[Editor’s Note: This article is the second part of a two-part series. Read part 1 here.]
Truth be told, there weren’t a huge number of hop-heads speaking of the Lycoming County or Williamsport microbrew scenes in terms of a “craft-beer revolution” until Mike Hiller moved back to town a few years ago. And if you ever get a chance to hear Hiller himself tell the story–the story of why he and his young bride, Kira, chose to trade in their new life in the big city of Boston for a grinding existence in a former manufacturing town of just 30,000 souls–well, you may finally come to understand what all this brewpub and craft-beer business is really all about.
In a word, it’s about independence. And it’s about a brotherhood–and a sisterhood–of truly passionate, entrepreneurial souls who see the dream of free-market capitalism to be an escape from the endless backstabbing and ladder-climbing of the open marketplace.
“It is a weird culture,” says Katie Bell, who works for the Williamsport/Lycoming County branch of the Keystone Innovation Zone, a state-funded business incubator that assists entrepreneurs and start-up companies across Pennsylvania. “They all help each other; they’re all friendly at these festivals. It’s just an interesting industry. It’s not the normal business mentality, I guess you could say. And I think the way they look at it is that they’d probably rather see more craft breweries go into business to compete with the big dogs, because all the big companies are now trying to do these craft beers. So I think they’d rather support each other.”
In the summer of 2007, those were Mike Hiller’s sentiments exactly. It was in July of that year that he and Kira, after an exhausting two years, six months, and two days of writing business plans and hunting for finances, finally introduced their Bavarian Barbarian Brewing Co. to the world.
The Bavarian sits just one block over from the Koch’s Bullfrog Brewery, which was already 11 years old by the time Hiller brewed his very first official batch of Hammerin’ Ale, a hoppy and amber-colored beer that was designed specifically for the under-developed palates of beer drinkers who are more familiar with the tasteless lagers produced by the so-called Big Three: Anheuser-Busch, Coors and Miller.
It was a shrewd early decision on Hiller’s part, although perhaps not altogether surprising when you consider that Hiller’s decision to finally make his craft-beer dream a reality was solidified after reading an autobiographical how-to book, Brewing Up A Business, by one of the industry’s leading rock-star celebs: Sam Caglione, the founder of Delaware’s hugely successful Dogfish Head Craft Brewery.
“I’d had the idea of starting my own brewery in the past,” says Hiller, as he tells the story of his company’s founding. “But mostly it was just something that I’d toyed around with in the back of my mind. I just remember reading [Caglione’s book], and feeling like everything that I’d ever thought about starting my own brewery was right there. When I read that book, I kind of got the sense that… well, that I could actually do this! And it really kind of inspired me just to try, and just to see how far we could actually take it.”
Without a doubt, Hiller and his wife have taken it quite far over the past two years. Granted, the Bavarian doesn’t have its own restaurant or on-site pub–just a tasting room, known as the Horde Room, where Hiller’s Steel Drivin’ Stout and Weldspatter IPA are sipped by visitors at the end of every brewery tour.
And no, the $300,000 in financing that Mike and Kira borrowed to open their business hasn’t exactly been paid back, and for the time being, Mike and Kira are the Bavarian’s solitary employees. Mike even spends two evenings a week making deliveries to bars and pizza shops throughout the state, and he still puts in about 12 hours of work each day, six days a week, just as he did during the brewery’s first few months.
“We’ve been struggling since the very beginning,” he says, after being asked if he ever thinks about just throwing it all away, and going back to his old life as a metal fabricator. “We’ve been open for almost 19 months now, and we’ve just had to scrape through, really. It can be very frustrating.”
But financial stressors notwithstanding, the future is decidedly bright for the Hillers and their quickly rising business, as well as for the Koch family and theirs, and as a result, for just about any of the scrappy new upstarts in the Williamsport and Lycoming Country craft-beer scene. That is, provided they’re willing to work like dogs for little recognition and even less pay.
And provided they’re willing to work with each other, and not against each other, in an effort to entice the hoards of microbrew fanatics who regularly tour the country in search of the latest and most obscure craft breweries.
If the last few years are any indication, the brewers of Williamsport are doing something right. The 45-employee Bullfrog, for instance, won a gold medal at the 2008 Great American Beer Festival in Denver for its barrel-aged Beekeeper beer, a bottle of which recently sold on eBay for upwards of $300, according to Bob Koch–who, by the way, was so dedicated to the success of his brewery back in 1996 that he used his house as collateral on the bank loan.
“It was a risky business move,” Bob admits. “But I wanted to help [my son], and let him live his dream as I had lived mine with the baseball card shop.”
To this day, the 67-year-old Bob maintains a steady and involved presence at the brewpub. And as for the Hillers, some might argue that the Bavarian itself is most responsible for finally putting Williamsport on the craft-brew map. After all, just about any serious beer drinker in town can tell you that the Bavarian is the first production brewery to do business out of Williamsport in more than 50 years. That’s a fact that has caused the local media, perhaps not surprisingly, to sit up straight and take notice.
Of course, the Koch family has taken notice as well, and with the help of the Bullfrog’s highly skilled brewmaster, Terry Hawdaker, they’ve released a series of limited-edition beers, aged in oak barrels. On the morning of the latest release, 44 customers from as far away as Michigan and Ohio were lined up outside the door, with money in hand. The 180 available bottles sold out in 20 minutes.
And yet still, the Williamsport brewers refuse to treat each other as competitors in any other industry might. When a popular area restaurant known as The Valley Inn, for instance, recently decided to install a small brewpub of its own, Mike Hiller hastily sent over his own brewmaster to help out with the installation of tanks.
“I think we took a big risk in coming and doing this in Williamsport, especially,” says Bob Koch. “And others have benefitted from that. But we all get along. And you know what? It’s been fun.”
Dan Eldridge is a small business and entrepreneurship journalist based in Philadelphia. He is also the founder of Young Pioneers Media. Send feedback here.
Photos:
Jim Wright – owner of the Abby Wright Brewing Company
Tank in the Bavarian Barbarian Brewing Facility
Bavarian Barbarian Brewing Facility
Outside at the Bullfrog Brewing Company
Bartender in action at the Bullfrog Brewery
All Photographs by Brad Bower