experimental beers, right? So there were all the Belgian ones, right, that are really high alcohol and really bubbly, double or triple. And then sour wasn't really a thing yet. We had a barrel that Scott was working on, which was very unique and peculiar to me that this was a thing, with this barrel with the bacteria in it doing its thing, and you wouldn't touch it for many, many months to years, right? And that has certainly also come a long way. But it was I think very well-balanced. I mean, we knew this was an eating crowd and that everybody was into craft beers, so you had to have sort of a core. We often had a lager on. 00:21:00And so I would say some of the beers were ones that we thought were fun, that we wanted to make, and then others were things we just had to have on tap.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Did you do much ... Were you trying to match the food, or was it ... Or complement the food in a direct way, or did it just-

Sebastian Wolfrum: No, I mean-

Erin Lawrimore: Was it just a range of styles to go with a range of food?

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yeah. Yeah, I think there was ... Early on, this was we were just making beer. Initially there was so much going on at the brewpub that with the brew system and the three brewers, we couldn't keep up. I mean it was really ... And then as things kind of wiggled its way in, and more places opened downtown and all this, it kind of got a little more reasonable in some sense, I think for everybody involved. And so that allowed for us to really attempt to 00:22:00take over all 12 taps, which a lot of times we had guest beers. A lot of them were like Guinness and Sierra Pale Ale and all these classics at the time, because there wasn't a whole lot available.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Sebastian Wolfrum: It's not like you could go and just get craft beer from somewhere else, so you had to go with these big, big brands, right? And so Anchor, we had on. It was really like a weird history of how things were. But yeah, so that was the selection. I think we were very tame in terms of pushing ... Pushing the limits.

Erin Lawrimore: Would this has been ... Did you start before or after Pop the Cap came through and raised the ABV?

Sebastian Wolfrum: So this is all after.

Erin Lawrimore: Okay, that's what I thought.

Sebastian Wolfrum: So I had ... By the time I entered, right, 2006 ... So I got here 2005, but then getting the paperwork completed and all that took a bit. And so by the time I got in, that just had happened. So Sean basically had already 00:23:00switched to basically pursuing to open Fullsteam, but it was just on the heels so everybody was excited. So one thing that was going on right when I got there was Scott was brewing all these beers that were over 6%, because the year before he couldn't, right? It was sort of one of those, and it was like the perfect storm, right? I mean, that singular rule change really changed everything as far as I can tell. That's how North Carolina ended up being, and still is, like the craft beer state in the South, right?

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Sebastian Wolfrum: It's still really pretty amazing to watch. Now with these big breweries from out west opening up shops and all that, it is really ... Yeah, it's a really cool, cool state to be in.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Do you remember much about the equipment, the facilities 00:24:00that y'all had at Natty's back then?

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yeah, so I mean as a German showing up here, I was appalled by any and all of it and everyone. But I mean, it's how it is, right? I mean, the brewery's obviously not 150 years old, and nobody's making investments that the brewery will last 30 or 50 years, right? It's just not ... Nobody knew where this was going to begin with, right? And so from not having appropriate floors, like often just concrete with epoxy on it, or some basic kitchen tiles, right, that were sort of sturdy, and the mash. So the equipment was bought used. At the time, that was still fairly possible. There was sort of a pretty healthy mix of places closing and other places opening, and a lot of things didn't come from China at that point. There was very few ... Maybe fermenter and Premier 00:25:00Stainless out in California, they sort of jumped on that probably first out of everybody. But stuff was made in Canada, right, at DME or Newlands up in Vancouver or wherever they were, and so specifically mechanical on most of these. And so the equipment that we were using at Natty's starting out was Criveller, which is a Canadian company. The stuff was made in Italy, so it's a big mining and steel company. They had subsidiaries in Italy apparently, and so the equipment is made in Italy for a small brewery, and it leaked. Your mash mixers leaked, and it was always something fun going on, but it only had three vessels you could mash in, lauter and then boil all in separate vessels, so that was already pretty neat at the time to do that. Especially for me, having learned on fully-automated, nicely-installed, for the German five-vessel system. 00:26:00It was very different. Anyways, it was great. It was really neat. And then when we expanded, we bought ... Well, by the time I had gotten there, he purchased the equipment, also used, from a German company that made brewpub equipment, and so that was the next step. They don't exist anymore. That was the next step. Then it was a barley line, when we bought a barley line at the time and put that together. And so at the time, sort of Natty's was right behind Highland. We were always just a little bit ahead of Foothills in terms of overall production volume, and so it was sort of a fun race for all the time that I was there, which was all the way up to end of 2012.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, yeah. No, we always like to boast that three of the top five brewery production facilities for most of the craft beer here in North 00:27:00Carolina were in-

Sebastian Wolfrum: Well yeah, Greensboro/Winston-Salem, yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, yeah.

