Our brewery consistently puts out less than 0.1 of one pound of DODA day. So you're basically running an entire brewery. An incredibly much lower impact than the average three bedroom home in Sto deal. To Burn Baby. Oh yeah. Is a slam dunk, absolutely breathtaking. In today's podcast, we're going to be revisiting our Burlington Toto Vermont route. This was a 41 and a half mile bicycle route, which started in Burlington and we end in Stowe. And along the ride we go and we visit with four different establishments. We're going to talk about that in greater detail in just a few moments. And my guest today is John Kimmich, and John is the owner of the famous, the World Famous Alchemist Brewery in Stove, Vermont. But before we dive into that content, I wanted to take a moment to thank our sponsor plus for their support of the Bike to Bites podcast. When your tomorrow is built on technology, you need a partner with Superior Insight, with expertise in cutting edge innovation across ai, security Cloud and workplace transformation. E plus of today's modern enterprise, and e plus is where technology means more. Okay, so let's talk about our Burlington to Stowe bicycle route, which was about a 41 and a half mile ride. We started in Burlington and we ended in Stowe, and it was absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous. We had a grade, a maximum grade of about 8.6. We climbed to an elevation of about 2,582 feet and it was just beautiful. So we started our day in Burlington at August 1st bakery and with a hearty breakfast, some great pastries. We got in some good coffee, we got on our way and we rode just quickly from there. Stayed in Burlington, went over to a restaurant called Deep City, unbelievable Barbecue. And yes, they are using Vermont maple syrup on their barbecue and on their ribs and was phenomenal. And from there, that was the big hike. We took our route from Burlington, we went through some beautiful scenery along the river, and we landed in Waterbury where we had a visit with the world famous Ben and Jerry's ice cream and that tour and those samples were just off the charts and delicious and needless to say, I couldn't finish it and the crew jumped in and handled what I couldn't take care of myself. And then we end our visit to the Burlington STO route in Stowe at the famous Alchemist Brewery with our guest that's in studio with us today. John Kimmich. He's the man behind the world renowned Alchemist Brewery. And when I say world renowned, it is world renowned and not only is there a man behind the Alchemist Brewery, there is a woman behind the Alchemist Brewery, and that's John's wife, Jen. She won't be joining us today. We're going to be spending our time with John, but we're going to hear all about their story, about how they came together to create this unbelievable company, this unbelievable beer. And it's not just one beer. They've expanded. There's a bunch of beers in front of me and we're going to talk about that in a second. Hetty Topper is considered one of the best IPAs in the world, and John has gone to great lengths to make sure that if you want it, you need to come to Vermont to get it. Now, they will ship it to some places, but very, very rare. So I strongly encourage you go up to Stove, Vermont, go visit the brewery. It is worth the trip. John has spent over 20 years perfecting the art of craft beer and is a pioneer in sustainability, and we didn't really get to explore much of that in the episode. That's why I'm excited to have John in the studio with us today. We're going to talk about what he's doing on that front. And when you talk about a B corporation that has significant meaning into what length someone has to go to achieve that status. And I'm going to explore some of that with John here today in the podcast studio. So without any further ado, welcome John to the Bike Divides podcast. I'm so excited to be here with you in the studio. Really enjoyed our time together and it's amazing that we are able to reconnect and thank you for sending these lovely beers that we're going to open up and try in just a second. But before we do, I have to ask the question. You deliberately by choice left out what I tried when I was up with you on the show, which was the Heady Topper and the Focal banger. Is there a reason? I'm just curious. These all look unbelievable and I can't wait to dive into them, but I'm wondering if there was some thought process behind not wanting to send those. Is it because we've already had those and try something new? Definitely. I mean, you've had those beers, everybody's had those beers, so why not try something new and talk about some different shit? You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm excited to do that. And before we crack them open, I wanted to, you haven't seen the episode yet, I don't think, and no you haven't, haven't seen the episode yet. It's a great episode. We end our trip with you at The Alchemist. It's condensed, and so our conversation got condensed and some of the things that I really wanted to dive deep into in the show we didn't get to because the time wouldn't allow us. So this podcast gives us the opportunity to do that. And specifically I want to talk about what it means to be a B corporation, what it means to be doing things differently. If you could explain to the listeners, to the viewers, what is a B Corp and why was this so important to both you and your wife when you started the brewery? Well, I tell you, Garrett, I wish you had invited Jenna in on this because she is. I mean, she is the heart and soul of The Alchemist. I mean, I do the beer and I do a good job of it, but so much of what the Alchemist is known for outside of that, that comes right out of Jen and out of Jen's heart. So I got to be honest with you, I didn't even know what B Corp were until Jen started doing all the paperwork to do it. So honestly, I've been learning the whole time as others are. So the B Corp, it is about so many different things, but it's a different way. There are different metrics that you have to meet as a B