Episode 36
The Origins of Young Blood Beer Co w/ Billy DuPlanty
Gary Arndt, Bobby Fleshman, and Allison McCoy-Fleshman welcome Billy DuPlanty of Youngblood Beer Company to discuss how he got his start in the beer industry, the origins of Young Blood, and their unique experimentation philosophy.
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TIMELINE
00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:56 Billy Billy DuPlanty's Journey into Beer
02:37 Beer Sales Background
06:40 I Kinda Want to Start a Brewery
09:10 Founding Youngblood Beer Company
10:30 Meeting the Brewer: KYLE
12:26 Opening During COVID-19
12:49 Crowlerification: Adapting to Unforeseen Circumstances
13:21 Young Blood Logistics and Brewing Setup
15:55 The Origin of Young Blood Name
17:13 Experimental Brewing Philosophy
18:44 Canned Cocktails Venture
20:02 COVID-19 Impact and Resilience
23:26 Three Tap Rooms and Counting
25:11 Join us next time for more Young Blood
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CREDITS
Hosts:
Music by Sarah Lynn Huss
Recorded & Produced by David Kalsow
Brought to you by McFleshman's Brewing Co
Transcript
Hello everyone.
Gary Arndt:And welcome to another episode of respecting the beer.
Gary Arndt:My name is Gary Arndt with me again, as usual is the brewer to the stars.
Gary Arndt:And by that, I do not mean celebrities, but actual celestial bodies, Bobby Fleshman and we got a guest with us today, drove all the way up from Madison.
Gary Arndt:Thanks for coming by the way.
Gary Arndt:Yeah, no problem.
Gary Arndt:I know it's a bit of a drive.
Gary Arndt:We got Billy Duplant he is the co founder of Young Blood Beer Company in Madison.
Gary Arndt:That's right.
Gary Arndt:And there's a lot of cool things.
Gary Arndt:I think we can talk about with respect to your company and the beer and a lot of the things you do, but why don't we just start at square one?
Gary Arndt:And how did you get involved in beer and brewing and why was it a mistake?
Billy Duplant:Well I mean, I'm glad you came to the conclusion before I even start the, it's like starting a movie at the end, like getting involved
Gary Arndt:as it starting a brewery.
Gary Arndt:It's horrible decision.
Billy Duplant:20 years later, boom, boom.
Billy Duplant:So I, um, I started my journey way before I even drank right out of high school.
Billy Duplant:I started as a merchandiser for Beachwood distributing.
Billy Duplant:Okay.
Billy Duplant:Who is a current partner for Youngblood and the seven Milwaukee County area.
Billy Duplant:So I don't hold grudges.
Billy Duplant:I do, but just not to them, I guess they do a really good job.
Billy Duplant:But I started as a merchandiser selling beer, basically filling shelves, talking to customers, doing that before I even consumed alcohol.
Billy Duplant:I didn't drink until I was almost until it was almost 20, uh, almost 22, actually.
Billy Duplant:So like I had a lot of years of not drinking, but I was still around beer.
Billy Duplant:And then after about a year and a half of that I got, uh, unceremoniously fired by the fine folks at Beachwood because I was.
Billy Duplant:I was summer help quote unquote.
Billy Duplant:And I was like, okay, well that stinks, uh, whatever, right away, turned around and got a job with wow, which is now beer capital.
Billy Duplant:that was Washington Ozaki Waukesha County distributor, uh, worked for them for 10 years.
Billy Duplant:Jumped into sales over there and hello.
Billy Duplant:Jumped into sales for them.
Billy Duplant:Did that in Milwaukee and kind of all over.
Billy Duplant:The beer cap territory depending on the time.
Billy Duplant:After that I jumped over to a company I worked for and then purchased called Craft Beer Partners.
Billy Duplant:So I was kind of a broker salesperson for Epic, Upland, Ohso, Shiner, One Barrel, uh, Potosi, all of those kind of slipped in a Tall Grass.
Billy Duplant:That was a good one in there.
Billy Duplant:Um, all
Bobby Fleshman:Rest in peace!
Billy Duplant:RIP TG.
Billy Duplant:Uh, that was, uh, You know, I, I worked for them for four years or two years.
Gary Arndt:You're selling beer to retail establishments, restaurants, bars, things like that.
Gary Arndt:What do these places look for when they select a beer, if they want us, if they want to serve it,
Billy Duplant:that is, that is a chaotic question.
