In the ever-growing craft beer market that is Tampa Bay, one local brewery has separated itself from the rest of the pack with a neat project that’s still picking up steam.
Four Stacks Brewing Company, opened in 2015, started a video podcast close to a year ago — just as an experiment. Turns out, though, the aptly named Four Stacks Beer Show allows the Apollo Beach brewery to stand out while showcasing personality and continuing the area’s beer-ducation.
“The reason we keep doing it is because we’ve had people come in and say that they were looking at other breweries in the area to visit because they’re in town from wherever, and they chose to come to us because they saw the show and thought it gave personality to our brewery,” said co-owner Nathan Hangen. “So, for us, it helps us stand out a little bit and it’s fun. And really, to be honest, there is a true goal of explaining beer to people, because your average Bud Light drinker thinks craft beer is snobby, and we’re trying to say it’s not snobby, it’s just different. We believe that there’s beer for every palate, and we’re just trying to shed a light on craft beer in our own way.”
Inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk’s Wine Library TV, the weekly Beer Show follows Hangen and brewer Mike Frey, the bottle share guy, as they drink their way through three or four segments (hey, it depends how drunk they want to get). A guest beer on tap, a Four Stacks beer and a bottle from Frey’s well-stocked cellar are guaranteed features, but a mystery beer — which the pair sips blindfolded to guess its producer and style, testing their palates at the same time — could also make an appearance. Liz Kavanagh, who handles the brewery’s social media and operations, stops by a grocery store to choose the fourth offering, anything from Blue Moon to Natty Light.
Frey and Hangen discuss ingredients and explain the different flavor profiles they’re tasting in a way that’s approachable for casual craft beer drinkers. However, hardcore enthusiasts and other brewers will enjoy their back-and-forth banter throughout each episode, too. The idea is to pigeonhole themselves into this sort of niche category for anyone seeking entertainment.
“I noticed, probably in the past, like, six months, when we go to festivals, we’re finding out more and more people are actually watching the show. We find out other brewers and things like that are watching it, and they find it funny because they get some of the rhetoric,” Frey said, adding that Tampa Bay Brewing Company’s David Doble told him at Bad A** Beerfest in May that he caught the show. “Some of the other people, they’re catching on, and then they start understanding what we’re saying.”
Knowing there’s an audience makes putting together the video podcast worthwhile. The duo would previously shoot in either the tasting room or the brew room using Hangen’s iPhone toward the end of the week, usually on Thursday or Friday, before the doors open. Now they’re slowly moving into doing the Beer Show live with customers around, plus guests like Keith Hatchell, another Four Stacks brewer, from time to time.
Some days they’ll even do weird things for outtake purposes — shotgunning cans of PBR outside to see who can down one the fastest, for instance — used as Facebook content later on.
“One of the things that I found when you own a business, especially a local small business, is that it’s a small-town feel. Everybody wants to talk to the owner and get to know the owner, and I love doing that. It’s just if I did that all day I wouldn’t get anything done. So this is also a way for them to get to know us without us being here 24/7,” Hangen said.
As far as how the young brewery’s doing as a whole, people not knowing where Apollo Beach is — let alone Four Stacks — has been the biggest challenge. But Hangen says distribution, which recently launched with Cavalier Distributing, will help, especially as the chocolate coffee porter, Lou Dog Blonde Ale (it’s a Sublime reference, one of the crew’s many nods to pop culture) and Pinfish Pale Ale hit more pints. Their reach is limited to select Hillsborough bars and restaurants, including The Stein & Vine and Talking Pint, and the goal is to enter Pinellas later in the year or early 2018.
“We don’t want to jump the gun,” Hangen said of the additional 2,800 square feet. “If it does happen, it would be the beginning of October when we would acquire the property and begin our buildout.”
This article appears in Sep 21-28, 2017.