Corp. I wish I got to say I wish I had known that was a question you're going to ask me. I would've had a cheat sheet in front of me. Well, no, no. So it's foundationally, foundationally, right? It's all based on doing things better, smarter. Yes. It's based on a lot of different factors. It's based on what you do environmentally. It is based on what you do socially. It is based on how you treat your employees. There are so many different facets to it that really existed in our business, not like when we started the process of becoming a B Corp that we had to put things into place and change what we were doing. Yeah, this was already part of your ethos basically. I mean, it's long been a part of our ethos from the day we started our pub in 2003 when we professionalized our positions and everybody had paid salaries and benefits and so that we tried to level the playing field for our employees. And in those early days when we started our environmental initiatives with what we could, which at the time was composting and doing the proper thing with the waste stream and minimizing waste and all of those things that have evolved over the last 20 years as we moved from a 60 seat brew hub to now two production breweries that between the two of them make a little over 18,000 barrels of beer a year. So it's a crazy thing because at our biggest year at the pub, we made 420 barrels a year. So as we've grown and as we have been fortunate enough to have the success that we've had and to be able to provide what we do for our employees and then to start reaching out into the community and start doing work like that. So it's really just always been a part of what we do. And it's a great thing that there is an organization out there that recognizes businesses that are doing things a little different. In my visit with you, we did a pretty full coverage tour of the brewery operation in Stowe. I was blown away to the lengths that you have gone to make sure nothing is wasted, everything is utilized. There's no drain on the local waterways because you're taking precautions before breweries put off. A lot of waste, a lot of water waste. We talked about that when we were together. Talk to me a little bit about the operation because who don't know and who haven't been there and have had the luxury of taking the tour that I took with you, I tell you, John, and in the intro you heard me talk about Jen as not just the man behind the brewery, but there's a woman behind the brewery and I mentioned Jen, you guys are fully committed to this effort and I'd love for the listeners to hear, kind of walk me through the process of how you're doing things there because it's like nothing I've ever seen before in the world of hospitality, which you are in. I've never seen someone go to the lengths that you guys are going through to have low impact and to have instead, quite frankly, a positive impact on the environment and the community in which you serve and live. Well. Thank you. We always appreciate kind words like that. So I mean really it started at the pub all those years ago and like I said, with composting, so we were a small brew pub, small brew pub, making that 400 barrels a year. And we were small enough that when I had brewery waste at that point, it went down the drain. Nobody ever asked me to do otherwise. I didn't know to do otherwise. The Waterbury waste system never complained about it. That was pre Irene. So at that time there were thousands of state employees at the state employee complex, and I think we just kind of went under the radar. So what we did have was food waste because we were a 60 seat restaurant, so we would work with local farmers and a friend that raised pigs would take our compost every day and would feed it to his pigs. When that got to be too much, we started working with a local compost company, grow compost, and so they would take our food waste and they were composting it in windrows and turning it into soil. When we expanded into production brewing, which was 2011, that was when all of a sudden here we are, we're on the radar with the wastewater system because in the meantime, the state offices got wiped out in the flood. So you had thousands of people and the dilution of thousands of trips to the bathroom and thousands of hand washings and everything else, that dilution power of that water went away overnight. So all of a sudden they were getting spikes in high strength waste and we were obviously the culprit. So it was at that moment that we got thrown into the School of wastewater. And really just for clarity real quick, all of the water wastewater from your brewery ultimately, and we'll talk about the process in which you go through to make sure it's clean when it comes out, all of it ends in Lake Champlain, does it not, or a chunk of it. Does? Well, I mean fluid waste. Well. Fluid waste, I'm speaking about. Everyone's waste in this part of Vermont, all waterways are heading toward Lake Champlain. So every wastewater facility in these counties, they are affluent, yes, discharges to a river and then heads to Lake Champlain. The problem that happens quite often is when systems are overwhelmed by natural disasters and you have raw effluent being put into the rivers that finds its way into. Ocean because they can't keep up with trying to treat it all. Well, I mean this is a problem. The entire United States, this is a problem of infrastructure not being able to handle growth. And so here in a state like ours, you have much older wastewater systems and it's something like 90% of the wastewater facilities in the state of Vermont are undersized and underfunded. Vermont is not unique in that sense. There are plenty of states dealing with this and there are plenty of states with much more lax regulation than we have here in Vermont with much more serious pollution issues. So that is a whole different topic, but to get back to the brewery way, so when we opened the production brewery and then we had high strength liquid waste going down that drain, the state came knocking on our door, obviously. And