Billy Duplant:So I don't really, the way that I sell is I I've always thought the First thing you have to sell is kind of your personality and yourself to the people.
Billy Duplant:Otherwise if they don't like you, like relatively quickly, it doesn't matter if you have the best.
Billy Duplant:And I say this as someone
Gary Arndt:who recognizes the extreme importance of people to do sales and someone who sucks at sales.
Gary Arndt:Ah, yeah.
Gary Arndt:And you know, you, you, you go to a lot of places and some places will have, you know, like a Bunch of taps and everything.
Gary Arndt:And they got your signage everywhere.
Gary Arndt:You know, you get the neon lights and everything.
Gary Arndt:And I always wonder like, well, why do you pick this as opposed to that?
Billy Duplant:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:So really it's a, it's kind of a listening game and just you go in and you survey their taps so you know exactly what they need.
Billy Duplant:And when I was doing the whole craft beer thing, I was always, I had all these different brands, so I always had something I could slide in.
Billy Duplant:So it's really just paying attention and being a good listener.
Billy Duplant:Good listener and becoming an actual partner to what they're trying to accomplish.
Billy Duplant:If they're trying to curate a really great list, you have to come with something other than I need to move this beer.
Billy Duplant:You come with the idea of you get to buy this beer, uh, and you switch the mentality on them like that a little bit and it starts to make them feel like you're sharing the best thing that you have to offer.
Billy Duplant:And.
Billy Duplant:Vice versa, you're getting the sale which you need and then most of the time actually a lot of my best friends now are people that own or manage at places and over those four years of craft beer partners and some of the years that I had with Wow and Beachwood And beer capital you just become friends with these people and then they just trust you because you've built up that You, you've shown them that you know what you're talking about and you're willing to stand behind it.
Billy Duplant:So they know that you're going to keep coming back in.
Gary Arndt:And when you're working for a distributor, do you care what you sell just as long as you sell something?
Billy Duplant:Uh, you, so that, that's kind of the, uh, you do care because you are compensated based on caring for certain things at certain times.
Billy Duplant:So they do like You know, you get a little spiff if you sell an extra couple of cases of Mike's hard lemonade this month and it's like 5 a case.
Billy Duplant:Cool.
Billy Duplant:So I get an extra if I sell, uh, if I sell like 20 of those, I'm coming out pretty good.
Billy Duplant:Like untaxed on top of what my normal salary is.
Billy Duplant:So there's a little spiff that way.
Bobby Fleshman:In a unicorn situation for a supplier is that.
Bobby Fleshman:They're they're offering these bonuses, but they're also someone that that salesperson or representative is a fan of with even without those benefits, right?
Bobby Fleshman:Oh, yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:If you buy into a specific brewery, like I'll use one of my favorite breweries, Great Lakes.
Billy Duplant:Um, when I worked for beer capital, Great Lakes was like my favorite brewery.
Billy Duplant:It still is like a top favorite brand to me.
Billy Duplant:And I would like go out of my way because I knew the beer really well.
Billy Duplant:And I knew the sales team that worked for that brewery really well.
Billy Duplant:I would go out of my way to, Hey, if I'm not going to get anything else here that I can make an extra dollar on, I'm going to, I'm going to maybe throw that bone to my guys over there at great lakes.
Billy Duplant:And that, I think.
Billy Duplant:Pretty sure like every brewery does that.
Billy Duplant:That's why having a brewery representative in the market is very important because you kind of don't give them a chance to not think about your brand.
Billy Duplant:And you can always be there to help them
Bobby Fleshman:out.
Bobby Fleshman:The double edged sword of having a wholesaler is they, they collect the check number one, and you don't have to worry about collecting checks.
Bobby Fleshman:If you're, if you're selling directly, that's a lot of headache, but they're also doing the heavy lifting and making those deliveries and so on and so on.
Bobby Fleshman:They have cold storage.
Bobby Fleshman:But the other thing is they're representing how many other breweries, In this case, how many other brands, how many of their flavors?
Bobby Fleshman:So you have to get in there and fight for their attention.
Billy Duplant:And I mean, that also gives you that, that per, if you put a person in that market, you show dedication to those reps that you're not willing to let your brand slip in that market.
Billy Duplant:And that's just as important.
Billy Duplant:That's a quality assurance person.
Billy Duplant:They can call at any time.
