The Germany Expat Business Show
A podcast that shares knowledge, stories and inspiration for anyone starting, running or growing a business as a non-German in Germany.
The Germany Expat Business Show
Prost! Bringing More Beer Innovation to Germany with Higgins Ale Works
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Jen and her husband Paul Higgins are originally from NJ. A career opportunity for Paul brought them to Munich in 2003 and Jen kept her IT career on track so they stayed.
In 2018 they founded a small craft beer brewery in the heart of Munich's brewing district, creating American styled ales. In 2022, they opened a taproom next door to the brewery and have enjoyed meeting locals, expats, craft beer fans and brewers from around the world.
In our conversation we discussed:
How they expected to stay in Munich ‘A couple of years’ and why they’ve been here for almost 20(!)
Even though Munich is the beer capital of the world, they missed craft beer and slowly but surely, they pursued their passion to found Higgins Aleworks in 2018.
The process of establishing a business that involves beer and consumables
Starting a business as a hobby and leveraging the luxury of time
The ‘Reinheitsgebot’ and how it impacts beer innovation (or lack thereof)
A lucky coincidence that has to do with starting a brewery in a bakery
Controversy! Can vs. Bottles
How the pandemic actually forced them forward with their business and make strategic partnerships with competitors
How they found a space for their taproom in Munich’s impossible commercial real estate market
How they use Google Maps and LinkedIn for marketing
You can find this episode and all episodes as well as show notes for each at https://thegermanylist.de/the-germany-expat-business-show-podcast/
Starting or running a business in Germany as a foreigner? Already running an online business in Germany as an expat? Wanting to grow your German-based business? Working as a freelancer in Germany? You'll love my guide with over 30 resources for expat business owners in Germany.
Hi, I'm Eleanor Meyerhofer, a native Californian designer and digital strategist. In October of 1999, a few years after graduating from design school, I flew from San Francisco to Munich with a fistful of Deutschmarks, a dial-up connection and an extremely vague plan. Twenty-plus years later, after a 10-year stint at a global agency freelancing and launching two online businesses, I'm still here. Now I'm talking to other expat business owners to share knowledge, stories and inspiration for other non-Germans running businesses in Germany. So I am here with Jen Canale of Higgins Aleworks and Jen. I'm going to kick it off with the question I ask everyone on this podcast, which is can you tell me the two-minute story of how you ended up in Germany? Hi, yes.
Speaker 2:I sure can. Thanks, eleanor. Thanks for inviting me to the podcast. I'm really very, very honored to be part of this niche group of people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my husband and I came to Munich in 2003 for his job kind of a classic expat story and after about a year of looking for work, I finally landed a really great position with an American company, a software company that had a European headquarters here. So it was a really good fit for my skill set. They were very happy to have a Native American English speaker in the team, which, of course, contributed to my very slow absorption of the German language. I can relate, yes, and you know, we expected to be here just for a couple of years, but we felt very comfortable. We like the culture, we like the city, the location. So here we are, 20 years later and somewhere in there we decided that we were really missing craft beer, okay, because of course, this is the beer capital of the world and the beer is very good, but it's not very diverse. So, slowly but surely, we started to pursue that passion and we founded Higgins Aleworks in 2018.
Speaker 1:Okay, and just real quick, where in the States are you guys from in 2018. Okay, and just real quick, where in the States are you guys from? We're from New Jersey, okay, okay, so East Coast it's still a trek home, but not that far Not too bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if we can get a direct flight, we're always happy, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, okay, so you started not a diverse beer scene. So the irony of me living in Germany is I'm not really a big beer drinker. Um, so can you tell me a little bit about the beer scene not being diverse here? Like what that sure?
Speaker 2:I mean the German beer, of course is is famous, uh, obviously, for, for all the right reasons.
Speaker 2:Uh, the quality is great, the volume is huge, it's the biggest producer in Europe and probably worldwide, maybe outside of the US and the beer styles are typically Helles and Lagers and Dunkles and Wheat Beer. Those are, at least in Bavaria, those are the predominant beer styles and, of course, and there are other areas within Germany, such as Franconia or Bamberg, where they do more specialized beer styles that are very, very unique, but it's still somewhat traditional, right? The recipes, and what you don't see or what we didn't find for many, many years, were the things that we were getting used to in the US, which was IPAs, india pale ales, american pale ale styles, cream ales, let's say, a more intensive hop profile because of the hop varieties that are used from different parts of the world as well as as well as yeast and malt, but you know other things go into the beer, but that's kind of a a key differentiator in the beer styles, I would say, between a traditional German beer and a craft beer, let's say an American style craft beer.