so unbeknownst to us, that's when we entered into the world of discharge permits of direct discharge permits and indirect discharge permits. And without boring your listeners too much, when we produce beer, we produce organic waste. If you put in X pounds of yeast into a batch of beer to ferment, you get 10 x pounds of yeast out at the end of fermentation because the yeast grows and you don't use it all. So you always have excess when you are making a batch of beer, have hot unfermented wort in a whirl tank that cannot be salvaged for beer. So it's part of the waste system. So those hops in that unfermented sugar will have to go someplace and then throughout the system, after we dry hop a beer, you have to pull that beer infused hops out of there and dispose of them. Is that tank wash also? That's all. Part of tank wash is different because it's handled differently. So all of the high strength waste that is easily, it's called side streaming, that is easily side streamed that you saw here at the brewery. That's the stuff that we collect in drums and 250 gallon cube totes. And that is what a pumping truck comes five days a week. I mean, folks just go to the website and take a look at this diagram. I'm holding this diagram up and we could put it up on the screen later as a graphic, but this diagram says it all. I mean, look at the lengths that you're going to make sure that you are having the least amount of impact on the environment. Explain this. This is fascinating. I'm going to wrap it up quick. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. So that side streaming waste gets taken by a pumper truck five days a week, and that liquid waste is delivered to various anaerobic digesters in the state of Vermont. Turns it into energy basically. There it is processed, the energy is extracted, it's converted into electricity and put back into the grid. The solid waste that comes out of that process is then field applied for agriculture. The water part of that is put back into the aquifer, so the waste that eventually goes down, our drains here at the brewery, this is not the human waste, the toilets, that all goes directly to the sewer system and that's the way it works. Our brewery waste that we produce goes down the floor, drains into a series of tanks. There are two 5,000 gallon tanks buried in our front yard. The first one holds is a settling tank for solids. The second one is the pumping tank for then the liquid effluent that's brought into our own in-house wastewater treatment system, which is an aerobic digester. So the bacteria that helps us break down our waste stream lives with oxygen. So we keep that alive with air and we keep it happy. Our waste is as a constant pass through system as the waste goes through, it is worked upon by the bacteria. We inject a polymer that is, I ironically charged and attracts the solids which float, and we those out and those skimmed solids go with the pumper truck to the anaerobic digesters, the liquid that then gets discharged from our brewery into the town of stove's wastewater system. A three bedroom single family home on average puts out 3.5 pounds of BODA day. It's biological oxygen demand. It's food for bacteria. So 3.5 pounds a day, our brewery consistently puts out less than 0.1 of one pound of VODA day. That's. Ridiculous. It's amazing. So you're basically running an entire brewery and having a lower impact, an incredibly much lower impact than the average home, a three bedroom home in Stowe. Correct. And what we put into the town of STOs waste system is actually diluting people's waste on the mountain road. So we're putting thousands of gallons of dilution into the system. So we're actually making their job easier down in the waste treatment facility because they get less high concentrated waste when we are discharging our effluent. All we've spent time talking about just now is just the water management, the water treatment, the wastewater management. You power both your breweries. You have one in Waterbury, I believe one in Stowe. Both are powered by solar. Our Waterbury facility is 100% solar powered through an offsite solar farm. We have onsite solar panels on our storage barn there that takes us over 100%. So everything that we produce on property panels, we donate that to the senior center in Waterbury to pay for their electric bills. The Stow Brewery, were just a little over 50% powered by solar with onsite solar panels raised in our parking lot. The plan here is someday soon, I would think within the next, certainly within the next five years. We have a plan. We just did a small addition here and we have a plan to cover our mechanical space outdoors with additional solar panels, which will give us about almost 2000 square feet of solar array. That should cover that other 50%. Then we'll be a hundred percent solar at both breweries. So you're making an impact with the wastewater management making an impact by managing the energy consumption with your own solar powered panels that you've erected at both facilities. You are recycling your CO2 and you're using your CO2 and your actual brewing brewery operations. Can you explain that? Yeah, can I. Please open this? Open a beer. Oh yeah. Can we open it together? Sure. What. Should I open I I've been staring at this. For an hour. Now my throat's starting. So what am I drinking? Well, if you're drinking what I'm drinking, this is which is a rotating beer that I make where I get to experiment with new varieties of hops. This one is called NZ 1 0 1 because it's still an experimental hop. It has not been given like a fancy name. It's delightful. It's from New Zealand. It's very fruit forward. It's tastes like weed. It's good. Let's listen. Oh, all right. Oh my gosh. Doesn't that smell nice? It smells so good. I have the producers in the room and they don't get any, and that's okay. Okay, come on. On three. I on two three. Oh, John. Isn't that good? That is delicious. Yeah, that citrus orange rind. Very nice citrus taste to it. It's got a little bit of. A little of dank weed in the. Fish. Dan dank