Gary Arndt:So how do you then make the transition or what brought you to make the transition from sales to actually making beer?
Billy Duplant:I still do the sales portion of our brewery.
Billy Duplant:My partner Kyle, is our head brewer.
Billy Duplant:He came from Door County Hacienda.
Billy Duplant:He was one of the first brewers over at Octopi.
Billy Duplant:He's been around for a pretty long time, even though he is.
Billy Duplant:Younger than me.
Billy Duplant:Whatever.
Billy Duplant:Screw you, Kyle.
Billy Duplant:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: He says with love.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison just sat down,
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Hi by the way.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:Uh, let's see.
Billy Duplant:Oh, so the, the reason for the transition is I realized that I've been selling for, you know, a really long time, other people's beer.
Billy Duplant:And it was time to start selling my own because I didn't like the decisions that were being made.
Billy Duplant:Like I saw Tallgrass die and that was a really great brand for me.
Billy Duplant:And they.
Bobby Fleshman:They just some background with me was Billy and I talked about this before, but that was one of our favorite quote local breweries before we moved to Wisconsin, right?
Bobby Fleshman:Tall grass.
Bobby Fleshman:They were Kansas.
Bobby Fleshman:Manhattan.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, Manhattan.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:So down in Oklahoma, they were one of our favorites.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:Phenomenal, phenomenal beer.
Billy Duplant:Um,
Billy Duplant:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: wait, the other one.
Billy Duplant:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:Oh, yeah.
Billy Duplant:No.
Billy Duplant:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:Buffalo sweat.
Billy Duplant:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Wait a minute.
Billy Duplant:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:Did I know this?
Billy Duplant:I did know this.
Billy Duplant:I think you did another rooster.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Yep.
Bobby Fleshman:Anyway, I mean derail.
Bobby Fleshman:But that, that's a, they had great pull one out.
Bobby Fleshman:They
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: had, I was thinking if it was local here, and I was like, I don't remember Tallgrass being here.
Bobby Fleshman:Nevermind Kansas.
Bobby Fleshman:Right.
Bobby Fleshman:Briefly.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:No, but they were, they were, they were great brand.
Billy Duplant:And I saw them die from decisions that were being made.
Billy Duplant:And I also saw that.
Billy Duplant:You know, I was being asked to sell more and more and more of core things.
Billy Duplant:And to me, that's great if you have core built in, but I wasn't really interested in that.
Billy Duplant:I was interested on the new fun thing, because that's really fun to talk about.
Billy Duplant:And that's an easy thing to sell.
Billy Duplant:And so I was reaching out to like upland and Epic.
Billy Duplant:Over I did like a 20 line tap takeover with epic and I basically said give me everything New and weird that has never come to the state and they just sent like pallets of beer and I did a big ol event Um, I think that was with Gino at three sellers in Menomonee Falls.
Billy Duplant:What's up, Gino?
Bobby Fleshman:But also Billy's a great salesperson all the time.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: I'm taking notes like crazy.
Billy Duplant:Yeah it's a defect of some sort.
Billy Duplant:I'm sure there's some sort of weird ADHD thing that makes me.
Billy Duplant:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Lean in, man, lean in.
Billy Duplant:Totally..
Billy Duplant:That's exactly it.
Billy Duplant:Um, but I would reach out to these like companies and they would be like, can't you sell more of this?
Billy Duplant:And I'm like, I will sell more of that.
Billy Duplant:If you give me these things to sell with it, like, just give me that opportunity.
Billy Duplant:I'll up your dollars.
Billy Duplant:I'll up your CEs.
Billy Duplant:Let's go.
Billy Duplant:And sure enough, it worked.
Billy Duplant:And I was like, okay, well, I would really like to just do this on my own because I was, you know, I was kind of, uh, I had just brought the actual origin of Youngblood as I was sitting with my very good friend, Tom Dufek, who we started the brewery with as well.
Billy Duplant:And, uh, we were sitting at Maduro and I had just locked his canned cocktail company Plainspoke up to Craft Beer Partners, and that is a brand that we now own, Youngblood owns and makes their delicious handcrafted cocktails in a can.
Billy Duplant:We were talking right after that.
Billy Duplant:And in this moment of just like clear headedness, I was like, I don't know how long I could do this.
Billy Duplant:And he's like, dude, I just signed you.
Billy Duplant:What are you talking about?
Billy Duplant:I'm like, I don't know, man.