Speaker 2:that it's. The American style is more hop intensive than the flavor profile which gives fruit flavors and herbal-y flavors, so things that you wouldn't get such a strong taste in a traditional German beer.
Speaker 1:Okay. So you guys said you know what we really miss these IPAs. Why don't we just start making them ourselves?
Speaker 2:Kind of yeah, I mean, it was, it was. My husband was a hobby brewer in the States. Okay, that's where the passion started and you know from our, from the very first moment that we met, I was drinking his craft beers and then we were visiting craft breweries all across the US. This is in the 90s, so it was still relatively a young market, even in the US. Today there's over 10,000 craft breweries in the US.
Speaker 2:So, in a 30-year, 25, 30-year period it's really just exploded. But here I always say it's kind of like 1998 back in the States. We're still in a pioneer phase, and there are craft breweries here, of course, and have been for the better part of 10 years, growing slowly. You know, we get a new brewery or a new tap room or some new aspect within the industry each year, but it's definitely a different market.
Speaker 1:Okay. So one of the questions I had is you guys have a tap room in Max Forkdot, right the idea and in business. It's like you know this is not something you're doing in your basement and just having friends over in your living room. Can you tell me about the process of establishing a business that involves beer and consumables? That just seems to me really difficult.
Speaker 2:It would seem a bit overwhelming right In this place of location, of all places, and it is the main reason why we started very slowly, very conservatively, very incrementally, step by step, with testing recipes. You know, we didn't just open the doors and turn on the taps. You know, we really took our time, we had the luxury of time. We started really small, just first, as a hobby. Paul and his friend who's now our brewer, bob, he's from california but he's been here 20 years as well uh, they started hobby brewing together, working on recipes that they had both done individually and together. You know, bringing that east coast, west coast together was quite a nice um fit and so we would.
Speaker 2:We started by having a couple of events inviting other craft brewers to taste our beer. Ultimately, we worked our way to doing festivals, local festivals, and just to get the feedback from you know, before we made any real investments in the equipment and location, and the feedback was 100% positive. So that was very encouraging. And then we decided, okay, let's buy a small system. And the key was the location. So we were incredibly lucky when we rented the space to start the hobby brewing. It was in the basement of a building and that had that basement had been a former production bakery.
Speaker 2:Okay, and little did we know that a bakery is automatically genimped or allowed to have a brewery. Oh my God, because you have the yeast and the malt and all that. And we didn't even know this for ages for the first year probably and it wasn't until we decided that okay, we're going to take the next step and get a commercial system. And Paul, my husband, paul Higgins, went to the Balroth referent multiple times to find out what kind of did we have to get for this space? And nobody could. They couldn't answer it, they were confused and finally we realized it's because they finally said, mr Higgins, it's already allowed, you don't have to do anything.
Speaker 2:And we were shocked I mean, so there's a bit of luck involved in that and also the owner of the building. It was his family that had the bakery and he ultimately rented us the entire basement. So we were in a space that was scalable to expand. It still has size limitations. You know we have to use an ancient elevator to get equipment downstairs, so that limits the size of the tanks and the actual suit house that we have, because it has to fit in the elevator to get down there.
Speaker 1:So that's why things are still really on a small scale okay and okay, so that, wow, that is an amazing dumb luck. I mean wow, um so, but did you have to like have a permit for serving people beer and like a meister brief or whatever, like a meisterbrief or whatever, like a Meisterbrewer thing, that's a good question because you know, this is a very heavy certification-oriented country.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Ironically, it is not required to have a brewmaster at our scale, at our thoughts Okay master.
Speaker 2:Um, at our scale, at our thoughts, um, we do actually have a brew master working for us now, but at the beginning that wasn't. That wasn't really a requirement. It is. There is a requirement to have a license to sell beer. This is this is an area that I've never really gotten good clarification on. There is a certain allow allotment of beer alshank that a brewery can do from the premises without anything extra, but as soon as you move it to another location, that's a different story.
