Who’s developing more: Cool Springs or downtown Nashville? A video billboard in Times Square reveals some news about the Nashville Soccer Club. Plus, our guest is brewing his way through Nashville. All of this and this week’s events on Nashville Daily.
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Our Guest: Wesley Keegan | Owner of Tailgate Brewery
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00:00:00 Hello everybody. This is the Nashville daily podcast. I'm Stuart Deming and I'm Erin Pennington who is developing more cool Springs or downtown Nashville, a video board in times square. Reveal some news about the Nashville soccer club. Our guest is brewing his way through Nashville, all this and this week's events on Nashville daily.
00:00:26 All right, so we have our guests who is literally brewing his way through Nashville [inaudible] [inaudible] rig, so he's doing it on the go. [inaudible] Asheville. Our guest is Wesley Keegan, the owner of tailgate brewery West. Thank you for, for being on here. Is it Wes or Wesley? Yes. Yeah, me. Either way. You know what I mean? Just West Wesley. Whatever makes you happy. You answered a both and I'll answer to just about anything just as long as you're looking at me as long as I have your attention. Yeah, that's right. Awesome. Well thanks for being on the podcast. We are recording this in tailgate brewery on their Charlotte pike location in West Nashville. This is one of three locations. They have one actually West. Why don't you just tell them where they are? Yes. So this one we call HQ or headquarters, this is kind of where our, this is where the beer is made.
00:01:13 Well, yes, the, the long answer is this is our large facility. We have two breweries on this location. We have an eight barrel brewhouse where we do kind of like our R and D brewing and we call it pilot brewing, like test brewing. And then we have a large 50 barrel brewhouse, which is the largest brewhouse in the state of Tennessee with big 200 barrel fermenters. Our packaging line where we do canning and everything is all here, but every location does brew. So that's unique as well. You know, breweries are in middle Tennessee starting to open up different tap rooms, but we opened out some bruise correct work. We're committed to brewing on site because it's not a bar, it's not a restaurant, it's a brewery and a tap room, which I think is a pretty important distinction. And if you look at other markets that have seen breweries grow, the ones that are brewing on location or sustained, the ones that are opening quick bars don't really last. Where are you guys making your ciders at? A music row is, is our primary cidery. Okay. so your apples in from like the Northeast or they come from like they come from Washington and it's a proprietary blend that we kind of set up because we don't really have a lot of apples in Tennessee. [inaudible]
00:02:22 You get your apples in your cherries all the way from up there. Yeah. Yeah. It's a nice area. It's perfect for that product. But for us to even ship apples here, attempt to press it, it's just, it's not efficient. So we've worked with a company that does all of that. We're able to pick what we want, we make our proprietary blend and then we ship what's basically juice on from the juice shipped out here, you know, simply put, and then we're able to use that to make our part cider. Awesome. So yeah, so that's primarily made it at music row, but we also make it at this location too. Okay. Because we do distribute tailgate cider, which is kind of our core cider to market. Gotcha. Awesome. How many beers do you have on your menu right now? Each occasion has about 30. Okay. I'm about 25 of those come out of, you know, the R and D and the test batch brewery here at, at our HQ location.
00:03:13 The other five are typically, you know, like the core beers, like our lager, Southeast IPA, you can put a milk stout, whatever the current hazy limited release in Kansas are sour, that kind of thing. So if it's in package, it comes out of our main location. But if you go to each different location, there's a little extra variety. So music row you'll see anywhere from like six to eight different ciders that are only at our music row spot. And if you go to East Nashville, that's our wild and spontaneous fermentation program. It's a good place to do like a, I think it was last year you guys had the Oreo and cream that came from out of town. Let's not wild. So wild is like the, it's a little bit of a misunderstanding. You know, the, the average consumer associates like Brett soured beer, Bret beer as sour beer.
00:03:59 Okay. That's not really a thing. Like wild is like a type of bacteria that you put in the beer that generally makes varying results. So it's technically an infection and it's something that we do not want to do in our normal breweries because it can spread. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean brewing is not like distilling, you know, where like you can be dirty when you distill because you know, the alcohol and all the other crosses are gonna clean it up. But beer is like a hyper clean process. And when you introduce a bug that we're deliberately trying to keep out, you know, and we have a lab manager to make sure that stuff doesn't happen. You want to put that a different location. So it works out really, really well to put it in a third location that is East Nashville where it's small, it's expensive, it's slow, but the beers are just phenomenal.
00:04:44 Like they're super delicate. They're very they're very in depth. There's a lot of different things going on where like right now we just packaged our food or stays on and like you go through this like entire SES on adventure where it's spicy kind of prickly, highly carbonated, but at the same time it's got a little bit of funk to it. It's kinda got some Berry notes and you know, then you get some citrus. It's, it's totally wild the experiences, but that's the kind of beers that you can make out of that location. That's awesome. That's a rant tailgate I think. I dunno from a national perspective, tailgate might be becoming a household name in Nashville and Tennessee. It's a household name for me. I appreciate that. I hope so. Yeah. what was your intent for people who don't know tailgate, you know, what was your, your vision when, when starting something like this?
00:05:33 Did you want to get into the household of every, every Tennesseean? Yeah, so our story is a little unorthodox in that we actually relocated out here in 2014 so I started it in Southern California. Okay. Cause you were like in the beer capital of the world at that time, right? Yeah. And when I left, there was a a hundred breweries there. That's the same. Yeah, it's pretty wild. You know, I was, I was 21 years old when I watched this and that was you 12 years ago. So you know what I thought when I was 21 is very different than what I think today, you know, but I was a hobby homebrewer. My late father thought of the name three years before I started it. Hmm. Anheuser Busch contested the name and you know, when you go to the business school, you know, there's value to intellectual property, there's value to branding.
00:06:20 And when I always thought that the name tailgate was something that regardless of what market we take it to, people would understand kind of our intent. Right. you know, and I always use the example that like Corona spends billions of dollars teaching us to think a beach when you drink Corona. Yup. You don't, you don't really need a lot of advertising to make some sort of conclusion when you hear the brewery name tailgate. Right. So that was pretty important for us. But today we only sell in Tennessee. So we brew here, we package here, we sell here, we do export to the U K. That's incredible. That's going really well. Yeah, it's been good. But that was just kind of like a, a little bit of serendipity, you know, four or five years ago and it's turned into a really good relationship for us. Right. but everything here is now just hyper focused on Tennessee.
