DEL.ICIO.USNew Athens brewery the payoff after years of struggle for two partners
For the Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/14/08
Athens — In February, when Terrapin Beer Co. poured the first batch of beer made at its new brewery here, partners John Cochran and Brian "Spike" Buckowski smiled and laughed — and then they breathed a long sigh of relief.
Call it a dream come true — a decade later. Or else, as Buckowski likes to put it, "a long, strange trip ..."
 Jenni Girtman/AJC | ||
| John Cochran and Brian 'Spike' Buckowski, the men behind Terrapin Beer Co., worked for years with the dream of having their own bricks and mortar brewery. Their dream came to fruition in February, when they poured the first beer made at the new brewery. | ||
 Jenni Girtman/AJC | ||
| Jana Ritter (left) and Wes Jacobs enjoy the Terrapin beer tasting at the new brewery in Athens on Feb. 25. The brewery has regularly scheduled tours and tastings. | ||
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Bathed in the sweet, aromatic aromas of malt and hops, a crowd of some 100 beer lovers gathered for the inaugural brewery tour and tasting, and raised a pint of Terrapin Rye Pale Ale to the duo. Cochran and Buckowski had been working for this moment since they met and came up with the idea of starting a brewery together back in 1998.
Terrapin tapped its first Rye Pale Ale at the Classic City Beer Festival in Athens in April 2002. Like all Terrapin beers, the Rye recipe was created by Buckowski, who is a graduate of the American Brewers Guild in Davis, Calif. But at that time, it was brewed under contract by Frederick Brewing Company in Maryland, and shipped back to Georgia.
Contract brewing is a good way for a small, entrepreneurial company like Terrapin to build its business without investing much capital. But the practice carries something of a stigma in a burgeoning American craft beer culture that values the local, the independent and the audacious.
Still, six months after its debut, Terrapin Rye won the Gold Medal for best American-Style Pale Ale at the 2002 Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colo. That's the equivalent of a Grammy or an Oscar in the world of craft brewing.
"It was funny. We sent our beer to Denver, but we couldn't afford to go," Buckowski remembers. "But suddenly we had people from all over the country wanting to know where to find Terrapin Rye," says Cochran, "and I told them it was only on tap at a few bars in Athens."
Over the next five years, Cochran, 39, and Buckowski, 41, struggled to turn that early success into the bricks and mortar brewery they'd always envisioned.
"In the early days," Buckowski says, "we used to beat our heads against the wall looking for $2,500. But we were always able to find a way to cover it. When it became $30,000, that was a lot harder."
In 2007, the partners were finally able to scrape together the money to purchase enough equipment to get started (including a brew house and fermentation tanks that originally belonged to Atlanta's Sweetwater Brewing Co.).
In July, they worked out a deal with group of investors, and signed a lease on a 45,000-square-foot space in Athens, about a mile from the University of Georgia campus. But it took until December for Terrapin to be granted a state brewing license (an agonizing delay for Buckowski and Cochran, who feared they might never open, and grew mustaches in protest).
While Rye Pale is still the brewery's best seller, two other beers, Golden Ale and India Brown Ale, are also available year-round, and have become increasingly popular, especially on draft. But like many other small breweries, much of Terrapin's cache among beer geeks is due to a series of higher-alcohol, limited edition beers.
Cleverly marketed and released with the seasons, they're part of the Terrapin "Monster Beer Tour," wherein the brews are promoted like they're rock stars. The spring Monster Beer offering, Rye Squared, is available now. It will be followed by All American Imperial Pilsner in the summer, Big Hoppy Monster in the fall, and Wake-n-Bake Coffee Oatmeal Imperial Stout in the winter.
Each of the boldly flavored brews has a fanciful label created by Virginia artist Richard Biffle, best known for his Grateful Dead album covers. Biffle's Terrapin art always features the company's logo — a far-out turtle, who appears in various guises: playing the banjo, driving a hot rod, baking cookies or dressed-up like Uncle Sam.
If all goes well, Terrapin will brew about 800 barrels a month of various styles, up to about 10,000 barrels the first year (a barrel of draft beer holds 31 U.S. gallons).