Speaker 2:Like a bigger location or or no like if you were to sell it in a tap room or to sell it um outside of the brewery let's say okay outside the brewery location and for us the tap room is literally next door. But it's not the same building. It's not the same landlord. Luckily again, that was a former Kneippa, you know, like a German little pub stube, and we just took over the existing license.
Speaker 1:So that again was oh, so you could like it's like a tax that you could buy out the license of the kind of it comes with the location.
Speaker 2:Okay, it's just you know and again it's another huge amount of luck. A lot of locations for gastro in Munich have a lease with the big six breweries, so they're the landlords, I guess effectively. So that's why most of the Wirtztouses and the restaurants and cafes you see that do sell liquor or beer are selling Spaten or Lovenbräu or Augustiner, because they're tied to them and there are very few places I don't know what the percentage is, but there are not too many actual bars or pubs that have that are called Brow or Eye Fry.
Speaker 1:But ours was Okay, and so if you wanted to do something like start bottling it, it'd be a whole different order of magnitude of things you'd have to do.
Speaker 2:Well, no, no, we were able to package on the premises on that. You know, in that brewery we still do package. We actually sell predominantly from the tap and in the tap room. That's probably 85% of what we sell and the rest we do to go. So we package it in 0.33 liter cans. Okay, we started with bottles, but we really wanted to stick to the American style look and feel.
Speaker 2:And cans for us. I mean cans are very controversial here from a recycling standpoint. Germans are very anti-aluminum can in general. Bottles are, let's say, a cleaner recycling Okay. Cans are much lighter. So from a transportation standpoint, from an energy standpoint of the space it takes up in the fridge, they're better for us at our size. It's a much easier packaging for us.
Speaker 1:Okay, but can you sell them to be a wholesaler to Rave? Yeah, okay, you can do all that.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, we do not sell to Rave in supermarkets and I'm not really sure what that entails, but we sell to G get rank markets a few, but very few we like I said we do, since we've had the tap room. We sell almost everything ourselves from our tap room but there's a couple of restaurants and cafes and a couple of get rank markets here in munich that will have our beer okay available. Okay, and that's you know. We package it ourselves. We do everything in the brewery.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you have the can can filling machine we have lots of stuff down there.
Speaker 2:Okay, a little overwhelming. Okay, we, we bought a secondhand canner that was, uh, that was handmade by, uh, another craft brewery here. When they, when they upgraded, we took, we, we bought their, uh, their little I think it's a two-head canner. So everything we're doing is very labor-intensive, very manual process, but that's all part of the story, okay.
Speaker 1:And do you still have these other jobs, like software jobs, or is this your main thing now? I do not. I do not this is my main gig.
Speaker 2:for Paul, he is still working his original job that brought him over here. This project goes just is carrying on and it's great. But he works part time on that project and pretty much full time with the brewery.
Speaker 1:OK, ok, he just works all the time OK. And with the, with the tap room. So what's that like? Are you open all the time? Do you have to market it a lot? Does it spread by word of mouth? How did you get traction for selling the beer?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. Actually, when the pandemic hit, it was somewhat, I hate to say, beneficial, but it forced us forward. We either had we made it, you know, we weren't packaging yet, we were still sort of tiptoeing into the whole process and we then suddenly had, you know, for us it was a fair amount of beer inventory with nowhere to put it nowhere to sell it.
Speaker 2:No, no bars were open. So that's when we started to bottle and we also did um, uh, crawlers, which, which that's a special American style, um takeaway can it's like a 750 milliliter can and, um, we would fill, fill those cans and sell it to the neighbors. And we basically were selling to the neighbors and the community all through the pandemic, and that was the way that we started to build up kind of a local customer base. And while we were there, so we had the brewery, we had rented an office, and right in between the brewery and the office was this canipa that was kind of fading. You know, it had been there for many, many years and you know, I think it was after the second or third lockdown. They didn't come back. So I started to contact the visitor, you know the Eigentuber, to say, hey, we're here and we'd like to take it over. You just let us know. And ultimately that's what happened. You just let us know. And ultimately that's what happened. That's what they did. They called us and said okay, you can rent it Okay.