00:07:09 Yeah. That's awesome. Well, West we are happy to have you on. Thank you. We are we're going to get into a few things about Nashville and then talk a little bit more about tailgate, but you know, we're going to get your take on a few things such as traffic, traffic, always the favorite subject of people to talk about in, in their national conversations. D do you experience traffic where, where you are? Yeah, dude. Like only every time I walk outside [inaudible] says it's not good. But it is actually a big talking point of why we have additional tap rooms. You know, I mean, when, when I first got to Nashville in 2014, it wasn't that uncommon to go across the river. Right. But it just doesn't fucking happen. Like, like you cannot get across the river period. No, not at all.
00:08:00 No more bridges. Right. I mean, like miles don't mean anything anymore. I went, I went two miles away the other day and it took me 30 minutes. Like from Midtown. Right? Yeah, that's exactly about right. So like the geography of like with we say, Hey, we're going to open a tap room over here. The distance doesn't matter anymore as much as does the traffic and the game. Yeah. We can do a copter service to be able to take you to your three locations, but we need to tell a gate tailgate helicopters. Yeah, that'd be fun. All right, so we have some events happening tonight first ones at the Ryman auditorium who will have thoughts that that place is packed. Who's playing at the Ryman tonight? On Monday nights we have Lizzo playing at the Ryman auditorium. My girl. Yeah. This is the only place we have no idea who she is. Have you heard her songs? You did. Instagram has been like raving about her. That's really where I've seen her show as a solo show at the Ryman. So
00:08:55 You won't be able to get tickets there unless you buy the reselling tickets. But I've heard good things. I haven't listened to her. Maybe I have, she's legit. She's legit. So hang on sheet. She is like a world class. I think the the right way to say this is flutist. Like she plays the flute, she plays, but like she's a she wraps. Yes. I don't know. Not like, I don't think all at once. It would be interesting. She Miami on some of her songs. I'm not familiar with her whole dishonor discography. But your, your boy here has got some real respect for the divas. Like lady Gaga, lady Gaga is my girl. So like Lizzo is kind of in that category in, in my perspective. But I mean, she is incredibly talented and I think the thing that she gets a lot of real respectful on social media is like, her whole message is about like loving yourself, body positivity. That's a lot of the part that I've seen on Instagram. I have not seen a single thing on Instagram. My targeted ads are not bad. [inaudible]
00:09:52 In hot chicken. Yeah. You just gotta love yourself more. Yeah. And then you'll find some more wisdom. She's awesome dude. Yeah. So Tuesday night you have the black keys at Bridgestone arena at 7:00 PM. These are the things that are contributing to traffic, right? No. Yeah. So much is happening at winking of Bridgestone arena. We have a Nashville predators game versus in Minnesota wild as 7:00 PM on Thursdays still preseason? I think so. Okay. You would find it on their website. I think it's definitely a season. Definitely is. I think opening nights was October 10th or something. It might be the third. Yeah. It's pretty soon. So get your cheap tickets. You go to the prayers games pretty often when, as much as I can, you know, it's fun. It's one of those things that, you know, in my industry, every so often, there's a couple of tickets that show up for a Tuesday night, something like that.
00:10:35 Yeah. Never going to go, yeah, your boys in bed gotta get some sleep, you know, 8:00 PM and I am out. Man. What time do you get here at the brewery? 5:00 AM not any more, but I am up, you know, like I started at four every day. You know, and I, that was just kind of a function of I wanted to beat everybody to work. Thankfully. You know, we've got a really good team and the brewery starts brewing at 5:00 AM that's awesome. But yeah, I've just kinda been an early to bed guy Preds games on Saturday though. That's where you'll find me. Okay. Yeah. Nah, this one I'm actually really excited for and I've never been to this, this is the Nashville film festival happening October 3rd through the 12th. This is their 50th anniversary and it's happening at Regal Hollywood theater. I think that's a Regal 27 and that's in a hundred Oaks.
00:11:19 Yeah. So this is always good. I don't know if the national film festival is going to be the place to see your movies before they hit the big screen. Yeah. Like kind of like they're saying. So like Vancouver and the Venice film festival. So I like jokers one of the best movies that's ever come out this year. Right. Those are going to be, and like, I think it actually comes out this week jokers. Yeah. But you know, Nashville has got a lot of local talent and you know, it's always just good to go, especially if you're into the indie films and if you just want to do something different, this is going to be a place to go see a bunch of movies for a low price. And just, you see like 40 different movies for like 100 bucks or two. What was that card service that really flopped with a movie pass?
00:11:59 Movie pass. This is the only money I'm so [inaudible] with more nudity, I would guess. Like the artsy films are very nude focused. Yeah. Another really cool thing. We talked about this, I we talked about the Hermitage, I'll watch the last couple of days, but this is happening. Fall Fest at the Hermitage on Saturday. At 10:00 AM 10:00 AM they must be ramping up. Fall just must be their season. I think it's everyone's season. You're right. Yeah. We make more money in the fall than we do in the summertime in Nashville. I think it's just, that's historic and that'd be like a statistically proven and I know everybody in January just stays in their house and never leaves. So super seasonal demand. But the fall is when like, it's festival season, you know, like everybody does their Oktoberfest, their fall Fest. You know what, whatever kind of fast you can do, it happens in the fall.
00:12:50 Cause you guys have a lot of pop up tents and stuff. They go around to these different festivals. We don't as much. That's, that's kind of a bigger topic, which I'd love to get into if you want. Okay. Yeah. But you know, there, there's no end of the ones that we could do. Okay. Right. Yeah, we do. We do some, some of what, there's no way for us to keep up with all of them. Oh yeah. It's every day. All locations. This location. I mean we do our own, you know, we have tailgate Fest happening in a week, which is our second biggest event of the year. We used to call your first one is the fireworks fireworks show, which I think last year what you had 3000 people or something. Yeah. Same this year. It's fucking insane. Wow. Yeah. That, and that's a funny story. Are you providing all the food and drinks for that?