weed punch, a little pungent. Tastes like good hash. Yeah, this is fantastic. Well, thank you for sending this. Thank you. Friday, Thursday. So this back to that conversation, this beer is canned with CO2, but nothing that you're buying externally, something that you're actually manufacturing in your own operation. Yeah, so a few years ago there was a CO2 shortage. Prior to that, we had had hopes to be able to use our own CO2, but the technology wasn't there yet. And so it was really just about five years ago or so that this company, earthly Labs that's based out in Texas, we met these folks and they got the technology sized down so that a brewery our size could now start using this technology. So we ferment beer, and when you ferment beer, yeast eats chains of sugars and they produce CO2 and they produce alcohol, the CO2 bubbles out of the fermentor and into the atmosphere and the alcohol stays in. So basically we are. This is so good. I'm sorry I had to interrupt you. This is so good. Go ahead. I'm. Sorry. We are greenhouse gas producers, so that's something that we wanted to deal with and do the best that we could. So when Earthly Labs came along, we were one of their very first customers, and we worked with them for well over a year that we got our first machine of tinkering and figuring out the machine and helping them. They were a new company and we are really good at this kind of stuff. And so Joel, who works with us, he's my right hand man. He spearheaded this and worked with them over many months and basically helped them design their next type of machine. So through all of that work, we got the machine optimized here in Stowe. And then about a year after we did that, we were able to afford and install one in Waterbury. So now both breweries have CO2 reclamation machines and basically our beer ferments, we start fermenting on a Tuesday. It's usually done by Sunday, and our CO2 tanks are usually full for the next week by midday on Friday. So as the beer is fermenting and the CO2 is being churned out, we now channel that through this machine. The machine heats it up, dries it out, chills it back down again, and turns it into liquid CO2 and fills our doer tanks here at the brewery, which are pressurized liquid CO2 tanks. So we are now self-sufficient and we produce our own CO2, so we no longer purchase industrially produced. CO2 is amazing. Not only is it not being transformed, I mean when you look at the impact of anything, of course you'd be like, oh, so you're just making CO2 and you're just not using someone else's that they're making anyway. It's like, yes. But what you're not thinking about is all the infrastructure and the impact of to transport their transport, their delivery. All of that is eliminated now because we do it. And not only that, but of course every decision that Jen and I make, we make our decisions from the heart. Of course, we're led by our heart, but we are both very savvy business people and we are very aware of what's going to save us money in the short term, long term, all of that. So having technology like this, when other corporations cry about, we can't afford this, we can't afford that, what about the stockholders? It's all bullshit. They can't afford it. They don't want to it. So we like to try to be an example of it is good business. It does pay back. You got to just have a long view on these things. And quite often a lot of corporations are worried about daily gains and they're not. Isn't amazing, that kind of thing. Isn't it amazing that you've been able to build an operation, an unbelievable brewery with unbelievable brands of beer that you've developed underneath it, craft beer in a socially economically, environmentally friendly way, and your reward is that you're considered one of the best beers in the world? I mean, I'm not understating it. I mean, talk about Hattie Topper. I know at one point I read an article at one point in one year, it was the number four beer in the world. Maybe it's now risen up the ranks and is considered, I think it's the best IPIA I've ever had. But isn't it amazing that you've built a company on the foundational elements of we're going to do things and we're going to do it right. We're not going to worry about shareholder value or things like that. Yes, we're in a business and we want to make money, but we're going to start, our ethos is we're going to start with doing it right and the rest will follow. And it has followed you. These beers that are in front of me, they're, they're delicious. They're incredible. They're sought after your place in Stowe is walking into a museum because of your commitment to local artists and your commitment to the community. I just think it is absolutely amazing. I loved you before I met you and before I loved what you were producing. I loved you even more after my visit and learning more about you and Jen and what you're doing there and the people you have working as a family of employees and seeing what you're doing up there is if everybody could see that the world would be a much better and could operate like that, the world would be a much better place. I'm sorry. It's the truth. It's the truth. It's the truth. Well, thank you. Thank you. Genuinely, it is one of those things that we talk about a lot and it's what motivates people, what motivates people. I mean, people are motivated by different things. And I didn't get into business because I'm going to save the world. We got into business, we want to make a living, and everybody's got to work. And I was fortunate enough, find my passion and that has carried through. Not everybody is lucky enough to find their passion. And that's a hard thing. That's a gift. It's a gift. When you do. That. We were able to do this and the fact that I met Jen, the fact that Jen met me and that both of our strengths play so well together. I mean, there's just so much to that. That is crazy when I think about it. And. How did you guys meet, meet. The serendipity of it at the Vermont Pub Brewery up in Burlington in 1990, spring of 96, we had our first date. I