Speaker 2:So it's. It's kind of like um, you know, the real estate market here, especially for commercial and gastro, is crazy expensive. Yeah, hard to find. You know if it's been, you know, posted in emo scout or one of those, it's already gone it's already too late.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly so you really have to have your ear to the ground. You have to have your eyes wide open and see what's happening. Talk to people. For sure. You have to talk to the local businesses. If you see an empty storefront that looks appealing, ask a neighbor. Or go in and try to find the house for valeltong. Information on the in the lobby, All that stuff is very. You just have to be a bit tenacious with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So that's really how we got the tap room, and it was the perfect location being right next door. Okay, I mean, we still have to schlep kegs up and down from the furry over. But it's fine and it's just. It's a small space. It's a seats, about 25, um with a bit of standing room. But again, given our size you know we have a 200 liter system Um, it's. It's the perfect size for us for right now.
Speaker 1:Okay, I want to just quickly go back to selling beer to your neighbors in the pandemic, kind of like a beer speakeasy. How did you? Did you like? What did that look like? Did you like? Start leave flyers around, knock on people's doors.
Speaker 2:And it's got three big display windows, so we were just in there all the time and we had all of our you know branding going on Logos, posters, banners, and on the weekends we would offer a time to come in and pick up. Pick up your to-go and that's how it worked. They saw us, they found us. It was word of mouth. People would always say what's going on in here? So we were just sort of there and present.
Speaker 2:And when they put their order in on like your website, and then no, just I had a fridge right in there and you know you could sell a lot of stuff right out of the fridge, or you know we had certain times for picking up your, your, your crawler cans. Refills were always done on Saturdays, so they would come on Saturdays take their cans. So we just sort of did it very organically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, so foot traffic, see you guys there. Yeah, that's okay, okay.
Speaker 2:And, of course, people. We had a captive audience. They had nowhere to go and nothing to do. Yeah, so this was like their big outing was to go pick up their beer, and then of course we'd stand and chat and maybe taste some beer, and you know, it kind of grew that way also alcohol in the pandemic.
Speaker 1:A friend of ours um, he's we germany. Well, his mom's american, but he's basically german and he has a bunch of startups and he started started this one. I'll give him a shout out. They're called Wir Winzer and it's a site that has. They went around to all these like small German wine producers and this was years ago and they were like really skeptical and they're like no, no, we'll have a website and like people can order direct from you, blah, blah, blah, and like it went through like hockey stick in the pandemic because everybody was just like needing to drink. We had a bit of that.
Speaker 2:Now there's two other things that I'm speaking of shout outs. I have to give one to Tillman's Beer, because Tillman's they just had their 10 year anniversary, so they've got. They were one of the real pioneers in the craft beer scene. They were one of the real pioneers in the craft beer scene and as soon as the pandemic hit, they started a courier service, because they had a lot of beer as well. But then they offered to pick up beer from all of us, from all the little brewers, and that's what got us into packaging, bottling and canning, because we said, oh, this is a great opportunity, we've got to do that. So that really helped our brand get more, yeah, more, yeah, known.
Speaker 1:Known. Thank you, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, and then the other thing that we did were we did a lot of virtual tastings online beer tastings oh right, right, right. So we were doing that probably two, three times a month, okay okay so that really helped too.
Speaker 2:so, and that I I was able to lean into my network a bit. Um, you know, obviously, all the years that I worked in in software here, I developed quite a good network, as well as the american german business club. Right, I would like to give them a recognition because I've been a member of that club for a long, long time, long before I became an entrepreneur, but started really leaning into them too, and they've been a big support, a really big support, which is how you and I met. Yeah, actually, yeah, I see you in the newsletter there every month.
Speaker 1:Right, and did you so that you like would ship the people the beers and then you'd have the beer tastings.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mostly we did local tastings, so they'd come pick it up or I would deliver it.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And then we would get on. Zoom yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, and is that is your distribution pretty much local, or is it Germany wide?
Speaker 2:Okay, totally local, I mean hardly even not really outside of Munich.
Speaker 1:Okay yeah, and do you want to keep it that way, or do you have ambitions to like branch out to Bavaria and then one day I would?