Billy Duplant:I think I want to start a brewery.
Billy Duplant:Uh, I don't know how long I can continue to do this thing.
Billy Duplant:And he just goes, do you want to start a brewery?
Billy Duplant:I was like, yeah.
Billy Duplant:And he's like, are we starting a brewery?
Billy Duplant:It's like, yeah.
Billy Duplant:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:And then the next morning he called and, uh, we were finally sober.
Billy Duplant:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:There's ice packs on your head
Bobby Fleshman:and you're
Billy Duplant:talking to the phone or whatever.
Billy Duplant:That's how it was.
Billy Duplant:Cause I, I know I just got up and I had like, I know my eyes were all bloodshot and I was just like, Oh God, too much.
Billy Duplant:Cause we had like three cigars, like no matter what you're walking out of cigars, a little stuck.
Billy Duplant:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:, and he's like, are we doing this?
Billy Duplant:I'm like, yeah.
Billy Duplant:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:Okay, love you.
Billy Duplant:Bye.
Billy Duplant:Click.
Billy Duplant:And that was it.
Billy Duplant:And then we needed to find a brewer.
Billy Duplant:And then our friend Eric who now owns a bar called Beer Sol.
Billy Duplant:he used to work at Draft and Bessel and Dosa.
Billy Duplant:What's his last name?
Billy Duplant:Alright, and Sherwood.
Billy Duplant:Eric Goodbrock.
Billy Duplant:Yeah, yeah.
Billy Duplant:I know him.
Billy Duplant:He's awesome, dude.
Billy Duplant:Uh, he's like, he was telling me, you gotta, you gotta talk to my friend, Kyle.
Billy Duplant:You gotta talk to my friend, Kyle.
Billy Duplant:And I'm like, I don't, I don't know who your friend Kyle is.
Billy Duplant:I'm not going to do it.
Billy Duplant:I'm talking to the guy.
Billy Duplant:There was a friend of mine who worked at upland at the time.
Billy Duplant:And I was like, he might do it.
Billy Duplant:And I, I love upland's beer.
Billy Duplant:I love their one off stuff.
Billy Duplant:He brought back champagne velvet, which is one of my favorite beers all the time.
Billy Duplant:It's like, let's go.
Billy Duplant:And then that fell through.
Billy Duplant:And then I was at draft and vessel again.
Billy Duplant:He's like, I'm calling him.
Billy Duplant:You don't have a say.
Billy Duplant:And then we set up a meeting and uh, that was that first thing he asked me was like, what's your favorite kind of beer to drink?
Billy Duplant:And I was like, I love unfiltered Pilsner.
Billy Duplant:I like, you know, light laggers.
Billy Duplant:I like a lot of those types of beers.
Billy Duplant:I'm not, not the biggest fan of Belgians, which he was like, are you kidding me?
Billy Duplant:'cause he loves Belgians.
Billy Duplant:But uh, I love an unfiltered pilsner or just even a Czech style pills.
Billy Duplant:I love Pilsners, big fan.
Billy Duplant:And he goes.
Billy Duplant:This is gonna work.
Billy Duplant:And then we locked them up and that was it.
Billy Duplant:So
Bobby Fleshman:It strikes me how much yin and yang we have as to where I come from and what I've been looking for in partners.
Bobby Fleshman:And it's exactly the opposite of where Billy's coming from.
Bobby Fleshman:I came from the brewing side, just beer, beer, beer.
Bobby Fleshman:And learning the business has been school of hard knocks ever since day one.
Billy Duplant:Well, that's, that's what was very unique for us right out the gate, which I, we held as, as a very prideful thing was.
Billy Duplant:You know, Tom had background running restaurants and bars.
Billy Duplant:Kyle obviously knew how to run brewing and I had done sales.
Billy Duplant:So we're like, okay, well, this, this works.
Billy Duplant:And we, I had this half romantic idea where I'd just be tossing, uh, you know, like eight kegs in the back of a van.
Billy Duplant:And like, I just go out and sell those eight kegs and my job's done for the week.
Billy Duplant:The taproom generates most of the money.
Billy Duplant:This is going to work.
Billy Duplant:This is going to work.
Billy Duplant:Cause we were right off the squares.
Billy Duplant:Uh, and the taproom
Billy Duplant:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: So beautiful too.
Billy Duplant:Thank you.
Billy Duplant:Oh my gosh.