had started at the Vermont Pub Brewery in November of 95. I stepped into a shit show and spent two months scrubbing every tank in the place and cleaning things and getting them the way I needed them to be that winter. Maybe February, maybe March, probably March. One day I'm standing at work, I'm top of the brewery stairs, kind of back of house talking to my manager, the restaurant manager, and the kitchen door swung open, and I turned and I looked and I saw this incredible, beautiful person standing at the coffee machine, a door swung shut. And I was like, holy shit, who's that? And Chris is like, oh, that's Jen Maley. I was like, Jen Maley. All right. So I started following Jen around and made myself known. And a couple weeks later, I asked her out on a date and she said, no. I said, why not? She said, because I work seven days a week, I don't have time. And that was like, oh my God, if I could have taken a pill to make me love even more, I had just taken it. Then I found out she worked that hard. It was like, oh, she's awesome. So of course I played it cool. And I was like, all right, that's cool. And two weeks later maybe she asked me out on a date. Oh wow. Wow. And what was. That? What was that first date like? I never left. She made me dinner and I never left. Do you remember what you ate? Do you remember what you ate? I do. I remember what movie we watched. I remember what she made me. That's. Love. And about one month after that first date, we were engaged. Fast. I asked her to marry me, and she said yes. We didn't tell anybody, but it was Thanksgiving of that same year. So six months later, seven months later, that I was able to scrounge up enough money to get a very, very small ring and asked her to marry me. And we were married a year and a half after our first date. Oh, that's amazing. We just had our 26th wedding anniversary in September. That is awesome. Congratulations. And son, Charlie. We opened our original brew pub on November 29th, 2003. And on the morning of November 30th, we found out we were having a baby. Wow. Everything was very, very sere det 19. Yes. He's 19 and he goes to UVM now. And so when I think about all of this stuff, and I think about the kind of business that we've created, we both knew right away that we shared the same values, values we have always, how do I get into this? Without getting too into it. You just get into it. Very, very strict German Catholic family. In my time of indoctrination, I saw a lot of hypocrisy and that just doesn't fly with me. And so when I see all this hypocrisy in a world that purports to be so on track, I said to myself, self, that's bullshit. And I don't want anything to do with it. So I have focused on doing tangible things. I don't do things because I think I'm going to get some heavenly reward when I fucking die. I do things and Jen does things because this is it. This is our shot. I don't care what you believe, what you believe doesn't matter bit. The reality is this is it. We get one shot. You want to be an asshole or do you not want to be an asshole? I don't want to be an asshole. I want to do everything I can to not leave a destructive trail of John in my wake. And so for Jen and I, we both feel the same way. We find the same things important. We find the same things not so important, and we walk the walk and there's not a lot of people. Oh, you certainly do. Think like that. I shouldn't say there's not a lot. There's not enough everybody, A lot of people get started. They have good intentions and then they get a little money and good intentions go out the window. Did you always know both of you, but did you always know that this what you're doing right now is what you wanted to do? Or was there a different path that you were going down and somehow you took the turn and said, this is what I want to do? Where was it where you said, this is my path? Well, when I discovered brewing, that's when I found that path. That was it. That was the turn. When Jen and I met, that was that path. When we started building plans together, we have always been very, very open to what leads people through life and the opportunity when it presents itself and having the guts to take opportunity when it presents itself, having the guts to not be distracted by distractions and to not be pulled in the wrong direction. There's a lot of easier ways through life, but we weren't really interested in easy. We wanted to, we're both big on taking up challenges and creating and building and all of those things. I mean, it all comes out of wanting to be your own boss. You want to be your own boss, great. But if you have people that work with you, what kind of boss are you going to be? And we always wanted to be exceptional bosses, the best boss. Well, having spent just a little bit of time that we spent when we were at the brewery with some of your team members, nobody's walking around with a frown on their face. They, they usually have other issues. And those people kind of filter their way out of the alchemist. For the most part, the people that we encountered we're very, very happy to be there. And on that note, happy, which one should we open next? I know you want to open another one. Which one should we do? I'm sticking with this one, but by all means, since we're doing this show, you should open multiple and try different. Ones. But you have to tell me which ones I should open next. Well, I see a crush here. I see Pappy Secret Stash. I think I sent you a double 12. And what's that one in the back? I. Got a rapture. Oh. And then beautiful neon light. Back there. So it. Depends on what kind of beer you want to drink. You have a light lager, you have a vanilla milk porter. You have a double IPA. You have a Belgian double. And I forget what's in the back again already. Where's the Belgian? Double? Oh. Double. You have another idea. The double D. Double double tw. That's a Belgian double. Double tw. Should I try the double ble? Sure. Of course. I just like saying the name Double Tle. Of course you have. A, is that, how is that, I'm going to sound after