00:13:31 Are you bringing in, are you outsourcing? We do all of it. Wow. Yeah. And you know, to, to mixed results in the first couple of years. But yeah, we've kind of got an unlocked now. Pumpkin fast, which is now called tailgate Fest is our second biggest and that's something that's in a week. Okay. So we're contributing to those assets. Number six. Yup. Okay. That's on Sunday. That's awesome. That's a one year anniversary of me being married. God may come to that. Yeah. The wife approved. It's going to be a lot of fun, man. Here's what we do and this is, this is my one plug for tailgates and I'll talk about as much as you can. I'll talk about it as much as you want, but we're building a medieval style trevorshay [inaudible] when you launch pumpkin's out the back, it's going to be at least a hundred foot launch where like you can come, you paint your pumpkin and then you can come launch it and it's, how big is your property here on Charlotte?
00:14:18 It's about 700 acres. Okay, that's fantastic. I may come here just to capture that in slow motion with my camera. It's really dumb, but we're pretty excited about it. It's really fun. That sounds like so much fun. It's going to be cool man. I mean there's nothing like that around here. And like it was one of those meetings that we had, we were just talking about, okay. Pumpkin festival, super dope. We've had like one year we had over 30 different pumpkin beers as one of the largest pumpkin beer festivals in United States. Wow. We didn't. Yeah. But we need to have something different happening too. So to bring family friendly activities, just diversify. Absolutely. I mean when I was listening to Nashville daily podcast, they were talking about how there's a lot of festivals happening in the fall. So we have to kind of make ours pretty competitive.
00:14:56 So, you know, are we gonna see you on a list sooner? No, I mean you guys are right, is what I'm saying. Like you guys are, you're right, that, that's, that's where everybody's doing. So if it's not ours, there's a festival happening somewhere. Yeah. But ours this year is a blend of, it's, it's a beautiful lovechild of fall beers and Oktoberfest [inaudible] with a super creative name tailgate Fest, the weekend before Oktoberfest. So hopefully you're getting that. I kinda liked that because October Fest I've been to it, but it like, there's probably more to do here then there would be fun. Oktoberfest. It's cause, you know, adding that pumpkin aspect I think is really cool because Oktoberfest, I mean it's great for just walking around and drinking beer. Yep. Which I like to do. Yes. But then you know that's, and you have a live music and then that's about where it ends.
00:15:45 You've got the food, you've got the live music and you've got the beer, which you know, a lot of people are, you know, that's, that could be, that's all she wrote and yet people are there. Yes. I liked the additional aspect of, you know that pumpkin and, and if you don't care about any of it, everybody cares about a freaking trippy Shea, you launch them launching pumpkins. How often could you say that you saw a pumpkin launch? A hundred feet in the air? Yeah. Not that off. The best part is like the guy that we have here, he's a former contractor, he runs our Canyon line. He's our maintenance manager. He pulls me aside after we talk about it and he's like, Hey, were you serious? Are you like, you really want to do this? And I was like, yeah, dead serious. He's like, this isn't going to be cheap.
00:16:24 I said, yeah, but it's going to be fun. Yeah, it, this is a lot of hard work. And if we can do something dumb every now and then, yeah, I'm all for that. Absolutely. Yeah. All right, so we have two more events to cover for this weekend. More is another fall festival. One is another fall festival where the Cheekwood harvest Cheekwood harvest three events. Very, very good. So if you're, if you're going to Cheekwood go oversee their harvest and then come over here to tailgate, grab a slice of pizza or you can't get a slice, get a whole pie and then get some beers. Then you have the Titans verse the Buffalo bills on Sunday at 12:00 PM at Nissan stadium. I really hope they're not shutting down the interstate this weekend like they did last weekend or two weekends ago where they shut down for 40 no one.
00:17:05 Nobody would be able to get to the stadium if they didn't. This one is super interesting. We've made a couple of jokes about this. Who's in the last couple of days. You're in town? Yeah. You're in town at T pack and once he said you guys are the primary beer supplier for Tupac. I don't know if there's like an official title to it. We're not the, we're not the primary, but I think we're, you're alert. The language might be wrong, but I think we're like the official beer of tea pack in some form or another. We do. We, we heavily support T pack. That's a personal interest of mine. You know, my wife's uncle, when we first started dating, took us to New York. He said, you know, like, Hey, meet me in New York. And we got there and he said, Hey, we've got, I've got you tickets. And we saw like two shows a day for the entire weekend. Wow. That's incredible. Yeah. Yeah, it was an amazing experience.
00:17:50 So I've always been a theater fan even before that and I think what they do down at T pack is really great. Yeah. And you know, if we get a chance to support stuff like that, we're all for it. Yeah, absolutely. So some business news that we found on the Nashville business journal, it says, cool, sprint Springs strikes back. Aaron, what's this article about? Know, but it's not a star Wars title, like [inaudible] star Wars related happening here. There's snow on the ground. Yeah. But so mainly this is talking about the heavy investment that's going into cold Springs. Cool Springs, homos. I mean, to me it feels like they have just as many announcements of new developments, buyouts, outs and everything. Oh, absolutely. As much as downtown Nashville, this second like largest headquarter corporation area in Tennessee. Yeah. The subheading to this article this is from the national business journal says 15 developers and investors from six States are pursuing more than $3 billion of big Seuss projects in cool Springs aiming to bring urban cool to the suburbs. Wow. See what you did there. Nashville Vista district, I mean urban. Cool. I mean it's still cool Springs. It's going to be your business community, pretty punny right now. So there,
00:19:01 I don't think this is including the Mars facility that's worth $1 billion. Wow. This isn't including the add ons that Nissan's doing. So there's a lot of right there in cool Springs. If you get a go 65 and I think it's Carruthers and McEwen. No, I'm wrong. It's the road after that one. They say that that's one of them be the busiest intersection in the Southeastern United States. Wow. and that was predicted about five years ago and now I think that's, that dream is coming to like being fulfilled.
00:19:31 Do you think that we might actually start experiencing traffic now? Yeah, I think we're actually gonna experience real traffic.
00:19:40 So it's, Franklin is just blowing up in itself. The main street and Franklin is incredible. I love going to Franklin. I tried to avoid cool Springs as much as I possibly can though. How about you guys?