Sebastian Wolfrum: Totally. Yeah, yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: And so we never mention Highland when we talk about that, though.

Sebastian Wolfrum: That's right. No, they were in a league of their own at the time, for sure.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Sebastian Wolfrum: I mean, no doubt. And so talking about Highland, right? So as part of how I sort of fit into the state, so as I mentioned, I got here at what seemed really the right time. Pop the Cap had just happened. A bunch of breweries with the next generation, like mainly Foothills, Natty's and Duck-Rabbit had sort of opened up the year before, and it was all coming together. And so by the time for me, by 2008 when that came around, we were I think up to 50 already. So there was quite a bit of initial growth, or maybe in the 40s or so. I don't exactly remember the circumstances around it, but Jamie, 00:28:00the owner of Foothills, Chris and Kayne, the two guys who owned Natty Greene's, and Oscar, and I assume other people. I'm sure Sean was involved at the time. They all got together somewhere. I don't know where this happened and how and said, "Hey, we need ... We're getting bigger, and big enough. We need to start thinking about a guild, right? So we have a state organization that the brewers' association, like the national group, can then support and so we can kind of get ready." And I think probably at the time Red Oak was fairly involved as well, because they already ... Bill Sherrill was already pushing up against this 20,000-barrel production cap that existed in the existing law, right? You could only do 20,000 barrels, self-distribution, like making it and selling it yourself. And then the rule was you have to give it all up, which obviously 00:29:00would change everybody's business, right? But nobody thought that anybody would get there, and nobody was close to that, but it still was the time to talk about this. And so, and because I was the brewmaster that was hired in, I was not an owner as the others, I ended up in the fortunate position to be asked to get it all together, right? After this meeting, Chris and Kayne asked me if I can start putting this together. So I found the original lawyer who did the paperwork, because through All About Beer magazine, right, they ... When they came, left Colorado, right, there was already an initial effort. So in '92 they tried, I think in '98 or 2002 there was another attempt. Anyway, there were two previous attempts to establish a guild-type organization in the state, and both attempts 00:30:00failed. But there was already some filing that was still open at the state level, and so I basically found all the pieces, talked to everybody, and then filed all the paperwork with the lawyer, and then it was all pretty amazing stuff in a weird way. And then basically in 2008, it was ... I don't know, sometime middle of the year, everybody came together who was interested ... Probably 15, 20 breweries at least were there at Natty Greene's. We had a big meeting, and basically officially formed the guild. This is the guild that exists to this day, so that was sort of, yeah, really definitely a historic event but also for me personally, a really neat position to be in and kind of be in the position to meet all these folks, and kind of get to be sort of in the 00:31:00middle of it all, even though I was still sort of entry level in many ways, right? Certainly not an owner or started a brewery or whatever. And so that was really neat, and so on the side I did this for about three years, was sort of the treasurer, organized all the meetings, kept all the ... You have to write protocol obviously for all this and all that. Until we started having enough momentum and money to have an executive director, and obviously now it's a massive thing, right? With conferences and educational program, and three staff or four staff now, and so I mean it's a pretty cool organization that the state brewers have put together and are supporting ongoing, right?

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, and when y'all first started it, what would you say was the main, or was there just a main reason you could state as to why it was 00:32:00important to get that going, like from your perspective? Other than, Kayne and Chris told you to.

Sebastian Wolfrum: So I think all of the owners at the time, there was definitely an understanding that it's helpful to change some of the rules and regulations, right? That this, as everybody was growing, everybody had a different understanding of how this should go, but there clearly needed to be an organized voice. Especially in the Southeast, right, where there was a lot of restrictions on distribution, and can you have a taproom or not, and food or not, and all these things that we now take for granted, right? We can open a brewery and have a taproom, and the taproom obviously pays for the brewery, right? If you open a brewery and just distribute beer in a grocery store, it's really tough to make that a successful business. Many people have failed at that, right? And so why there's now 8,000 has a lot to do with that most states 00:33:00have come to the same sort of place that basically a brewery can only exist if there's a bar attached to it, right? And culturally, right, this is an amazing feat because we were talking about this good component earlier, right? That from when I got here, I would no longer have called the U.S. a food desert compared to Europe or something. But the same was true for just how people approach drinking alcohol, in what setting and whatever. And so when I got here, it seemed pretty straightforward to me why there were so many brewpubs as craft breweries, and so few production breweries, and that this is sort of the route. Because it did seem like it's the easiest way to get people fresh beer, right? 00:34:00It's a part of the magic of craft beer, right? That it's often very fresh and obviously beats any other beer in that moment. But that you can go somewhere, but there needs to be food. It needs to be kind of, at least like many things are, right, sort of masked in some nicer way so it's not that always that people are just there to have a good time and drink, right? It's from my perspective very odd that you can't buy beer and go down the street and drink it, right? I mean, this is sort of part of these cultural clashes that you have. But it's come a long way, right? Now it's totally like you go to taprooms. There is no food. Like there's food trucks, but there's really no food necessarily, and it's totally fine. People get it. Just because you go to a brewery to have a beer doesn't mean you're out to get drunk, right? I mean, people have obviously figured it out that this is not that simple, like many things, right? And so in 00:35:00an amazing way, this has become totally okay. As we now know, no politician would want to be seen drinking or smoking or doing whatever, except like it's a must that you show up at this locally brewery and then have a pint glass in your hand, right? That's totally ... And so culturally, that's a huge step, right? It's pretty amazing. Our distilleries are allowed very similar things, and I mean 10 years ago if you would have told me that we would have distilleries with tasting rooms I would have said, "Yeah, no way," right? So, things can really change.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Sebastian Wolfrum: And have.