Speaker 2:like to branch out, but I have. I have to get my head around. What does distribution look like so that it's profitable? Yeah, that's, that's. I mean of course you need it for marketing and branding, but it's it's a much tougher market than it used to be. I mean that was for for for some brewers, maybe eight, 10 years ago. That was like their main model and it didn't work out. So it's, it's. It's much better to sell direct from the consumer.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, so, okay, let's talk about the tap room. So who? Who are the people coming in? Like is it full all the time? How do you said like word of mouth, but like is it mostly foreigners?
Speaker 2:It's a good, it's a good mix. Um, so we do, I, I have, uh, we have a website. We use social media. Um, I use LinkedIn a little bit. Now. Um want to do more LinkedIn, uh promotion. Um, but the tap room does uh. Google maps to Google is is a great source because obviously tourists and and expats who are looking for craft beer, just put it in to google and you know we pop up.
Speaker 2:Ah, right, right, yeah, we also. Yeah, so, to answer your question, we do. I would say it was probably in the first year. So we're now two years behind us with the tap room um, probably 60% tourists and expats, 40% locals, and now we see that the local numbers are going up, which is great, and I think that that's more from word of mouth, you know. A question I have for you is that so far, almost all the marketing that we've done and outreach has been only in English. Marketing that we've done and outreach has been only in English. So I do have concerns about what we might be missing from the local market by not by, not, uh, advertising in in German.
Speaker 2:But I've heard pros and cons about, like having your your website in both languages and I haven't really dug dug deeply into that.
Speaker 1:What's your take? Yeah, that's interesting. I feel like I mean just like shooting from the hip. My approach would be yeah, you could always, I mean, depending on the tool you use. It's fine to have a multi-linkable website and you know if people are actually going into Google and searching, although it does sound like more of a tourist thing. Just my intuition says that, you know, if I'm a tourist, I'm going to try typing craft beer. I would go the PR angle and try to get placements in like the, for example, or münchen mitvergnügen or one of those yeah, places yeah then you would want to have a multilingual site.
Speaker 1:So, because that would be jarring, probably to go, I think, and see it all in english. Yeah, so probably that would be. Your first step is to have some kind of or even just a landing page in German, exactly Something, so that people could go and get the main info and do that. But yeah, that would be my first impulse. Or partnerships or festivals.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do the festivals. I'm sure you do that stuff. Yeah, yeah, and we, yeah, we do, yeah, we definitely. I guess the locals that are coming in they probably have read about us. There've been a couple of articles in the Suddeutsch, which was great we did have that, and there are some other publications, small publications, that have featured us and yeah, sometimes they come in with a brochure and I've never even seen or heard of this brochure, but we're in it like okay good. So yeah, that's good advice.
Speaker 1:You guys could also try like having an event and putting it on Eventbrite and doing it in German.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's another good one, definitely yeah, we're actually doing an event and events are a big draw, a way for us to draw more people in. So we're doing an event on Thursday at Spoon Up Spice Bar, which is a cafe on the Weissenberger Platz and burger plats, and before we had a tap room. We did a few summer events there because the location is just great and, of course, christiana and her team, who who run this spice bar, super and um, we ran into her, uh, ironically, in berlin a few weeks back and we said, you know, we kind of missed doing those events and so we're going to do one on thursday night, hopefully the weather will be nice, so we just bring a couple of beers and a couple of um taps and and our glasses and and serve right from there. It's just a nice change of location, change of scenery right up by rosenheimer plot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, looking at the fountain and it's oh perfect nice summer evening kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So we'll do that and we're also going to participate. Oh, perfect, we're actually going to host a master class and do a tasting beer tasting in their taproom on the Saturday, but as well as have a booth and serve beer. And there's 20 other brewers there. Wait Local.
Speaker 1:Sorry, everybody, there's a little local inside baseball here, but if you're not in Munich? But so wait, is this the one right at the top of the Giesinger Berg? No, that's their original location. Okay.
Speaker 2:Their original location was a garage. Okay. They're kind of a good you know model that we look at. That was their, let's say, first commercial location and their second location that they opened I think it was in 2020, which is where they brew Helles, their Helles. Okay, and it's out near Milbertshofen direction.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, okay, so not actually in Giesing anymore, okay.