I drink this beer. Well, there's a funny story behind that beer name. So when we were at the pub, I used to, we have a lot of fun. We smoke a lot of weed and we come up with good beer names. And I love, so at the time that double 12. Smoking like a true Vermonter. Yeah. Smoke a lot of weed. We come up with some great beer names. Go. Ahead. At the same time that Double Tule was on the menu, I also had a Scottish Wee Heavy, which is a strong multi scotch ale that was called We Whittle Web it. We whittle web it. So I had a lot say that five times. You'd see these big burly dudes come into the bar and they'd order a double twel and a, we would web it. So I'm going to open the double twel, right? Sure. Larry, I'm going to open it up. Let me, there we go. So this is a Belgian inspired, malt driven rich winter type beer. Oh, it just feels like I'm sitting in a lodge right now just sniffing it. Now when you drink, you can smell like the phs of the yeast kind of spicy, a little bit of clovey kind of character. And then when you drink it, you get this amazing, rich malt character of dried fruit kind of figs and dried cherries and raisin kind of flavor in there. This is delicious. That is all. I want to start a fire right now and just sit in front of it, kick my feet up and just end my evening with one of these. That's perfect. Start a Vermont fire. Gary. Vermont Fire. You know what? I got to come up and see you. My wife is dying to come up to the brewery, so we're definitely going to make a trip before the winter's over if you're not going. Are you going away anytime soon? Very soon. We'll get our winter vacation soon. Where are you heading? I'm digressing for one second. To Tortola and British Virgin Islands. Oh, we've talked about You've been there before. Oh yeah. We love it there. Yeah. My wife and I spent our 10th anniversary at Peter Island in the BVI and did the whole Virgin Goda, the whole, oh my. God. The baths. The baths. Yeah. We're going there next Sunday. Oh my God. How long are you going for? No, cruise ships on Sunday, so we're going on Sunday. We're going to be down there for two weeks. Oh my gosh. That is awesome. Good for you. Well, you deserve a nice restful, warm vacation and then you're back after that. You're back in Vermont. Then we're back for the best part of the winter. So maybe we will venture up and come see you and stay nearby. February, March, April. All great months to come up. Awesome. I want to talk about mean, we talked about a lot of the things that you're doing from an environmental standpoint. We didn't even touch on the fact that you recycle your malt bags, you've got multiple recycling programs. Nothing goes to waste. Your goal is to put nothing in the trash, literally in the trash. You're trying to use everything and repurpose everything. We do our best, that's for sure. Yeah. Our malt bags actually, we collect those and when we have full 53 foot trailers, those get sent to a factory that makes treks decking, so that artificial decking that people build their porches out of, so the carbon from those bags, that plastic gets sequestered for certainly a lifetime. Who knows, till the aliens come back and figure something out with it. And then. Turn plastic into fusion. Until that happens, we're all kind of fucked. And even your retail shop, I loved when we were together, we tried some of the Chetty topper, which you're using some of the beer that couldn't be put into cans, and you're repurposing it into something that is equally as delicious. Actually, when we're at the end of a canning run, as soon as we make the call, so because our beer is unfiltered and unpasteurized, there'll be some sediment in the bottom of the tank so it won't pass mustard to go into a can, but it's still perfectly good beer. And so we will actually fill kegs off of there. And that's what goes to our friend Rick, and he turns that into our cheddar cheese that we sell here at the brewery. Which you can only get at the brewery. Yeah, I actually saw it out in the store. I got to talk to Rick about that. So I have, it's supposed to be exclusively available at the brewery. Yeah, yeah. Actually there's the Alchemist. We have a YouTube channel, and if you dig through there, you'd find a video of the day. One of the days when we went down and I made a batch of that cheddar cheese with Rick. That was a fun day. I want to ask you, and I commend you for it as much as I hate you for it, which is why can't I get your beer in New Jersey? And I know the reason. I know the answer. Well, you can, but only at select times Can I get head each chopper? Sure. Twice, three times a twice a year. And our local liquor shop carries it and they hide it and they hide it, and you have to come in and request it. And if you're lucky enough to get in there in time and know that it's coming, you can get it. But other than that, I can't get it. Why is that intentional? Well, yeah. You told me. You know what you told me when I was with you? I go, Hey, can you ship some of this to my house? And you know what you said to me? Absolutely not. You want it come up here and get it. Yeah. We don't bake enough and we don't want to. How do you keep, go ahead. We make, we don't want to expand. We could make 20 times the amount of beer that we make right now and we'd sell it all. But. How much is enough is what you said to me. You're fine. You're fine doing the best that you do and making it the best and it doesn't matter. And we would do that same level of attention and care. If we made 180,000 barrels a year instead of 18, but we'd work more, we'd worry even more. We are not the kind of people that can contract that out to somebody else. That ain't happening. It's only going to happen. We make our beer. It's all made here in Vermont. We don't do any contract bullshit. And it is what it is. So we don't want to be any bigger. We have, I think 48 employees right now, which blows our mind. It's fantastic. It's rewarding, it's satisfying. We are more successful than we ever dreamt. And to what end? When I was in college, I did my whole senior