Erin Lawrimore: And quickly.

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yeah, right. Right, and so yeah, and so that's how I basically got into building a nice network of people and experiences, and sort 00:36:00of a more general career path that ... I don't know, fit into where I wanted to go.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. So we were talking about Natty's. When did you leave Natty's?

Sebastian Wolfrum: So I left, if I'm not mistaken, end of 2012, so into 2013 is when I left, yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: And where did you go after that?

Sebastian Wolfrum: So this was sort of my big leap into this idea of starting my own business, right? I mean, much more than definitely Germany, here you live in this environment of people who obviously, especially in craft beer, right? Who started their own brewery. Still, folks leave breweries to start their own breweries, right? All the time. And so that whole experience sort of caught me as well, but I was ... The way I would say is I was constantly in gatherings of 00:37:00all sorts with brewers, right? Through the guild and not through the guild, where I felt like completely outmatched, I describe it, by the enthusiasm and excitement of my fellow brewers about making the hoppiest beer you can figure out, and driving these edges that are now totally normal like the beer with fruit in it, and the sour and salt and hops and whatever, all these things that are now styles, right, in beers. And anyway, and so I had not gotten to that point, and knew that somehow opening a brewery may not be the perfect next step for me. And so, and this has been a process as these things go, and so I had started getting a certificate in distilling from IBD in London, at this sort of remote ... And at the time, this was really still remote. I mean nowadays, this 00:38:00is probably just like any other class that's on Zoom. But this was like three months or so, with textbook and then you take an exam and all that. And so I got that, and then what ended up happening is there was this epiphany. That's how the name came about, that NC State out of all places, right? While we're sitting here, it was in the extension group. Folks had organized a meeting at Fullsteam, because at the time Fullsteam was already doing this conceptually idea, right, that the brewery is an extension of farming and food and this whole foraging, before people knew foraging is a thing. They were a little ahead of their time. And so they were the obvious conversational sort of focus point, and so brewers 00:39:00came, distillers, farm people came. Farmers showed up that NC State had brought in, a bunch of extension agents who manage and help these farmers in these places. They were basically saying, "What can we do, both as the state, as the university and as the farmers, to get more North Carolina-grown ingredients into this industry that's grown," right? And now we were at like 120, 130 breweries in 2012. And there was a lot of talk about grain and grain farming, and in this back-and-forth between the farmers can grow it, and the brewers want it, was this obvious sort of disconnect that everybody said, "Well, somebody needs to malt it. It needs to be transformed. You can't just use raw grain." And at this 00:40:00meeting, our kids were still very small. And so I don't exactly remember how this was, but my wife had the kids and was there, and then I showed up and she left and take the kids with her. And so we were both at this meeting in the transition, and so she got the front end, I got the back end of this as we were sort of trading off the kids. By the time I got back she was like, "Hey, wait a minute. Aren't you trained, right, as part of your classical training in Germany? You know how to malt, right?" And I was like, "Yeah, I certainly went to school. I could figure that out." And so that was the epiphany that led to exploring whether or not this can be turned into a business, and so that was sometime in 2012, probably in the fall or something. I don't remember when this 00:41:00meeting was. But out of that came basically this idea, and then started working on this business idea. And so when I left Natty Greene's, I would consult for various breweries, helping set up packaging lines or improving processes or whatever people needed, and then developing this business plan, and starting to look for equipment and money and how this can all come together. Yeah, it took years, right? I mean, but between me figuring out that this actually can be a business, to starting it and then the business actually making a product, right? Which happened early 2016, right? So it was four years really, or sort of something, three and a half years, in between those two things. There's a lot of missing pieces, especially with such an odd concept, right? Malting at small 00:42:00scale had basically disappeared. There was a handful of folks in the U.S. at that point who had sort of on a very small scale started this up, mostly driven by the idea that you should make it up in New York, or at Valley Malt, or in Asheville, right, the folks at Riverbend, or up in Montreal, there was one of the early malthouses. Those folks all said, "Hey, if we want to make local beer it should come from locally-grown ingredients." They also had all these discussions in various ways on how to do all this, and that you need to make malt. You can only ... Because if you want malt from Canada or the Midwest, you could already have gotten that. That's what you were getting, right? But if you 00:43:00want to do it in a nontraditional malting region, which is all east of the Mississippi essentially, you have to figure that out. And so yeah, so I was ... Yeah, basically my concept was to ... I am not going to do it if I have to go not fully modern science and technology-driven. That's partially why it took so long, like finding the equipment, finding the dollar amount that it takes to get that up and running, and then finding that dollar amount, right, actually getting it together, took years. So by the time everything had fallen into place, I found a location in Durham and started up Epiphany Malt. And so by 2016, we had our first batches of malt coming out.