Billy Duplant:Well, and then, you know, COVID hit, so we couldn't even show off.
Billy Duplant:Yeah, how about them apples?
Billy Duplant:Yeah, you open in 2020.
Billy Duplant:Yeah, May of 2020.
Billy Duplant:We were going to open like on St.
Billy Duplant:Patty's day, which is the day they closed all the bars.
Billy Duplant:This is
Bobby Fleshman:called Mick Fleshman.
Bobby Fleshman:You can imagine here in our tap room, the line that we had.
Bobby Fleshman:I don't know, Irish holiday.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Billy Duplant:yeah, yeah, yeah.
Billy Duplant:So I just, I remember just us being like, okay, well, what are we going to do?
Billy Duplant:People left their jobs to come work at our spot.
Billy Duplant:Like some people were getting paid pretty well and they came to help us out, start this thing, kick it off.
Billy Duplant:And we're like, I guess we'll figure it out.
Billy Duplant:So we crawlered our first, like, I don't know, like eight beers.
Billy Duplant:cause we had to, we just like got a pallet of cans.
Billy Duplant:We had crawlered everything.
Bobby Fleshman:Same thing.
Billy Duplant:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:And we're like, okay, I guess this is how you do it.
Billy Duplant:And we sold through those batches and we were like, okay, cool.
Billy Duplant:That works.
Billy Duplant:There were even like the there were like the George Floyd, marches that were going on in Madison where we were like, like building out our, our space.
Billy Duplant:So it was like, all this stuff or just like, there's never going to be, a time where this works out and we didn't make our own work at first.
Billy Duplant:So like we had to go around, uh, we, we did it at, Vintage.
Billy Duplant:Uh, we did it at Lucky's.
Billy Duplant:Uh, we did it at Hophouse work or yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Okay.
Bobby Fleshman:So you transported that and then put it into.
Billy Duplant:So we got a, we got a van and then we got these uh, what are they?
Billy Duplant:IBC totes?
Billy Duplant:And they like have a bladder in them.
Billy Duplant:So like they would just be these bags and we would
Bobby Fleshman:Push them out with compressed air or whatever?
Billy Duplant:No, it would gravity feed straight into the tanks because we would take it from a hose on the side of the street on King Street and put it through, excuse me, a little hole that fed down into our Oh yeah, because
Billy Duplant:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: your tanks are in the basement.
Billy Duplant:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:Also a thing we didn't really think of because we're like, oh, beer's not really gonna leave here.
Billy Duplant:And you have no elevator, right, for kegs?
Billy Duplant:No, no, no, no.
Billy Duplant:I was like, we can handle getting five quarter barrels up those stairs.
Billy Duplant:It'll be fine.
Billy Duplant:Oh gosh.
Billy Duplant:And then all of a sudden we're moving half barrels up there so we can, we can, stuff.
Billy Duplant:Right.
Billy Duplant:Right.
Billy Duplant:Unb we gravity feed it down t off the beer and we're ju is chaotic.
Billy Duplant:So we did eve
Bobby Fleshman:step.
Bobby Fleshman:Our listeners may o Is before yeast has been added.
Bobby Fleshman:Yep.
Bobby Fleshman:By legal definition.
Bobby Fleshman:Mm-Hmm.
Bobby Fleshman:. So, so you guys maybe beer, water, it fall Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:It falls under your license.
Bobby Fleshman:Sugar, sugar water.
Bobby Fleshman:Because the yeast goes in
Billy Duplant:on your facility, correct?
Billy Duplant:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:Correct.
Billy Duplant:So, you know, it's not beer until the yeast is added.
Billy Duplant:Mm-Hmm.
Billy Duplant:. we would do that and, you know, you do all your dry hopping there.
Billy Duplant:We had 10 tanks in total.
Billy Duplant:I think it was.
Billy Duplant:eight fermenters and two brights.
Billy Duplant:No brew house cause we're like, It's fine, we can just do this.
Billy Duplant:It's not gonna be like, a lot.
Billy Duplant:We'll be able to make this work.
Billy Duplant:Obviously things scaled up really quick when you have to go out and create a network because you're not allowed to sell stuff out of your tap room.
Billy Duplant:So I started going around and going to all my old haunts in Madison and Milwaukee, making sure that this really, it was cans in Madison.
Billy Duplant:And then I would just take kegs to Milwaukee because I, I actually, I actually live in Mukwonago so I came up from Mukwonago today.