00:19:54 So cool Springs is one of those places that I'm speaking from the perspective of, you know, beer industry, hospitality industry. In my space they talk about it just being flooded with chains. You know, all the restaurants, all the, the dining options are chains. We get people that comment on our pages all the time, like, please come make a taproom down there. It's so damn expensive. It is not even just residential. Austin Smith with party foul. Yeah. He just announced his Austral business journal. Yeah. We had him on our show. I liked that one a while ago. Yeah. He just announced that they're opening their cool Springs location. Yeah, yeah. But is extremely expensive down in cool Springs. It's amazing that Nashville prices have pretty much extended to like the greater Nashville area. You know, there's not really defined anymore. Almost any neighborhood pretty much costs the same as Nashville. Oh yeah. The apartments in downtown Franklin that they're right now
00:20:48 Are just as much as the apartments that I live in right next to Nissan right now. It's incredible. Which is, that's crazy to think about. Yeah, it is. So yeah, this, in this article, I'll just give you guys a little bit more information. Again, Nashville business journal the quotes that they can't be, are your parents suburbs, younger folks require them to be hip walkable with urban amenities. They're not looking for white picket fences. The competition includes new newcomer, Cate, D C Dallas-based developer whose regional executive declared that an integrated and walkable mixed use environment. At the state of Tennessee's best interchange interchange is exactly what corporate America is seeking others. And I think it's the Liberty pike. I can't remember. Yeah. And so this is probably, you know, taking that corporate field at cold Springs may have had in that chain and everything and turning it into more of a place that, you know, may have some vibe after 5:00 PM and may have a little bit more of a vibe for everybody who's involved, not just not just your nine to five hours.
00:21:51 And I mean that's what developers are looking for, right? They're, they're looking for mixed use. Kind of back to the first thing that we said was, you know, people don't want to drive cause it's so much work. So if a developer can bring a full package to their residents, their tenants, you know, what, whatever their primary rented space is. Yeah. That's what they're trying to push. Yeah. Like one Bellevue place I think is doing an incredible job of that. And I would love to see that down towards cool Springs as well. And on a Friday's episode we talked about the national business journal had a quiz of what national needed next. And my answer was a out of all the choices, more retail space that's friendly to residents because once you get more of those mixed use places in and nationals finally getting on that swing in the downtown area, the more that you know you'd go are going to have that community field downtown versus you know, it's just tourists.
00:22:47 And you know, those are just, tourists are going down there 24, seven and you've got that business community just North of of Broadway. And you know, once you have more areas that are similar to the Gulch in that downtown area, then I think downtown is going to change. This article on national business journal talks about the Turner family. What should they were the primary investors into the golf, right? They're the ones who are also doing this development down in cool Springs and they have construction projects all over the city of Nashville, either probably one of the largest construction companies here in town. Another article that we found on the Nashville business journal is the Nashville soccer club reveals Jersey sponsor for MSL M L S debate Dubuque debut debut. It was a tough one. It was. So this is interesting because I'm a baseball fan so I'm not used to seeing logos on jerseys. Yeah. So this is, this
00:23:46 One was like every time I see it I'm like, ah, I know the NBA is going this direction, but you're not 80 years old either. You know, I mean that's, that's kind of the baseball argument. Yeah. You know, if you look at a soccer Jersey anywhere else in the world, they, they are branded so much to the point where like when I was younger I thought that those were the team names because some of them were like international companies. I didn't know what an air Lingus is, however you say that. I think it's a little more organic now. Now that it's become a little more commonplace, like you're saying with the NBA and that sort of thing. But it makes sense to do, the MBA was doing that. It's like a little patch on like the top left. NASCAR drivers say, Oh gosh, it's all, yeah, that's always been there.
00:24:28 But yeah, so Nashville announced a partnership between the national soccer club and a Renaissance bank and it's crazy. They were advertising in times square for this, for this relationship, for this relationship. That's where the school, that's where like the reveal went to, went to one of the, the video billboards in times square. That's cool. Yeah, I saw it actually yesterday in Midtown on the Renaissance bank. Like they, they had put it up on the window. Oh, that's awesome. Like while it was being announced. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. So that's good timing and it seems cool man. Like they're, they're super progressive and they've got an incredible ownership group that knows what they're doing. You know, like all the guys back of house are pros or no, even like their their corporate relations guy was running NASCAR. I want to stay for like the Coca Cola 600 race track out in North Carolina.
00:25:22 Thank you. Yeah. I'm like, this guy's been doing it for years. So it's not like a club startup that's trying to figure their way out. Like these, these guys are pros. Yeah. And Renaissance, a great organization man. Like it's a cool bank. They're progressive, they started in Mississippi, but all the people that are doing it here are like industry pros that know that relationships matter. Yeah. I think that's an unpaid that you guys are supporters of the national soccer blood bright big time. You showed their games, you show their games. We do. We show them in all of our locations. Our music row location is the official watch bar is kind of what they call us. Amazing. Walking in there and you just see like the, the scars. Yeah, so AAO is like the the official American Outlaws. It's the official watch club for us soccer.
00:26:10 So like when the world cup was happening this last summer, the women's world cup, I mean they'd come in and they'd just packed the place and I think it was the same final was like 9:00 AM and it was absolutely absurdly packed. And you guys open early for that. I mean, you kind of have to you know, they're gonna watch somewhere. These, these are people that come out on Tuesday nights all year round, you know, and support men like men's and women's soccer. Yeah. And it's just a really good relationship. And so that kind of parlayed, we're all soccer fans here. That parlayed into when NSC started coming along, you know, all of us were just like, yeah, we're, we're buying our tickets, we're fans, we're going to show the games and if we can, if we can work with the organization too, we hope we can.
00:26:50 Yeah. Are they, so I've only been to European based game, so I've been to like Roma vs [inaudible] cool. Which was incredible. They had like a frickin moat around the thing with spikes. So you wish to field you would have died. But I, I assume America as a soccer games are not as intense as that. Right. It depends, man. I mean, if you go to like a timbers game in Seattle, like they're nuts, purity and everything that's see scans. I mean like a, I think a Seattle timbers game is probably about as wild a fan experience. You can get it looks like, and I haven't been, but it like that's the dream. If you're an MLS team, like you want to be like them basically. Atlanta has got a good one too. But the best like analogy I could give you is like Preds and the Stanley cup a couple of years ago.
00:27:35 It's madness. You know, like they all know their changes that all traditional viewing parties for the predators as well. Right? Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I mean, we're just, we're sports fans. Think I watched, I think I watched three or four Stanley cup games during that season. Yeah. Yeah. We actually won a Preds ran hole of best place to watch a predators game in Nashville and this location one. But I mean, you know, during the playoffs it'd be over a thousand people and we'd have four different big screens up all over the property. I mean, if you want to come out and chat and people were like doing the whole thanks Paul. Yeah. You know, watching it on TV. Yeah. I mean there is no, there is no Paul announcement on an away game, but people were still doing it out like it's a really cool experience. Especially in the playoffs, like during the regular season.