Erin Lawrimore: And you've grown significantly since then.

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yeah, yeah, so right. So right, it started at, I don't know, 80 or 100 tons and then now we are over 600. So yeah, it's come a long way. The brewers have also grown up around it. I mean at the time, this was a very challenged ingredient in terms of getting the trust and the buy-in, and paying more for something that seemingly is very comparable to the stuff that's already available, right? And so there's no, this is ... Even though the story lines and the logic is very similar to, "Why do you drink Budweiser when you can have a Trophy from down the street?" And so that's sort of the same, except it's not exactly, right? Because obviously, it's just an ingredient. If you know how to 00:45:00make a good beer, many ingredients can make you a good beer. And so there's a lot more to it, and so we've ... From the Epiphany's point of view, we've gotten to an amazing place at this point. We have really, really solid customers who understand us, and we understand them. Obviously price is important, but it's not why we have relationships and basically make malt and deliver malt to them. That has really, yeah, been a long, long fun process.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Can you talk about some of the different malt styles that come out of Epiphany?

Sebastian Wolfrum: Sure, yeah. So we sort of have three different main streams, really. So the core of the business is making functional malt like base malts, so it's a Pilsner, very light, a 2-row or pale malt, sort of a middle of the 00:46:00road Maris Otter kind of malt, a lot more malt-forward, basically. And then we do Vienna and Munich styles, which are much more sort of sweet and malt-forward and have a lot more color to them, but still sort of considered base malts. And so that's the core of the business, probably over 80% of what we make are those. And then we have the whole specialty variety where we tweak things a little bit, make them sweeter or darker, and that goes into roasting. So we have a roaster, and with that you can make anything, really. I mean, the roaster is really a very versatile piece of equipment, and so you can make toasted biscuit-type flavors, to coffee aromas, chocolate, like bitter chocolate aromas, to all the way like ... It's almost like clean, almost mint-like, acrid aromas in really 00:47:00dark color with the roasted barley, right? So if you think of drinking Irish stout, where it's very cool ... Not refreshing, but very sort of ... Mint is probably the wrong word, but because you passed any aromas, right? They're all roasted out because you went so dark, and so we go all the way to that. And then we make a whole host of specialty small batch malts; spelt, buckwheat, triticale, corn, rice. We malt Carolina gold rice-

Erin Lawrimore: Oh, cool.

Sebastian Wolfrum: Grown out on the coast, a bunch of these heirloom corns that mostly people have in grits, but Bloody Butcher, Tuxpeno, Buena Vista is one of those, Pungo Creek. So we have these old, old varieties that are available in the region, and make small batches with them. A lot of those go then for the kilning, the drying step in the malting, go through the roaster, so that gives 00:48:00us another whole set of things to play with. Yeah, so those are really the three sort of main lines of malts that we make, so we make a lot of malt, different types, and we're having fun with this. I mean, the equipment and the team that's there with Jordan, who runs the malthouse. She's at this point by far the expert, and comes from the barley side, right? She went to Virginia Tech, and knows the whole horticulture side of getting the grain out of the ground, and then obviously has learned since then a lot about how malting is done and how to do that. And then we have two more folks who help her kind of run the process, bag everything, clean things, make it all happen. So that's, yeah, I am really 00:49:00fortunate that this has worked out that way. Between the two of us, I think we are probably the most knowledgeable in the industry in terms of me with my brewing background and she with her farming grain background. It's been fun, and I don't know. I do think it shows in terms of what we do and how we make it, and what comes out. Yeah, and that whole growth and kind of figuring out how that side of the brewing industry really works has been a lot of fun for me. These connections to the farmers, because that's a whole different universe by itself, and getting into helping them understand, us understand. And then every year 00:50:00working with managing these raw ingredients that only grow once a year, right? You only have a shot once a year to do it, and get it right, in a region that's not typically known for barley. So if we don't ask someone to grow it, it's not being grown. So if they have a bad crop, which happens, then supply is tight quickly. And so it's been very interesting all these years, and it's been really fun to see. And so the slight pivot that we kind of bring into the fold is that yes, most of the grain is grown in North Carolina. We have three farmers that primarily grow for us here in North Carolina, and then we have one in Virginia, and then sometimes we get from Tennessee or Kentucky or Maryland, also. We kind of have a few folks that we reach out to when things get tight. But overall, it's just not ... And more and more as things change in terms of weather and 00:51:00patterns, it's not realistic to assume that you can grow it out front and then malt it in the back. I mean, that's just not how our agriculture works short- or long-term. And so we basically focus on essentially hatching the best bets for us and our customers, in making the best malt that we can figure out with malt in the region. And then once a year at this point, we bring in barley. It's been complicated because of all the global upheaval in transportation and supplies and all that. Get barley in from where I grew up, so one of the farmers that grows for Ayinger as well has shipped me barley, and so we make a special Bavarian-inspired Fest Malt for the festbiers in the fall. And so that's kind of ... So we are having fun. I think it's a lot like many of the craft breweries, 00:52:00right? It's a handful of people who just walk in and say hi. We're just trying to do right where we need to do right, and have fun where we can have fun, and explore things and kind of don't worry about what the big players have to worry about, right? I mean, they're there for a reason, just like the big brewers are, but it's very, very similar and we're lucky we have them, the breweries around us to support that.