thesis on the brewing industry and how it evolved since World War II and all of this stuff. And I'd learned then, I mean, history repeats itself. There is a certain size brewery that you really, really put yourself at risk when you hit a certain threshold. And I don't think there's many brewery owners out there that think like that. No, there's not. But you know what you do. Over Covid. If it hadn't been for PPP money, you would have seen thousands of craft breweries close. Go out of business, go out of business because. Of exactly what I'm talking about. You hit a certain size and you're too big to pivot. You're a big fat ship that can't turn quickly. But you know what I loved about what you said to me about you got to come up here and get it. I mean, the experience of coming up to your brewery and being there, and we were there in the summer and you had some music festival that was taking place in the back and it just felt like you were family there. You know what I mean? As a customer, you felt like you were family there. And I thought that was really special. And when you grow massively, you could potentially lose that specialness. Not potentially. You will lose that. And that's what we're shooting for. And we've often said in many interviews, that's what makes life great. That's what makes travel great when you travel, everybody that travels outside of this country, even in this country. But if you are fortunate enough to be able to travel outside of this country, what do you love to do? What is the number one thing you do, hopefully other than having sex on your vacation? But aside from that, you're going to go eat, you're going to go drink. And when you find awesome places and you have incredible experiences, that is what makes your vacation amazing. And there's a certain level of intent on our part to create that experience. No, it's clear. You shouldn't be able to get great things all the time everywhere. You just shouldn't. And more and more, the human race are so spoiled and petulant. They want everything now and they just want it now. If you can have that, I should be able to have it. Well, tough shit. You can't have it. You got to come here to get it. You got to make the effort to get here, to get. And I love that you said that to me, and let me tell you something, it resonated because as much as I love this beer that you sent me, and I love it, I love it. There's something more special about drinking this with there, right? Sure. There's something about place, place. Matters when you take psychedelics, set and setting. It's a very big part of it. Coming here, sitting here, smelling the brewery, seeing the people that work here, having that experience, we are intent on providing that opportunity for you to come up here and have a unique life experience. What's next for you? Do you think about that much? Yeah. Vacation's next, but I'm saying in terms of I know you don't want to grow beyond a certain number, but what's next? How do you constantly innovate and come up with new things and is that part of what's next? Just constantly just being creative and introducing art on a new can. I'm just throwing it out there. What's the next big thing. For you? I don't want to sound like a broken record, Garrett, but I'm pretty sure I told you we smoke a lot of weed up here in Vermont, so that's next. We're constantly thinking of creative and fun, new things, and some are preposterous and will never happen, but some are just crazy enough that they will happen. So I mean, sure, we have projects in current currently happening. We have things that are kind of on a two, three year plan. We have things that are going to be really cool in five years and even longer. I mean, we have a laundry list of ideas for this place. So it starts to come down to, okay, well, like the whole business side of things. How much money do you want to spend on cool things? We love cool things. And again, we'd like to create that experience. So where do I see myself in the future? It's just more of the same. I mean, we are hurling into the future and constantly trying to refine and make ourselves a little bit better and a little bit more efficient. Well, for those of the. Without sacrificing anything quality base. So really Jen and I both, I mean we've had so many over the years, we've been offered stupid money. People have tried to buy us numerous times in dark moments, half considerate. And I don't know if I spoke to you about this at all when we were together, but. You did, but go ahead. You did. Yeah. It was it. The most recent one was in Covid because the sharks start swimming, the opportunistic. They know you're hurting or that things are bad opportunistic. They come in and they. Heaters Come out of the woodwork and they know, Hey, they're probably it's a stressful time. They might just want to sell. Let's try them again. That kind of thing. And so we had to make that decision once again. And this last time we made it, I mean we both came to the exact same conclusion separately, is that this is what we do. If we ever stopped doing what we do with The Alchemist, we'd be starting something new right away. And why the hell would we do that? We've spent all these years building this gleaming, shiny, beautiful train that is hurdling forward that we have now attached 48 other cars to, we're not going to jump off and say, see you later. Good luck. We're going to keep charging and doing what we do, and in an ideal world, live to a hundred and I'm going to be doing this into my nineties and just keep doing it until I drop dead. Well, you know what? This is not the only time that we're going to sit down and have a conversation together. I know that for a fact, and I want to sit down with you and Jen on the next visit that we have with each other. She sounds amazing, and I have yet to meet her and I can't wait to meet her. And for all of our listeners and viewers that are listening and watching this podcast and watching it on YouTube, if you haven't been to The Alchemist, just close your eyes for a second and think