00:28:21 It's not, it's not quite so high. But it's fun here. Yeah. All right. So West we've got a, a segment that we always do called National's tip of the day. So if you had to, if somebody was coming into town and they said, how can I best experience national, but with you, how would you take them throughout the day? So the low hanging fruit is, you know, eating and drinking, right? Like nationals and eating and drinking city where were built on that 100% and you know, you have to do that. And so anybody that comes to town, I'll give them a list of like, Hey, here's where I'd recommend you eat. Here's where I eat. You know, go down to Broadway, do that stuff. But my favorite thing to do in Nashville is canoe. The Harpeth. I love that. Yeah. I don't own a canoe. I don't own a kayak.
00:29:00 It's not something that I would do enough, but the way I do it is I go down to foggy bottom, right down here on highway 70. You know, you just drive that straight down the street from the brewery. It's near the narrows the Harpeth. Yeah. They park. Yeah. Yep. The Harpeth river state park. Yeah. But it's, it's like, it's a ridiculously approachable activity. You don't have to be dressed anything silly. You can get a two person canoe for like two hours, which is a, a very reasonable canoe ride. Doesn't seem very long, but after two hours, you know, your, your ass is crying, you know? So if you don't do it a lot, like, yes, it's enough. Yeah. But it's like 50 bucks, you know, they, they, they set you up. They'll pick up. Yeah. It's, I mean, it's, it's the best you can bring your snacks. You can bring whatever you're going to drink. Yeah. You know, I always bring a few beers and you know, it's, I'll usually do it pretty early in the day. Weather's good. Water feels good. I mean, that's the best. I think it's the best thing to do in the city. Personally. I've done it before. It's super relaxing. Yeah. It's, I mean, you could put up float in the river and go down the carpet. Yes. It's, the harvest is a lot of fun. But who's going to pick you up as a question?
00:30:09 Probably a snake. [inaudible] Things are freaking everywhere. Yeah. Like when used poisonous. Yeah. Like when you stop for breaks, like you gotta be quick when you get in and out. Cause I mean that they don't take this next out of that. That's why you need that canoe man. You've got like a little shield yeah. Of safety on either side. Yeah. Just trap yourself. Yeah. In between the canoes, I have a water moccasin story, so I was swimming once in like this little like big stream near my house and I thought this was a stick coming towards me. And so I grabbed it and it was a watermark to send any wrapped around my arm and I ran out of the water. I nailed my hand against the tree and I've never swam one that type of water ever again in my entire life. I knew in the Harper.
00:30:53 Wow. Yeah, it was a in the almost bit in my face, like it was a very intense water moccasins, so I was hoping this was going to be like a lonesome dove type thing and you know, like he's gonna tell the story from, from that movie. There's all water moccasins scene. I mean it's like made in the sixties or something. See, if you don't know the reference, that's okay. We'll go back and watch it. Yeah, you've got four hours to dedicate. It's totally worth it. What is one of your favorite restaurants in Nashville? I know you guys have incredible food here at tailgate. Thank you. But like if you had to go bring a guest to somewhere, where would you show them besides your restaurants?
00:31:25 It's kind of a loaded question, right? Because it's cuisine based in my opinion. You know, it depends on what I want to eat. I think that for my money, the best food in Nashville is that ordinance. Like, yes, it's got phase incredible. Yeah. You cannot get a better meal than their chest pie. So good. So here's a plain chest pie story. So first time I, I mean I grew up, I had, I had an aunt that lives here in Nashville and she was, I grew up in California and she lived out there at the time. So I grew up like washing my clothes, drinking sweet tea, like a lot of Southern isms were in my life just by was not one. Okay. So I was at Donald's and finally I worked up the courage to ask the lady behind the counter like, Hey, what is chess pie? She goes, honey, that's chess pie. And I said, no, I get it, but what is it? She's like, well, it's got chess pie.
00:32:15 That's it. That was the explanation. So they're chess pie is awesome. Did you get a slice of it though? Of course. I did try that. Do you ever figure out what was in [inaudible]?
00:32:22 Yeah, I think the actual explanation is, it's basically pecan pie in my ass to, because yeah, I think that's the easiest way. It's just like the curve, the base of the [inaudible]. Yep. Yep. So very not healthy. No. Right. Extremely unhealthy. But for like the, for, for $11, you can't go wrong. I think Arnold's is probably best food. How long have you waited in line at Arnold's? Take my, my top is 41 minutes. Yeah. I dunno. It's nothing that I'd be proud of, you know, like I'm not a line guy. Like if there's a line somewhere, I'm usually going somewhere else. What about pancake pantry? I haven't done it. Really do it Wednesday morning. 7:00 AM best time. Okay. Yeah. That's probably the only tourist thing I haven't done. Like I love all the barbecue places and I kind of, I kind of rotate, you know, with ed and Martins and peg leg.
00:33:09 Right. And I love them all for different reasons. I go to Ellie's most cause it's closest to my house here on the West side. There you go. Everybody's got a hot chicken. I love Hattie B's. Chef John, have you guys done like a collaboration with like how heavy BS chicken on pizzas and stuff? Man, we made a beer couple of years ago called hot chicken IPA and it was good beer. I enjoyed that. It was red and we did a couple of different iterations of it and like some of them were super fucking hot and some of them were pretty mild, but it's basically just the jalapeno IPA which was pretty in Vogue at the time. But we just came up with a dumb name called it hot chicken IPA, you know, and then some mouth breathers, you know, tweeting at me saying like, yo, so you put chicken in this thing like, Oh, I put your in this bitch.
00:33:53 No dude, we don't put chicken in it, you know. So that was kind of deflating cause I thought that was really silly. So we don't have a hot chicken IPA anymore is more or less sweets. I had a hot chicken. It was, no, it was Nashville hot. It was a cookie from Christy cookie. Well that was good too. It was, it actually, I was like, there's no way this thing is gonna reflect the hotness of white. What are you experienced in rock chicken? But it did. Yeah. I probably wouldn't eat it again because I wanted an actual dessert when I eat. It was something good to experience. Cookie time is a very special time. You know, I want to be very deliberate with my calories when I go down that road. Yeah, exactly. And I don't want to have to, well maybe, maybe now I can just say, okay, now I need another cookie to go on top of that in order to counteract what I just ate.