Erin Lawrimore: And are most of your customers North Carolina?

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yeah, so the majority is in the state, and then we have a handful from Georgia all the way up to Boston, really.

Erin Lawrimore: Oh.

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yeah, so Trillium sometimes buys from us, Dogfish on the coast, and then a little bit into Virginia so we have a handful; Triple Crossing, Benchtop up there in Virginia, Ocelot, Wheatland Springs. Those are 00:53:00the main folks there. And then in Georgia, we have a pretty cool connection with Creature Comforts. So all of their wheat malt that's going into the Athena brand, and a little bit now also in the Tropicalia, into the IPA, is wheat that they grow with a farmer in Athens, and then send it to us and we malt it for them to their specs.

Erin Lawrimore: Wow.

Sebastian Wolfrum: And then they get it back, so it's a well-kept secret there. They're growing into it, which makes sense. They obviously have the big brand and lots of pieces to consider and things at stake, and so they're slowly growing into hopefully talking more about it, and kind of being comfortable that this could work year over year. I mean, they know that it's a risk, and you 00:54:00don't want to talk about it and then the next year you buy it from Canada again because the crop failed, right? I mean, but that's real. That's a real risk for that. And so yeah, and then in the state it's primarily what I would call like the dirty dozen that really are in for the long haul and buy a lot, a lot of grain. And so yeah, there's Fullsteam, Trophy, Wooden Robot, Protagonist. Burial buys from us quite a bit, and so we have Booneshine, and so it's peppered throughout the state. In Greensboro, Little Brother and Joymonger, and so it's like a really, really good little mix. And then out at the coast we have Shortway.

Erin Lawrimore: Cool.

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yeah, Shortway Brewing. They are, and Tarboro and all that, so initially it was really hard for me to figure out who was interested and who 00:55:00isn't. Everybody's excited, right? It's a cool story. It's a fun product, but then actually buying it and brewing with it is a different story. And so, and that seems true to this day even though we are ... I think we are now in a place where brewers know so much more about the ingredients as well. I mean, education and knowledge has really gone up, and there's now a track record of people making local malt, and what the quality is like and all that. It's still really ... It's not like the world has turned upside-down because there's something available that is not from the big boys. They still sell the majority of the malt to the majority of the brewers. That's just how it is.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, so if you had your way, where would you like to see Epiphany in like 10 years? I know it's harder to look out more than five or 10 years.

Sebastian Wolfrum: No, that's a very typical, normal thing to think about, 00:56:00right? When you run a business, and how that goes, and where you want to go with it, right? What kind of ... What's the right place to be? And so at the moment, we're in a really good spot. And so it's nice to be in the place where the business is making a little money, you know? The supplies work fairly well. Everybody knows how this comes together, who to talk to, and what everybody is getting out of it. And the question is, "So, what's the next step?" And the next step, much more so than a brewery, would be a pretty significant step up. Because the next equipment that makes sense is so much bigger, in order to make a next step and to grow into then some space that then just makes it a business again, right? And so you need to ... So that ramp can't be too short or too long 00:57:00either, right? It needs to be the right fit, and that step is scary. You need a lot more grain grown. You need to sell a lot more. You can't still make it. You can't compete against big malt. That's never going to work, and it's not the point of this. And so the question is, "How much more interest is there," right? And, "How much more grain can we grow successfully year over year, that we don't ...?" Because at that point, when it would really be a bad harvest, there's so much more grain you need to bring in from somewhere else. This all gets more and more complicated, right? If you have railcar access and whatever it's a different story, but obviously this is not. We wouldn't go that step.