Speaker 2:Not in Giesing anymore, but still within the city because they are trying to get into the Oktoberfest, get their own tent.
Speaker 1:Oh, that must be really hard that is monumentally hard Breaking into that mafia.
Speaker 2:A big task.
Speaker 1:We all wish them good luck.
Speaker 2:We do we do.
Speaker 1:Before we move on, I want to ask you about the Reinheitsgebot. Oh yeah, but I'm curious because I my main social media platform is LinkedIn and I was surprised to hear that you do some marketing there. What, what was your thinking there and how has it?
Speaker 2:Well, I did that that so exclusively when I was in the in the business world and you know I have hundreds of contacts and and I just thought many of them are local and and I thought there's a whole untapped um no, potential there that I haven't indeed, I'm gonna use the word fermented uh yeah. Yeah, but really a lot of potential there, so okay.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I do get a good bit of traction. A lot of people view what I. I don't want to overdo it, I don't want to saturate it, but if it's like, for example, the last posting I did, there was about our two year anniversary and that was a big taproom anniversary and that was a big party, uh, and a lot of people came, it was great.
Speaker 1:So okay, okay, I don't think we're connected there. I'll have to to reach out, we will be within the hour exactly um. So one one last. Okay, but one last question um, let me take it some of this, excuse me, um can you rent the tap room for private events?
Speaker 2:we occasionally okay, okay, yeah, we are open wednesday through saturday and I don't really like to close it for private events. So if it's a, if it's a tuesday, um, for example, we actually we do um beer and craft beer and whiskey tastings and we host that in the taproom on Tuesday evenings. So my goal is to get more things, more incremental things, in there on a Tuesday, where maybe I don't have to staff the bar.
Speaker 1:But I've got a guaranteed thing. But yes, in theory. Okay, and the whiskey and beer, are they together? Yeah, great, oh my goodness. Wine was it? No wine, wine and beer never sicker. No, wine and liquor never sicker. But I guess it works out for most people it worked out great.
Speaker 2:It works out fine. We we actually um hosted together with uh nick walker from yeah, that's my guess.
Speaker 2:And he is the best, most knowledgeable person about Scottish whiskey and he tells wonderful stories about the distilleries, the origin, the way it's distilled, all the different steps in the process, and really it's really a seminar. Okay, and he knows our beer and so you know he'll take a. Okay, uh, and he knows our beer and so you know he'll take a look at our uh, uh tap lists and he can pair anything with our beer, wow, okay, and we get great feedback in it. So so we're taking a little pause for summer, cause it's not really whiskey weather, but we'll start again in the in the in the fall.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, so stay tuned, everybody. Yeah, all right, tell me about the Reinheitsgebot and what it is and how it affects your process.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, it is the German purity law for brewing beer which was created in 1516. And it is still in effect. And it is still in effect and it is mostly cared about here in Munich and Bavaria by the traditional brewers. Um I, I don't think that it's really adhered to as strictly elsewhere. And what it means is that beer can only be made from uh well, it was originally three ingredients, which is the water, hops and barley.
Speaker 2:Yeast came into play a little bit later, although yeast was always involved in brewing, but it became part of the regulations for keeping a beer pure when, but it was modified a little bit to allow for other types of malt, malted things for specifically for wheat beer, for the production of wheat beer. And the thing is, I mean, we really like that. We kind of accept the challenge. Now let me backtrack by saying in America and many other places where IPAs and pale ales, new England style ales, all these different styles, are made, it's quite common to throw different things into the beer, like fruit and maybe coffee or chocolate or things like that, to enhance different flavors. Particularly hops notes can really be enhanced by that sort of thing, and so here that would not really be allowed.
Speaker 2:You can do it and not call it beer, that's one way and I think if you, let's say, you know, we make a pumpkin beer every year, obviously pumpkin ale, and that has got everything. Everything you'd find in an American pumpkin pie is in that beer Pumpkin spice latte, but just a beer, exactly. But when we sell it, we don't sell it as beer, we call it an alcoholic drink from a malt basis. And I think if we, I believe if we were to make that as a regular flagship beer in large quantities, we would certainly have to get that approved by the Lebensmittel people. So that's a different thing, you know. So again, we have the benefit of being small and doing like you know. A single batch of a pumpkin ale at 200 liters is not much. Um, yeah, so that's so. But for us we really enjoy pushing the flavors, but staying within those limitations you know, so 90,.