Billy Duplant:Um, my partners live out in Madison.
Billy Duplant:So we're kind of like a, a brewery that is.
Billy Duplant:kind of everywhere.
Billy Duplant:I guess.
Billy Duplant:I like that we're not all just in one place.
Bobby Fleshman:So catch me up on it on how far is that from Madison?
Billy Duplant:Uh, hour 15?
Billy Duplant:Okay.
Billy Duplant:So it's like a, it's like a half hour south, uh, southwest of Milwaukee.
Bobby Fleshman:Gotcha.
Bobby Fleshman:Gotcha.
Billy Duplant:What's the origin of the name?
Billy Duplant:Youngblood.
Billy Duplant:Oh, this is fun.
Billy Duplant:Okay.
Billy Duplant:So I'm going to give you the real one.
Billy Duplant:Or no, I'm gonna give you the fake one and then I'll give you the real one.
Billy Duplant:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: That's always good.
Billy Duplant:And he's gonna do this with every beer name we ask him about.
Billy Duplant:Yeah, well, we'll see.
Billy Duplant:Those are kind of, some of them are just on the nose.
Billy Duplant:So the name Youngblood comes, uh, it's kind of like If you look at Wisconsin as this like this beating heart of beer, the veins would be the tap lines and we are creating new beer nonstop and the blood of Wisconsin is beer.
Billy Duplant:There is an analogy to be drawn there.
Billy Duplant:However, the real reason is I was watching the movie Young Guns Real, uh, real drunk one afternoon.
Billy Duplant:And I was like, man, this is a phenomenal movie.
Billy Duplant:Young guns.
Billy Duplant:We could totally do that.
Billy Duplant:Guns don't work in Madison.
Billy Duplant:Oh, let's what about young blood?
Billy Duplant:And then I went and watched the young blood movie.
Billy Duplant:And I was like, young blood movie.
Billy Duplant:And I watched that and I was like, that's it.
Billy Duplant:And then I brought it to the team sheepishly.
Billy Duplant:I was like, what do you guys think of young blood?
Billy Duplant:And then I gave them that up the other version.
Billy Duplant:They're like, that's really deep and really thoughtful.
Billy Duplant:And I'm just like, cool.
Gary Arndt:And the other thing I noticed it was like The first thing you see on your website is you're, you describe yourself as an experimental brewery.
Gary Arndt:Why an experimental brewery as opposed to just a brewery?
Billy Duplant:Well, we don't, we make the same beer, but it's at least a year in between batches.
Billy Duplant:We won't, we don't have a flagship.
Billy Duplant:We just keep things changing nonstop.
Billy Duplant:And we, if something works, we'll bring it back.
Billy Duplant:If it doesn't work, we don't.
Billy Duplant:And that's, that's the experiment.
Billy Duplant:If it, if it works really well, like some of our sours, that was kind of a lark as, and now we're known for sours.
Billy Duplant:That was an experiment that
Bobby Fleshman:gone right.
Bobby Fleshman:And I think that's what you do well, is you find, you find a pulse and you get behind it.
Bobby Fleshman:You don't, you don't make a decision and stick with it if the market's asking you to do something different.
Billy Duplant:Completely.
Billy Duplant:And like, we, we are agile enough with how we put together our brew schedule and how we release beer to just.
Billy Duplant:Make decisions like we, we, we.
Billy Duplant:Plan out quarterly.
Billy Duplant:So we're basically running at about four months time of knowing exactly what we're going to, we're going to try and put out and things change.
Billy Duplant:Sometimes hop yields change and you know, like, Oh man, like there was a while ago, I think it was a galaxy that was tasting real bad and we're like, okay, we're not going to use that.
Billy Duplant:Uh, so we got to change that recipe.
Billy Duplant:That's a whole new beer.
Billy Duplant:So we, you know, we just keep, Keep moving, stick and move is kind of how we do it, but
Billy Duplant:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: I appreciate that's your name, Youngblood Beer Company instead of Brewing Company.
Billy Duplant:Because it's just, I don't know, it shifts the focus slightly.
Billy Duplant:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:I like that.
Billy Duplant:For beer.
Billy Duplant:It's just beer, even though we make canned cocktails too now.
Billy Duplant:Ha ha ha ha.
Billy Duplant:Perfect plug.
Billy Duplant:Oh yeah.