Coming out next, Buckowski has a series of even more limited beers, dubbed Side Project, which will be released in 22-ounce bottles on a much less regular basis. Ironically, the first one was brewed in response to the current worldwide shortages of malt and hops. It's a hugely hoppy beer called Hop Shortage. Look for it in stores at the end of the month.
"It's just going to get crazier and more creative," Buckowski says. "We've always wanted to be the cutting-edge brewery of the South. It was the Monster Beer series that put us on the map — brewing the extreme beers, the aggressive beers, the big beers. Side Project will be about brewing out of the box, with all kinds of different styles."
Back at Terrapin's tasting area — amid the hanger-like industrial park building that houses the brewery — a bluegrass duo launches into another ringing breakdown, while a crowd gathers at the bar to sample the wares.
Christian Hampton, just returned from a recent tour of the brew house, is savoring a pint of stout. Hampton, who has lived in Athens for 11 years and works for Jittery Joes's Coffee, surveys a row of towering steel beer tanks and says, "It's really exciting to see this finally come to fruition. It was a great moment when they poured the first batch of Rye that was brewed here. I'm planning to come out and volunteer to help them bottle the Side Project. If I could get them to do anything crazy for that, it would be a smoked beer."
For Terrapin, having come this far, anything seems possible.
LOVE THAT LOCAL BREW
Gail and Dean Graves, were volunteers at Athens' Classic City Beer Festival in 2002, when Terrapin Beer Co. debuted its first beer. Like many other Athens beer fans, the Graves eagerly watched and waited for Terrapin to open a brewery in the city.
"We've been Terrapin fans since day one," Dean says, "And it's great that they're finally here."
Like locally grown food, locally made beer is a major trend right now. And having an award-winning craft brewery nearby is a point of pride for beer lovers like the Graves. There are some 1,400 craft breweries in the U.S., with at least one in every state. The average American lives within 10 miles of a brewery.
"Beer made by small, independent and traditional breweries is definitely an American success story," says Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association. "There's a change in lifestyle going on. People are trading up and that is what is creating such strong demand for craft beer."
Terrapin's John Cochran agrees. "That's where the beer market is going. We're all about what's new and what's different. Everybody who works here — we're all beer geeks. What we're trying to do is take a lead on building a new American beer culture."
Long before Cochran and his partner, brewer Brian "Spike" Buckowski, opened their brewery here, they were heavily involved in the local community. They put on beer dinners at local restaurants that feature local and organic ingredients, including Five & 10 and Farm 255. And they helped sponsor the Classic City Beer Festival, along with a host of charitable and music events. They also partnered with Athens' Jittery Joe's Coffee to create a custom blend for their Terrapin Wake-n-Bake Coffee Oatmeal Stout.
Owen Ogletree, organizer of the annual Classic City Beer Festival and a writer on beer and brewing, says, "It's just too good to be true. I wake up some mornings and think, 'Is this really happening that we have this great craft brewery in Athens?'
"But really, it's a return to the way things should be. People are realizing that life is too short to eat white bread and drink bland beer. There's a whole world of flavors out there that you need to explore."
CRAFT BEER SALES UP, BUT WHAT IS CRAFT BEER?
Craft beers can be hard to categorize. But Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association in Boulder, Colo., says they are best defined as domestic beers produced using 100 percent malted barley (rather than cheaper ingredients such as rice or corn). Compared with other beers, the emphasis is more on flavor and less on appealing to a mass market. And most craft breweries have a close connection to their local communities.
In 2007, the craft beer market once again grew by double digits, leading all other segments in the beer category. The Brewers Association estimates sales by independent craft brewers were up 12 percent by volume and 16 percent in dollars. Seasonal beers have passed pale ales as the top-selling craft beer style.
"Since 2004, dollar sales by craft brewers have increased 58 percent," says Gatza. "The strength of this correlates with the American trend of buying local products, and a preference for more flavorful foods and beers."
As it turns out, the Southeast, including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina, was the fastest growing region for craft beer sales, with some 32 percent growth over 2006. And Athens' Terrapin Beer Co. has high hopes of being a big part of that trend.
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