Speaker 2:More than 90% of what we brew in a given year is within the purity regulations.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And the only times that we stray is, like I say, if we do a, a seasonal beer like a pumpkin or a chocolate stout, or we'll be brewing a beer with edelflower, elderflower coming up soon. So those you know, there's like five maybe in a year, that don't.
Speaker 1:And that's going to be called an edelflower Alcoholic show. Get to try and tell mom's bosses an alcohol show. Get tonight called Moms.
Speaker 2:Vases. And then you have to be extremely transparent with the Zutaten and especially you know if it's got flour or fruit or chocolate. You got to call that out on the label, for sure.
Speaker 1:You know this explains a lot. Okay, it's the context of beer. But whenever I go back home to California I'm always amazed, like you know. Oh, what's this? A cronut? Oh, kimchi tacos? Oh, there's just like all that is one of the things I miss about. There's just people are always coming up with new stuff or weird flavors, and here I find I feel like it's slowly changing.
Speaker 1:People are being innovative around food, but it does seem like it takes so long and maybe that's because, or like you know, you go to street festival and every year it's like kind of the same stands and I'm like OK, what? And the people? I mean there's an opportunity there, because I feel like the people that find a way to come up with something new, they just crush it Because everybody wants that thing, because it's not like in America where 15 other people are doing something new and weird and interesting. Other people are doing something new and weird and interesting. So I I never understood if that was just a cultural thing, or at least in the case of beer.
Speaker 1:Now I know because, also, my parents they live up in sonoma county and in northern california my dad was telling me he's also kind of not a big beer drinker. He was like and it's really a shame, because it's just the golden age of beer like they're just all. Like when you're saying chocolate and this, you know there's all kinds of. And now the last time we were there like, now the other thing is like cider and there's a zillion kinds of cider, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I just always come back and be like, why is nobody doing that here? Like if I was a gajillionaire I would have all these different businesses just doing weird variation, or maybe I wouldn't, because the Ryan Heights.
Speaker 2:Well, that's that I mean it. Definitely the palates here are very conservative, traditional speaking to beer. But I think it does carry over into the gastro world a bit and it is. You're right, I've seen in the last five years maybe a lot more dynamic, diverse kind of food being offered, and it's again. It's the same for the beer too.
Speaker 2:I think it's a slow adoption process, but you know, when we get German people who come into the tap room, you know for sure they're already curious and they already have an idea of what it may or may not taste like and they say well, is it? Um, I don't want anything too bitter. And we do it, we. So we and I this is a credit to Paul and Bob who came up with the earliest recipes they dial down the bitterness as much as possible for the local palates. You know, in the States we probably go a little bit more. If we were doing this in the US we'd go a little further, push the boat out, so to speak, with the flavors. But here we keep a little nice balance between malts and bitterness and then adding fruits, so that there's layers and it's appealing to just about everybody. It's appealing to people who love craft beer and are looking for new things, as well as to people who've never had it or don't have much experience tasting it.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's interesting. Actually my husband's cousin, her and her husband and their kids. They lived in California for a year. She's a biologist and she was at UC Davis and when they came back they were just raving about the IPAs that they drank in California. So I think you know the German clientele that you are getting. Do they skew, younger or hard to tell?
Speaker 2:They're really all right in the middle. I'd say the average age is probably 40. Okay, it's really. I mean our, our overall demographic is between late twenties to late forties. Um, yeah, but the, the local people, yeah, every, yeah, that's forties about the average age for everybody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:But but the ones, the tourists or the expats that come in? It's so funny. They often come in and they look at the board and their eyes light up.
Speaker 1:You have IPA.
Speaker 2:Oh, we've been drinking all this great German beer, but we really need an IPA now.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then I'm going to ask, like a total ignoramus question so would you, do you do things like make a Rottler with an IP? Or is that like a total no, no, or do you?