Gary Arndt:Explain that business, because I noticed that as well.
Gary Arndt:And it's different from what a lot of breweries do?
Billy Duplant:The,
Gary Arndt:the canned cocktail.
Billy Duplant:The canned cocktail?
Billy Duplant:So, it's a different company.
Billy Duplant:It is a sub company of young blood.
Billy Duplant:My partner, Tom, he created this brand several years ago when there was a demand for the canned cocktails, but they weren't everywhere.
Billy Duplant:This is before Cut Water.
Billy Duplant:This is before everybody.
Billy Duplant:And he rolled it out, um, with a Moscow mule and a bourbon smash and a mojito.
Billy Duplant:And those like did really well small handcrafted cocktails, uh, and then, I think it was at the beginning of last year.
Billy Duplant:He kind of brought it up to us.
Billy Duplant:He's like, we should, we should blend entities.
Billy Duplant:Cause there's a lot of, we have like labor over there that we could bring over here that knows how to do certain things.
Billy Duplant:Uh, we could just put everything under one house.
Billy Duplant:And so we made the decision to bring it in.
Billy Duplant:And, uh, now we have some, some really strong people working in our production facility and we are.
Billy Duplant:Turn it and burn it on these canned cocktails.
Billy Duplant:So we do a Moscow Mule, a Brandy Old Fashioned, bourbon smash, uh, mojito and a margarita.
Bobby Fleshman:What percentage of your business is cocktail now?
Billy Duplant:Oh, um, it's, it's not, yeah, it's not a large, it's, we, we make big batches of it.
Billy Duplant:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:But it's not, uh, we don't even blend them in the same books.
Bobby Fleshman:Gotcha.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:So you opened the facility during COVID, which I'm sure if you could do it again, you probably wouldn't, but having done it and going through the crucible do you think it ended up making you stronger or more resilient coming out of it?
Billy Duplant:Yes.
Billy Duplant:And far more tired, but yeah, I mean that, that I think, uh, you know, forged in fire is kind of a, the real deal.
Billy Duplant:There would be days where I would.
Billy Duplant:Drive out to Madison, I would sell there all day, and then I would come back to Milwaukee and sell almost all night, and then it'd be midnight, and I'd be in Port Washington.
Billy Duplant:Just being like, all right, time to head back, and you know.
Billy Duplant:Being like on the ground that deeply that early on and it's like seeing how people are reacting to the beer and the brand and everything like that, like gives you a lot of perspective and it also continues to be one of the reasons we're able to pivot on certain things like, uh, people weren't liking that people weren't liking that we've recently started redoing some of our IPAs because our IPAs were kind of just okay.
Billy Duplant:I, I take a lot of pride in knowing that if a beer is truly something we don't like, we just dump it and we will.
Billy Duplant:eat that cost But, if it's good and we think it's at least good, then it will go out there.
Billy Duplant:But, you know, we've been kicked around a little bit for some IPA talk early on.
Billy Duplant:And I think our last like run of like five IPAs, uh, you know, triples, doubles, and singles have all been sensational and people are like, holy crap, you guys know your way around an IPA.
Billy Duplant:So we're, we're, we got our sours on lock, we're getting the IPAs on lock, and the traditional styles are the things that Kyle, our head brewer cares the deepest about
Bobby Fleshman:Who knew a brewer caring about traditional styles and Pilsner's and yeah,
Billy Duplant:Yeah, he's a curmudgeon, a young bastard.
Billy Duplant:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Bobby, that makes you the curmudgeony old bastard.
Bobby Fleshman:Oh, yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Oh, yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:This story is so similar to our story.
Bobby Fleshman:I get this.
Gary Arndt:So you said you only you'll make a batch, you know, we won't do it again for a year.
Gary Arndt:So how many beers do you normally have on tap?
Billy Duplant:So our tap room only has 12 tab lines.
Billy Duplant:So So we want stuff in and out as fast as possible.
Billy Duplant:The rest goes out to distro.
Billy Duplant:Um, we have two tap rooms as it stands right now.
Billy Duplant:We have our King Street tap room, which is our main spot.
Billy Duplant:And then we also have a place on North street on the North side of Madison, right across from Tip Top Tavern
Bobby Fleshman:Often with different stuff on tap?
Billy Duplant:Um, or yeah, I mean, they, They're allocated the same beers.