Erin Lawrimore: Well, and I think it's interesting because when I ask brewery owners that same question, it's pretty much the same answer when it comes to production. How much beer to produce, you know?

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: "I don't want to be Bud. I am not going to compete with Budweiser."

Sebastian Wolfrum: No, no. Sure.

Erin Lawrimore: "That's not going to happen."

Sebastian Wolfrum: No, no, right.

Erin Lawrimore: "Or even Highland."

Sebastian Wolfrum: No.

Erin Lawrimore: So I think it's interesting that it's the same kind of thought process.

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yeah, and for a brewer, there is still initially at least the ability to ... Once you have a setup and a brewhouse, to add tanks, right? Plenty of people do that, so that buys you a little bit of a leeway. For malting, you need another vessel, right? And that's a huge ... That's similar to buying another brewhouse in terms of investment, right?

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, yeah. So ...

Sebastian Wolfrum: And so that's really ... It's a different logic you have to follow.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Well, let's talk for a bit about why we're here at NC State.

Sebastian Wolfrum: Right, yeah. Absolutely. We'll get on to that part, too.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: So let's talk about your role here. How long? You haven't been here long, but how long have you been here?

Sebastian Wolfrum: No, no. So right, so I just got really started not a year ago at this point. But so what is the story? We talked a little bit about sort of my 00:59:00role, right, growing into the industry with the different pieces that I helped, and really got to know folks. Dr. Sheppard, right, who's the professor here for bioprocessing, he's been in and out a little bit so I've seen him at various events over the years. Because he's been in the state for a while, and mostly focused on yeast and fermentation, and isolating wild yeasts in particular lately. And so I knew him, and then six, seven years ago when this started to think about somehow bringing brewing really into the fold here at State, it began with a single science and technology elective introduction class. For 01:00:00that, he had then approached me and asked if I wanted to do the malting segment on it, since I was running a malthouse just down the street basically, right? It made sense. And that was exciting for me, and I didn't think much of it. It's fun. So once a year for the past five years or so, I would come and talk about the malting process, and the ins and outs and all that. And then yeah, last June they opened a position for the brewing minor, so it took them years to kind of put classes together that line up, make sense in the entire setup here, and then have the funding in place, and then basically get a minor approved. And so that all happened, and the main driver to going from the sort of being a single class and having a brewery in the basement, to a real program that can now sort of go 01:01:00into real brewing education, came from the folks here at New Belgium, right, setting up a brewery here in the state. So they have a very similar partnership at Colorado State, right, where they come from Fort Collins and there for, I don't know, 12 years or however long that's going. They have a really cool program established there. And so when they signed up ... They still have the Old Aggie, they have the Old Tuffy, right? To do this partnership, a good chunk of the arrangement was earmarked ... Of the funds were earmarked for education, right? That was important to them, and luckily there was already a little bit going and so that was sort of the anchor. And so the reason why this was possible is essentially because of that money being available to kind of make 01:02:00this happen. Yeah, and so I applied for this position last June, and went through the entire process of interviewing, and meeting all faculty and staff, and doing a mock class like a trial presentation where I talk and all that, to getting hired. Yeah, so I made the cut against whoever else was in the face. I don't really know, but yeah, that was awesome. It's only possible because obviously sort of the experience I guess I was able to pull together since '97. But then also that I was able to grow my own business into a place where I don't have to worry about it on a day-to-day basis anymore, and have the right people in place, and have reached a point that like five years ago, this would not have been possible. This was sort of good timing for me to make this happen, so yeah, 01:03:00and so that's sort of ...

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Well, you talked about that the minor is a bunch of different classes that are brought together.

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Can you talk a little bit about those classes, and about the curriculum for the minor?

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. It's a pretty neat setup. So the way this works for the minor now is you have to take the existing introduction class that sort of still exists how it was. It's really just about how beer is made, and what kind of equipment, and how it all comes together. And then, so that's the science and technology of brewing. Then you have to take what's in the fall ... This is coming up here in the next couple weeks ... Is the brewing analysis class, where we essentially make a beer and then we go through the entire process in the lab on analyzing it, from turbidity to color. So we analyze the wort essentially, then we go through the various fermentation parameters and watch this thing ferment, then move on to finished beer, our filtration, 01:04:00packaging, and basically go along that entire production process from the side of the lab. And so there's lab classes as well as lectures on how that all comes together and what people do, and how it's mostly the ASBC methods that we obviously use, like most everybody else. And so that's the next piece, and then the third piece in order to graduate with a minor, you then have to go through a brewing operations class. And in that class, I basically go into real detail on how your chiller works, how your boiler works, how CIP systems work, how pumps work, like really get into details of the centrifuge, what it looks like when it's taken apart. So that people really know the core functions of a brewery, 01:05:00that's not the kettle, right? I mean, the kettle and how to make a beer recipe, you have in the other class. That's really about the engineering level, if you are in charge of a place or a department, like how does all this actually work beyond turning it on and off? And so that whole thing is really fun. It ends in brewery layout and process flow, so it's sort of ... I'm looking forward to it. That's in the spring again, and so the course of your last year as a junior and senior are really in those three, four semester. You should be able to button this up so by the time you're a senior, you have that minor completed.