Speaker 2:just do this. I have on occasion done a couple of little experimental things, but no, we don't make Rottlers. We do sell an alcohol free beer, not by us but by another brewery called Huff and Hacker. They're, they're in.
Speaker 2:Proloch on the south side of Munich and they make a very good alcohol-free beer and it's you know for sure. The trend overall in Germany is people are drinking less alcohol, drinking less volume of beer than they have in the past. It used to be something like a hundred liters per person a year, I think. Um and uh yeah. So alcohol-free options are are definitely trending.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we're going to look into that, not making alcohol-free beers is is kind of difficult because you really have to get it below half a percent. Okay, it has to be below half a percent, and that's very difficult to control.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And the flavors are difficult to control. I think so. For us at this size, it doesn't make sense to do Okay, but maybe, maybe down the road.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:All right. Well then, wrapping up, I would like to ask what advice would you give anybody starting out with a business in Germany, or any lessons learned? Anything you'd like to share?
Speaker 2:Sure, I would really say to don't be afraid to ask for help and support. People are really willing and ready, and often they just don't know that you need it. And I think we entrepreneurs and solopreneurs tend to really bootstrap everything and think you know, we have to keep control, we have to do it ourselves, and you know it's really hard to navigate a lot of this stuff in a country that's not your native country. So try to find a trusted advisor who's a native German speaker.
Speaker 1:If your.
Speaker 2:German skills are lacking, like ours are. I mean, I always say that we have functional German.
Speaker 2:I'm still using Google Translate every day and I think, especially when you're going through the bureaucratic aspects of getting started, you really need somebody to help you, and your friends will, and your network will, your neighbors. You'd be surprised at how many people are happy to help and they want to see you succeed. You know they, I think. What I what I find is that I think you meant somebody mentioned this on one of your previous podcasts that you know the locals tend to be, let's say, they have a healthy respect for people that are entrepreneurs because they might be more risk adverse themselves, because they might be more risk adverse themselves. So so when they see people like us taking, sticking our necks out and just going forward, even if we're not sure, they really respect that and they want to help, and it's really a nice feeling to have that, that kind of appreciation.
Speaker 1:Cause it is hard.
Speaker 2:It's, you know, I'm not going to lie, it's, it's. It takes a lot of tenacity and a lot of um, uh yeah uh grit, uh, but the payback has been great.
Speaker 2:I mean, I enjoyed my, my career and I and I'm glad that I did that, because of course it it it certainly facilitated a lot of what we're able to do now financially, but also from the people that I met and the experience that I got all those skills you would think. How do you go from selling software to selling beer? Well, guess what? It's transferable. I'm working with people and I always say that it's actually better. This is the first time I've sold a product in a long time where I can get immediate feedback from the person who's actually tasted it.
Speaker 2:Software like you could get feedback half a year later, and it's great. It's really nice to work with the public and to deal with your customers who give you the feedback and give you the support, and that's where the reward really is. It's I'm connecting locally um at a level that I never had before. You know, all these years, uh, I was like half integrated and now I feel much more part of the, the community, the beer community, the craft beer community.
Speaker 2:We help each other out a lot because it's small and we're all kind of bootstrapping and it's really a nice cooperation that we have at a community. So that's I would just say lean in, lean into anyone who can help you. That's the best thing you can do for yourself to get and just start. Just get started. Take one step forward, because we didn't. We were frozen for a very long time and one expat said to me all you have to do is start.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And it was the simplest advice ever. But that was it it was. We were in this paralysis, like oh what if this happens? What if that happens?
Speaker 1:You can't know. You just got to start. Yeah, yeah. Well, jen Canale, that is excellent advice and I really enjoyed hearing your story. Thanks for coming on the pod.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me and I hope to see you in the taproom soon. For coming on the pod. Thank you for having me and I hope to see you in the taproom soon. And you know, bring your husband, bring your friends, we will. It's a good little vibe we have in there. We call it the cozy pub. I bet it's really, really fun. We enjoy it. Thanks for having us Appreciate it very much.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening. You can find this episode and all other episodes of the germany expat business show at my website at wwweleanormeyerhofercom slash podcast. That's wwwe-l-e-a-n-o-r-m-a-y-r-h-o-f-e-rcom slash podcast. See you next time.