Billy Duplant:Just whether or not, like we're seeing that people on a north street, like the traditional stuff, a lot more and the people that go to King street want, the more experimental weird off the wall stuff.
Billy Duplant:So, uh, it is, it is kind of a fun balancing game, but also 12 lines there.
Billy Duplant:The north street location is actually only open on weekdays from three o'clock on.
Billy Duplant:And before that it's a blended space.
Billy Duplant:So there's a bloom bake shop is in there.
Billy Duplant:And so is cafe domestique.
Billy Duplant:So there's coffee and bakery in the same building.
Billy Duplant:And then at three o'clock that turns off and we turn on, it becomes all of ours.
Billy Duplant:And then on weekends, we're kind of all open at like 11 o'clock.
Gary Arndt:What is your current split roughly in terms of on premise the sales versus stuff you're selling through distributors like the can sales?
Billy Duplant:Um, I would say just in terms of volume, it's probably, it's really not as much.
Billy Duplant:We do a lot more out in distro than our tap rooms do because we want to, we only have the 12 lines, so we want to keep them changing.
Billy Duplant:So I would say probably about a 10 percent of our volume is poured out of the tap rooms.
Billy Duplant:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Yeah.
Billy Duplant:And your taproom, the, the, the primary one is where you brew the beer?
Billy Duplant:Used to.
Billy Duplant:Now we have, oh, used to now we have footers in there, so we're doing some mixed fermentation and wild culture stuff there.
Billy Duplant:And footers are large format Belgian or French barrels?
Billy Duplant:Yep.
Billy Duplant:I, I believe ours are French oak.
Billy Duplant:Mm-Hmm.
Billy Duplant:. Um, but yeah, they've all been pitched with some funky bugs and, uh, we've only done two releases so far.
Billy Duplant:Uh, we hope to get some more going in 2025.
Billy Duplant:And, and,
Bobby Fleshman:and the, the food or the idea is that you're able to.
Bobby Fleshman:Better control how fast it acidifies and acidifies.
Bobby Fleshman:Got a more nuanced character.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Billy Duplant:And you can, once you kind of get what you're going to get out of that, that sour or that, uh, that, you know, Brett kind of flavor, you can also take it from there and put it into other wooden barrels, like wine barrels and things like that to finish it off with different flavors.
Billy Duplant:You can add fruit to it.
Billy Duplant:We have a bright tank there that we, we did.
Billy Duplant:What was our, our first one that had some weird stuff?
Billy Duplant:I think it was passion fruit and earl grey tea.
Billy Duplant:And I know that sounds weird, but it was really, really unique and delicious.
Billy Duplant:Um, but like, we're trying to do that traditional mixed firm stuff and then do a Young Bloodified version of that.
Billy Duplant:So.
Billy Duplant:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Wait, so hang on.
Billy Duplant:I'm going to interrupt.
Billy Duplant:Wait.
Billy Duplant:So where, where do y'all brew now?
Billy Duplant:Uh, we have a production facility on Stoughton Road in Buckeye.
Billy Duplant:So, uh, it's
Billy Duplant:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Not in the downtown area?
Billy Duplant:It's not in the downtown area.
Billy Duplant:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Oh, because that was going to be one of my questions.
Billy Duplant:Like, what's it like to brew downtown?
Billy Duplant:Because I could tell you from someone that does, it's a pain in the ass.
Billy Duplant:Yeah, it was.
Billy Duplant:That's why we don't anymore.
Billy Duplant:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Yeah, because we're so smart!
Billy Duplant:Oh my goodness.
Billy Duplant:Yeah, just like having to,
Billy Duplant:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Listen to him, Bobby.
Billy Duplant:Having to, like, pull stuff out of that basement.
Billy Duplant:Like, we were all in phenomenal shape for, like, two years.
Billy Duplant:Like, everyone was just, like, yoked.
Billy Duplant:We're just like, yeah, look at us.
Billy Duplant:Uh, It's still backbreaking work though.
Billy Duplant:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Yeah.
Gary Arndt:All right.
Gary Arndt:We got a lot more to talk about, but we're going to do it on a future episode.
Gary Arndt:And that will conclude this episode of Respecting the Beer.
Gary Arndt:Make sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode and feel free to join the Facebook group to get updates between episodes and to support the show over on Patreon.
Gary Arndt:Links to both of these can be found in the show notes.
Gary Arndt:And until next time, please remember to respect the beer.