00:34:40 Yeah. Cause it's spicy. The calories don't count. Well let me ask you one. So have you guys, either of you been to Emmy squared? I have seen photos on it on Instagram. That's my literally my advertisement on Instagram is the Emmy squared in New York city, not the one in Nashville. Whoa. So I have not been there is a good dude. It's, it's incredibly good. That's, that's what I've heard from Instagram and I've seen their beautiful photos yet. No, it's for real. It is. You know how like burgers or one of those deals kinda like hot chicken [inaudible] so they've got two locations. One's in the Gulch and it's about the size of like your passenger seat of your car. It's pretty cozy and I will say I don't like this very much is like, and they're, they're great. Like they're great people. You can actually get tailgate there but like you walk in and the whole place is empty and then it's just kinda like, do you have a reservation?
00:35:32 Like come on. Well look, I know I realized there's like three seats here, but still you, they're all, they're all available. But I, I mean I totally respect the way it's run and that sort of thing. But they did just open a location in green Hills and this like up, there's a former French restaurant by the movie theater. Food's incredible. Exactly what we're talking about. Yeah, same, same style. I actually go to the green Hills one more often cause there's a lot more room. I'll make a reservation by default now, but it's awesome. Like I cannot understate how good their burger is. Okay. I have a story of a friend of mine similar to that of him. He scored like a small space apparently. I don't know if this place even exists anywhere, but there was a sushi place downtown that was very small, just a couple of tables.
00:36:18 I had no idea. And the when my friend was recounting his experience, he said he walked up to the counter. Nobody was there. Yeah. They told him to have a seat. And the the guy came up to him a few minutes later actually no, I don't think anybody ever came up to him. And he asked what was going on and they said, you have to go and grab a drink from the cooler, like a, I guess a refrigerator type cooler sit down. And that way they'll know that you're ready to order and you have to be ready to order. He wasn't ready to order, so they didn't take his order and he just walked out. Yeah. It tells me these things. And so like it's one of those places you have to know how it works. Yeah. And it was just super interesting cause I'd never heard of anything like that before.
00:37:03 So as an operator, I'm hugely sympathetic to, you know, your constraints in a location, you know, and like I tell like the M E squared story, just, you know, a little bit tongue in cheek. Because I mean the food's incredible. The people are wonderful and I just make a reservation easy, you know, like that's, that's no problem. But if it's a small spot, you know what I mean? Fortunately we don't have to mess with that. We're a little fast casual, but I will say in a similar vein, you know, people come into our locations and they like it. It's like they just stepped onto Mars, you know, like, like people will just kind of walk in and it's like, where the hell am I? Yeah. It's like, wait, it's actually Midtown with the bachelorette party. So yeah. So funny. It's like, it's everybody. Even locals, it's like, I didn't, I just see you with at least like you're in line.
00:37:49 You understand how this works. Pinera is the same thing. Any of these, the same thing. I did this at peg leg for lunch. Like what do you mean? Why are you confused here? For some reason, I think that, you know, if there's, there is no formula anymore in like a a restaurant bar, tap room type experience. And so I think that it's just kind of one of those deals where like our job on my side is to make sure we do better to let people like your buddy know, Hey, it's a little bit weird here. Yeah. I mean that's interesting. Did you have anything in mind when you, did you want any of these dislocations to be like a cheers bar or did you want it to be definitely not. What did you envision for the style of the restaurant when somebody was on the inside?
00:38:30 So we always wanted fast casual. We always wanted something where people could hang out. But you know, I'm, I'm the only owner and I've, you know, I grew up on welfare and food stamps. So, you know, as we grow, it's all very organic. It's because business is good cause we run a good business, right. Every dollar we make goes right back into it. I'm not the highest paid guy in this company. Yeah. So there, there isn't someone like buying their vacation home with Nashville shores and this organization, you know, that it, it's always like the butt of our jokes. [inaudible]
00:39:05 You know, a boy can dream. Yeah. So, but to that point, you know, we were fortunate that when we opened up, we opened with a bar and six picnic tables and you know, like, we didn't even have barstools but a friend of mine owns a couple of bars and he's like, he goes, buddy, you're going to have to have some barstools. And I said, Nope, that's not how breweries work, man on, I'm from California and you don't need barstools in California. And he's like, I'll bring you barstools and like when we soft opened, like he showed up in his picnic truck, hugely successful, owns honkytonks has no reason to do this, but like showed up that day and brought me barstools. Wow. Yeah. So great dude. I've sat at the bar, the one in Midtown. I've sat at that bar more than any other bar in town. Thank you. And I've had some, I met a guy from Ireland once and our friends, like I've met some really cool people. You know why you met a guy from Ireland at our music grow tap room cause he was a musician. What was the Irish bar? Yeah, it was, it was, yeah. [inaudible]
00:40:01 Mcginnis McGinnis. Yeah. So when they closed, literally they, we got the keys November one, we opened November 11. Oh my God. You guys turn around fast. Like I remember walking in, I literally was in within like the first three days of you opening it. Yeah. Yeah. Well and the whole, the whole negotiation with their owner and us was a month. I mean the whole thing happened fast, but you know, we were always looking for a second location. But when we did it you know, the, the, the people at Google, I was, I was going to try and call them a name, but I figured I should decided that because it was, there was such a small window between their closing and our opening that we weren't allowed to be a different location. So you can still see on reviews that location that it was coming. Yeah.
00:40:46 It's, it's a great place to get scotch, eggs or whatever, whatever the hell you know, are like Irish too. So people who are from Europe, especially like London or Ireland or something like that, that have come to Nashville and that was their spot still come in and they kind of again just walk into Mars like, Oh shit, where's my Irish bar? And then they ended up staying. So that's awesome. Yeah, it's funny that, you know, most most international experiences at that location are some sort of Irish connection. Wow. That's funny. That's really cool. So which industry do you like more the restaurant side of things or the beer industry side of fear? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I am not a restaurant tour. Okay. By any measure of the imagination. Now did you develop the menu or do you have a chef in house? We're still kind of small enough where like, I, I don't, well, the way I say it is this, we're, we're big enough.