of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for beer, because that's what they've created. If you go up there, every single one of your senses is going to be stimulated by the experience of going up there. And I strongly encourage everyone who's listening and watching to go do that, because I walked in there and it was like a mind fuck. I mean, I'm just telling you that I'm using, I'm swearing for the first time in this podcast, but there's no better descriptor than that because that's what it was. It's like you've taken the tanks that you use to store your beer, and you've created life-size versions of your cans with this beautiful artwork. You support so many local artists to come in and do the work both inside the brewery and on the cans and on the tanks. It is truly an experience that everyone, if you do not leave this world without having taken a visit to The Alchemist in Stow Vermont, that's my 5 cents. Okay, cool. Yeah. Amazing. That's what we shoot for. We do love to support the arts. That is one of our big passions in life, and that's what we want. We want people to walk in that front door and to just stop in their tracks and take that first look around and see what we've created there. And boy, oh boy, is it going to just keep on going. I mean, we have some really cool stuff in the works currently that is just, I mean, it give us 10 years even, and this place will really knock your socks off. So John, where can listeners and viewers find you on social and more information about you and the brewery? Where can they go to dial into what you're doing and check you out? Obviously, I would love to have you kind of tell them. Sure. I mean, our web address is alchemist beer.com. Our Instagram is at Alchemist beer, and the E's are all threes, which is a funny story also. Really the fact that the E's are threes. Yeah, so this is 2015. Instagram's brand new, and a friend of ours, unbeknownst, I mean, he told us when it happened, but it just didn't even click. We were at a beer festival out in California and he It's this thing called Instagram, and it was picture of us at the beer festival. I was like, oh, that's cool. And he's like, yeah, I created you an account. Here's the name and the password. I was like, oh, cool. So maybe a year later, one of our employees was setting up our Instagram accounts and then all of a sudden there is Instagram and it's live, and I see it, and I was like, why are all the e threes? And he's like, because Alchemist beer was already taken. I was like, oh, shit. Then. It was. Four months later that I was like, Hey, wait a second. I said. Oh my gosh, he registered it in his name. Well, no, it was registered. I had all the information, but I totally forgot about it. So. You just figured I got to do it over. By the time we realized that we had so many followers on the one with the threes that we just. That's a great story. One's a dead account. That's a great story. We couldn't switch everybody over, but whatever. It looks kind of cool. It's. Different. It does look cool. Yeah. It does look cool. And Facebook, all that shit, but you can find all that stuff online. The website really goes into depth. We've been working on the website a lot, so we have artist links in there. We have stuff about the Alchemist Foundation where where we give away scholarships, all of that stuff. And of course, where's the ultimate place they can find you, John. Social racial equity program that we have. So many different things are on there, and yeah, find us here in Stow Vermont. That's the ultimate place. That's the experience. And you're usually there, right? You're there a. Lot. Seven days a week. Is that a lot? That's a lot. That's a lot. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to be with me today, and I know it took us a little bit to get connected, but I am so grateful and I can't wait to sit down with Jen and talk to her a little bit. I would love to have her perspective being this unbelievably impactful woman business executive in a craft artistry industry is amazing in one. Of the most male dominated industries there is, and lemme tell you how we have pulled back from that. The whole, ah, it is rough beer festivals. It's just a big bro down. It's just a bunch of dudes standing around patting each other on the back, and it's just. Will you promise me that our next time together that you'll have Jen on this interview with us? Gosh. I'll insist on it. I'm sick of talking to. You. Well, I've enjoyed talking to you. It's been a blast, and I can't thank you enough, and I know you're just trying to jab me a little bit and that's okay. But you've given me enough beers. That I, I'm the six Garrett. You will. You've given me enough beers to numb myself, so it doesn't really matter at all. So yeah, thank you for that. Wow, what an incredible interview with John. That was just absolutely amazing. For more information on this episode as well as other episodes in this series, head over to our website at Bike to Bites podcast.com. You can also find us on YouTube at Bike to Bites. Be sure to give us a like and subscribe while you're there and if you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, we would appreciate a five star rating and a glowing review. It really does help spread the word. Check out our Instagram at Bike debits tv and be sure to follow my personal Instagram at Garrett a best where I post shots of my daily rides and interesting places I visit. If you're interested in watching the Bike de Bites TV show, please visit bike de bytes.com. We also have some really cool stuff of Bike de Bites apparel and some other things that you can check out. While you're there, I want to thank our sponsor. E plus E plus helps organizations harness the power of technology for truly transformative results from AI and security to cloud and workplace transformation. Plus, brings the right solutions at the right time in the most efficient way. Plus is on the front lines of today's modern enterprise. Check them out@eplus.com and remember, pedal eat and repeat. We'll see you next time.