Erin Lawrimore: How many students do y'all have taking the classes now?

Sebastian Wolfrum: So at the moment, in the science and technology class, there was 28. And then the lab is at the moment limited, because our lab is not a basketball court, right? It's just a room with equipment in it, and so that's 01:06:00limited to eight. So if those eight make it through and then take the next class, which I assume is really ... They're already in it on the second round. So then next spring would have the first group of minors graduate, so I hope those will be those eight, which will be really cool.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, that's very exciting.

Sebastian Wolfrum: And then if that all sort of makes sense, the goal is to kind of push this a little bit and move ... Increase the attendance on those, move the limit up a little bit to like 20 or so. That's a good number, especially when you do hands-on experiments and all that, and then potentially push that introduction class into the freshman or sophomore early setting, so that people 01:07:00early enough kind of get a sense, "Oh, maybe bioprocessing or food science is my thing, and brewing is only just a piece," right? So as we know, beer is an exciting subject. It's very easy to understand and learn how a lot of these complex things work in science, and especially the food and farmer side. It's essentially all making beer, except you make medicine or tomato sauce. But so that's sort of the goal then, to kind of prime people a little bit earlier that brewing is not just some weird, fun thing where stuff bubbles, but there's a real career behind it as well. So, that's sort of where we're aiming for.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. You mentioned the space keeps your second class down to eight. Can you talk a little bit about the instructional facilities, what y'all have and maybe what you're hoping to grow?

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yeah, so at the moment it's Dr. Sheppard's yeast research lab. And so there's essentially like a big horseshoe-type room with two long walls, so I mean it's maybe ... I don't know, probably ... Oh, I'd say 400 or 500 square feet. I mean it's not small, but there's lots of equipment in it. You need spaces to move around, right? We only have ... There's two hoods in it, and they're also running research, you know? There's some contracted stuff, some of their own research, and so you can only do so much in the space that is our space. And then eventually, so there's an extra teaching lab on the first floor here in the Schaub Hall, in the food science building. You could essentially them move into there, basically just get a bunch of the core pieces and so you 01:09:00can do eight groups instead of two. At the moment, we are planning on doing two, split the eight into groups of four. And then downstairs, we have a five-barrel brewery so that's not a small amount of beer we make when we do test runs. And so there's a discussion to figure out a little bit, to moving it more into an industrial automation situation, and finding a few partners who would help us sort of go from fairly manual, sort of typical craft brewery startup setup, to one that is more like where the folks end up being who go to State. Once you go through a bachelor, you're hopefully getting into an engineering focus or an operations science focus, and then you're working at a larger brewery that will already have all those systems running, and you better understand those, you know?

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Well, do you want to talk a little bit? You mentioned the five-barrel system, about the other can that's next to you?

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yeah, so this is the Pilsner. You can kind of see the howling wolf here, from Wolfpack Brewery. So that's something that we do downstairs, sort of to supply the campus with beer in events, and so it's a fun sort of side project. And then obviously Old Tuffy; some people think it's made down here, right? Because obviously it's all over NC State. When you look at it, it obviously says New Belgium up here, but most people don't put two and two together how this obviously works. And so, but we work very closely with them. So when I got here, I immediately reached out to see what they can help, if they want to come and help teach. And so there's both support in terms of know-how, 01:11:00but also then various folks from the lab and from operations will come and either Zoom in, or come and teach. I think that's really core to these classes, that it's not just the dry science in the book. Anybody can study the book if you really want to. But to get industry exposure, kind of see what the work really looks like, and we already have pretty cool alumni from the department who work at various places. Whenever you get folks in it's just ... The brewing industry is just amazing. The people that are in it, the excitement that it really has, so it doesn't matter if you're in corporate in St. Louis at AB, right? Anheuser-Busch, or for New Belgium, or you work at Trophy down the street. It's like we turn on the Zoom or people show up, and everybody is 01:12:00smiling. They think their job is the greatest in the world. My students obviously take other classes. There's other industry folk come in, and it's not like that, right? I mean, even if you're in a chocolate factory it's not the same thing. And it's amazing, and it's true for the industry. We all who are in it, experience it. It's so open. There's no secrets. Everybody is just trying to make things better and learn something along the way, and it's just like the polar opposite of when people take the bioprocessing educational branch and end up in pharma, right? I mean before you've done anything, you have to sign that you're not saying anything, right? I mean, it's like the polar opposite.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, yeah. Can you talk a little bit about some of the ways that y'all intersect with some of the breweries in this area, like in North 01:13:00Carolina, other than New Belgium?