00:41:42 I don't have to do everything every day. Yeah. But we're small enough that I do everything. Yeah. I developed the, the pizza menu. I developed all the pizza and all of that and basically we've hired really well where it's continued to evolve just like beer. But the way that we described that kind of stuff is like, you know, I was 21 when I was a home brewer and I launched a brewery, you know, by all rights. I had no reason to do that when we started cider. I had never made cider professionally, but we just said, Hey, we're just going to do well. Yeah. And I'm going to figure it out. Yeah. That's what we did. Pizza was the same thing. We needed food. Pizza made sense and you know, I said I'm gonna do it and bought an oven and while the oven was shipping, I kind of figured the rest.
00:42:27 Yeah. I love your as pizza. Thank you. We featured you guys and our top restaurant video and [inaudible] top pizza video in 2000. That came out last year. Kinda like one recommendation for pizza. Have you ever had the meat sauce? Pizza? A meat sauce pizza? Yeah. So basically what it is it's a very Northern style pizza. Northern what? Like, like Northeast New York style pizza. So basically it's just, it's your round pie, your 16 inch pie. And then instead of a spaghetti sauce, they use a meat sauce bowl. Aes kind of. Yeah, yeah. But it's like, it's like fresh beef in the meat sauce and then you cover it with like a really fresh mozzarella. Okay. And then you just put more meat on top of it. It's incredible. I like that. Yeah. It's a good piece of, well proud carnivore over here.
00:43:17 I'm very open to try that. Speaking of pizza and carnivores, we do have something in front of us right now. This is a new addition to the menu, isn't it? Yeah, this is hot chicken pizza. So, so unlike hot chicken IPA, this is actually got hot chicken on it. So now are you guys, did you guys partner for local hot chicken restaurants or make your own? Yeah. So our lead kitchen manager, I guess for lack of a better description, he kind of is a over all of our locations and he's based out of this one. His name is Jay. He said, Hey, I want to make a hot chicken pizza. And I said, dude, do you know how to make hot chicken? He's like, yeah, yeah. He was a director of dining at a, at a university before coming over here. So guy knows what he's doing.
00:43:59 He's had a lot of different head chef spots and jobs and he's really upped our game quite a bit. Yeah, we're trying this right now. It's fantastic. It tastes like this is great because I'm not like a super fan of hot spices, but Nashville hot chicken and the Creole food has gotten me into, yes, a little bit of the spiciness and this is just right on the money of where, where it's not too hot. But you like the kick? Yeah, kind of your top of your mouth. Like it's just like that nice hot chicken cake and then the pin ever seen with the pickles are great. Thank you. On top of this. This is an addition that you didn't know you liked until UVA until you eat it. That's the subtle art of pizza building is like we do these pizza of the months and they get pretty dumb.
00:44:39 Like we have, this month is a, there's only a couple of days left with chicken Parmesan and there's actually pasta noodles on it as well as, you know, breaded chicken as well as marinara and fresh mozzarella and you know, you go through these versions of it and you know, finally we were like, man, it's missing something. It's gotta be noodles, you know, and like it's, it's some sort of like what you're saying with the pickles is there's some, it's all about juxtaposing the ingredients is what makes a good pizza. Yeah. This is really good. We also have some flights in front of us. Yup. Who does the naming for these drinks? It's pretty cool. It's pretty collaborative. Most of the names are descriptive because, you know, we average two new beers a week, so it changes so fast, which is insane. Yeah. It's a lot of variety. Wow.
00:45:28 I mean last year we made over a hundred different beers, not counting beers. We remain, keep any of those hundred beers permanently on the menu. So, so it's all R and D. Right, right. And you know, like Southeast IPA is probably the best story I have about that process. When we opened up, we started just cranking out West coast IPA cause we wanted to find our IPA to number one style and craft beer. You know, I wanted a beer that you could put on the table next to planning next to highlight next to you know, I don't even know if goose was bought at the time, but like Dogfish head. Yeah. I mean the, the probably 60 or 90 minutes, you know, I wanted to be able to put a beer on that table where people would say, yeah, this is, this is, this is the right group to be with.
00:46:11 You know, I mean they're all a little bit different but those, those are some of the best in the country. So we went through this R and D process and if you were visiting the tap room over those couple of years, there are just version after version of West coast IPA that eventually became Southeast. So to your question, some of them become core products. Okay. And then some of them become seasonal releases like orange wheat that just came out. Wow. I just had, and it's fantastic. It's dope. It's like super refreshing. I was like, I feel really refreshing. That's what we're looking for. But that's the current seasonal, you know, we did Lyme lager during the summer. Okay. We're probably gonna run. When's you wheat in through the winter? It's a good winter beer. Yeah, it's refreshing, I think different roles, you know, I mean, I like drinking seasonally, but you know, how many 15% stouts can I drink?
00:46:58 I, I'm like, I'm going to find out [inaudible] every single time. That's my favorite thing. Like binge and 15% stat. Yeah. Been there many a times coming from South, South California, California. How did you end up here in Nashville? I've got family here. Okay. Is is the primary reason you know, we're, my wife and I are young. We're both from Southern California, but we wanted to try somewhere else. How long have you been in the Nashville area? About six years now. Okay. Yeah. And then you, did you move? So did you have a brewery brewery location in San Diego? Yeah. But not, not tasting room, you know, so production was was, was moved out of Southern California. We didn't have a tasting room again, I didn't have two nickels to rub together. Yeah. But we were selling across 14 different States at the time.
00:47:48 Wow. But it was, you know, basically a mile wide and an inch deep. So we were in all these different States but not everywhere. And the industry has changed and it's kind of a part of the story where it's just kind of like almost irrelevant today because it doesn't matter. You know, in 2007, nobody cared about a tasting room. Nobody cared about where things were made. They didn't understand or care to understand the level of interest that there is today in craft beer. So, you know, I think that, you know, we have evolved as the industry has and we've been very quick to pivot in the direction of what everybody else is going. Does anything about Nashville influenced the way that you pivot or is it mainly, do you guys just kind of stay inside your own heads and make moves in that direction?
00:48:36 There's a pretty good saying where it's something like, you know, I can build the best building in town by building the best building in town or tearing somebody else's down. Yeah. You know, we're, we're gonna focus on building the best building. You know, we're, we're kind of, we look inwards, we're not too concerned about what everybody else is doing in terms of competitive sense. Yeah. But I will say that what we have done, you know, back to like the taproom developing from six picnic tables to what it is today, it's 100% a function of customer feedback. So, you know, we were fortunate, we don't have a lot of bad reviews. But sometimes there is one and it, and it's justified, you know, Hey, this, this went wrong and maybe we missed it. Yeah. And those are good opportunities for us to listen and see what we can change.