Sebastian Wolfrum: Yeah, so like New Belgium, obviously directly contractually connected with us. But other than that, so we don't do any direct extension work, like not in the farming setting or other places. But there certainly is sometimes where people have questions, and we try and make connections or find the right research or answers. But mostly it's for teaching, so I reach out quite a bit and I will continue to do that, and get people placements for internships, and then certainly try and bring brewers in. Eventually there might be ... You know, like us making a little bit of beers is obviously fun and interesting, but at the same time there's obviously plenty of breweries in Raleigh and everywhere else. And so it's not like we need the university to sort of go out and be a commercial brewery, but having this experience as interplay 01:14:00is helpful, so there might be collaborations really on the horizon that I and we will do here as NC State with the various breweries around, and just make fun little experimental beers with folks, yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. So thinking a bit more broadly about the brewing industry here in North Carolina, what do you see today as some of the biggest challenges that the industry is facing now?

Sebastian Wolfrum: That's a good question. I mean, so in many ways, right, like everybody else, there is this uncertainty around, "Where can I get stuff? When can I get it? When is it showing up? How much do you have to pay for it," right? That's been pretty recent. And then what's also coming more and more is the ... 01:15:00If you think of it as a competition in terms of the beverage world, right, it's all these other pieces that are coming to the table that are also good to drink, have lots of different flavors, are very experimental. And so the distilling wing of the alcoholic beverage packages, right, the distillers are definitely up and coming, and it will be interesting to see. More and more, right, distillers ... Like you would have never thought anybody would have a canning line, but folks are getting into canning to make these cocktails, right? So there's a whole new side of that coming to play, that's obviously inspired by craft beer as well, right? This sort of one-stop-shop situation, and they're being a lot more adventurous. And so yeah, I can see that that continues to be an 01:16:00interesting development, and it's all like it will shift sales, right? And that's obviously a challenge. It all depends on how the individual breweries kind of deal with that, and stay relevant with their customer base, right? And then again, we come back to the taprooms. That's going to remain the core of how people will make it work. As much as the hospitality industry is struggling, right, and will continue to struggle out of COVID, the breweries are doing fine. They're filling the perfect space, and they already have been replacing bars and restaurants as the place to go to just have a beer with friends, also. That trend is just going to continue. We've all, over all this time, have learned, right? And thanks to these ... Really, I think this sort of came straight out of the coffee shops, right? That there is a place where you go, and nobody asks you 01:17:00if you want another beer or another ... If you want more food or whatever, right, as happens in a restaurant setting. But you just go there, you go and buy at your own pace whatever beverage or thing you want at the counter, and obviously sit there. You work, you meet friends, you play games or you just read a book, right, or whatever. And breweries are a lot more like that now. I think that's been a huge benefit, that people just have two folks behind the bar and that's the taproom. You don't need a lot of staff, and everybody can do it at their own pace. I think that's a huge strength. And so on that front, I just don't see a lot of headwinds coming. I'm not sure the distillers will get away with that that easily. It's just a slightly different setting, right? But there might be folks who open big facilities where you can just go in the same way.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Sebastian Wolfrum: And you don't have to worry about finding a seat, right? That's another big thing. But yeah, I think that's sort of my ... I think the beverage portfolio of what's out there, and the shifts that happen in that, are the most interesting challenge, right?

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. I see we've come to the portion of the interview that's the fun question.

Sebastian Wolfrum: Okay.

Erin Lawrimore: And I put fun in quotation marks, because for some people it's fun, and for others it's not. So, do you have a favorite beer from a North Carolina brewery? Sebastian Wolfrum: Do I have a favorite beer?

Erin Lawrimore: Or, what are some of your favorite beers? We always give people the option for more than one, because it's hard to pick a favorite child.

Sebastian Wolfrum: I don't know. I mean, I do like the classics, right? So yes, I think ... I mean I still like the Gaelic from Highland. I still ... I mean like 01:19:00if I would have to choose, and I should buy what I think would be fun, right? I don't have it often, I have to admit, but if you're asking me like that, that would definitely be. Red Oak certainly was around forever, and then Foothills comes into that same sort of category. And then it gets quickly to like the folks that I deal with obviously a lot, and hang out with. And yeah, those are ... I don't know, some of the cool kids, right? So folks at Burial or Wooden Robot, and Trophy here in town, and so yeah, so those are the places that I go to, right?

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Is there anything else that we haven't talked about that you want to talk about before we stop the recording?

Sebastian Wolfrum: No, I think-

Erin Lawrimore: Have we missed hitting on anything?

Sebastian Wolfrum: No, I think we've hit the major like-

Erin Lawrimore: The milestones?

Sebastian Wolfrum: Milestones are definitely in there, absolutely.

Erin Lawrimore: Awesome. Thank you so much.

Sebastian Wolfrum: Sure, very good.