00:49:26 And if it makes sense we're going to do it. But even stuff like this table that we're sitting at right now, this was not here four months ago and that's just because we needed more seating. Is age these like some of your beers in these barrels? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So barrels are a little bit of an art. And I am by no means an expert, but it's, it's kind of a little bit mix of like science, art, lots of patients. And our last barrel age release we did last year called crucifer where we came out with like four different variants of it. It was named after our artists. That's awesome. I remember that just offer a high end style that was like a 11.5, 10 something 10. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We are not allowed to go over 10.1. Okay. But yeah, that, it's that one.
00:50:10 And we did like, it was a good beer. We were like a Rocky road version. We did. We of course you did a peanut butter version. I mean we did a number of different variants, coffee, but those beers came out of these barrels and a, these barrels were dead. So you know, you can only do so much with a dead barrel. Yeah. Yeah. So furniture it is, have you guys partnered with like Nelson's Greenbriar to start aging some of your beers? They're about to release their a first major whiskey here soon. Yeah. So maybe getting some of those barrel barrels and putting the one of your like peanut butter and milk stouts in it whiskeys. Interesting. Because bourbon is more of the character you're looking for with beer, for those types of beers. You know, like that category a bourbon barrel aged out is kind of what we want.
00:50:52 You know, you want that richer character that comes out of like a Kentucky bourbon. Yeah. We've, we have gotten some whiskey barrels from them. They're great people, man. Both of those guys are good dudes. So we've gotten barrels from them. We love the people over at speakeasy that do pickers. Oh yeah. You know, Davidson's whiskey. They're, they're rad. So they changed their name to Pennington distillery now. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Did they officially change it? Yeah, I think speakeasies is their marketing department. I don't know. Jeff, if you're listening to this podcast, we'll love to have you on and we'll talk about your name changes. Yeah. He's a great dude. Yeah. We had him on one of our our videos last year. Cool. I got to see inside of their, their little production house and it's, it's great. Davidson, one of my favorites now.
00:51:37 Yeah, that's a good one. It's really good. They make great product men and their people are just awesome. So like we've used their barrels barrels. We're just kinda one of those things where they're so incredibly expensive and you've got to do them at the right time of year and you've got to be comfortable that, you know, you're going to be able to keep them at the right temperature and then shit goes wrong and then you're out the window. Money and time. Yeah. That's partly why. Yeah. And that's why, that's partly why we do what we do at East Nashville. Cause we've got some court barrels over there and then we're going to probably put some wine barrels in next. But it's small, it's controlled, it's in the tap room. So those types of risks are much more managed. Yeah. So looking of a, go ahead.
00:52:16 I was gonna say, what's a, when you do your planning for tailgate how far are you thinking ahead dude? Like my, my job is to you know, each department kind of has a manager, right? You know, today. So you know, there's, there is a sales manager, there is a brewery manager, there is a tap room manager for each tap room. There's kitchen managers. So these guys do a really great job running running the day to day running week to week. My job is to, you know, look ahead and sometimes that means, you know, like today we're already talking about what we're going to be making in Q one 20, 20, you know, like we're looking at the production calendar for that. Right. But that also means, you know, I don't like talking like this. I'm pretty anti like business speak, you know, like you're not gonna hear me say, you know, I'm working on our blockchain to, to maximize our synergies with, you know, linking.
00:53:15 Yeah. That's not me. But you know, we, we have to, you know, we, we, we have a business plan for, you know, what we wanna do with tap rooms. We have a business plan with what markets we want to be in. We only just launched a Memphis, so, wow. There's, you have a brewery in Memphis now? No distributor in Memphis distributed. Okay. So we distributed in Memphis. And that just happened, you know, after three years, over five years. Yeah. You know, so those types of things are things where like, you know, sometimes I've got a plan that I know I want to happen, but it could take five or 10 years, you know? Yeah. So there's not really, there's nothing from, you know, there's no absolutes in my life. Yeah. What's something that you're saying? You know, this may never happen, but this would be cool if it happened.
00:54:00 [Inaudible]
00:54:02 Whether that's in the beer making, whether that's in where you guys distribute, whether that's in partnerships. I mean, our, our business plan is, is simple. You know, we want to be the best brewery in Tennessee. Yeah. That's what we talk about in here every day. Yeah. you know, so our ability to, to achieve that goal is going to rely on our ability to continue to be flexible. Yeah. So, you know, there's, there's a ton of different opportunities out there for us. A year before we got into cider, I probably never would have thought that we were gonna start making cider. Wow. You know we, we like to think that we're deliberate, but you know, when we decide we're gonna move and we're going to do something, we're pretty fucking aggressive. We're going to do it, you know? Well, the thing that you're good. Yeah, no, go ahead. What's the thing you love most about being a business owner in the Nashville community?
00:54:58 Every minute of every day is different. You know, I, I don't have to be chained to a desk. I don't have to be stuck behind the wheel. I don't have to do anything that I don't want to do because it's, everything's my fault. You know, like I, if I walk in one day and I just think like, man, this fucking sucks. I can fix it. Yeah. You know, like at the end of the day, I have only me to blame. Yeah. You know, for whatever our good is or whatever, or bad is. You know, I can say that when things happen that are good, that's probably everybody else's fault. And we're lucky to have them, you know, they're there, they're doing their jobs and you know, we've got 90 ish people who really give a shit and that matters here. Yeah. But I think the best part about owning a business is
00:55:48 [Inaudible].
00:55:48 We, we get to dictate what we're gonna do every day. And that's, I think that's pretty special. Yeah. and we all, we ask this of everybody who is a guest on our podcast. What is the Nashville missing? We're getting kind of the big city vibes in here, but obviously, you know, probably everybody has a different thought on, you know, what does Nashville initial missing that would be next, that would, you know, what could come in from another city to really bring up Nashville to another level. Dude, you know, it's cliche, but bike lanes, it's, I mean, it's something so simple. You're right. Yeah. But like, it, it makes such a difference, you know? I mean, 15% of the city has sidewalks. That's a good statistic. Yeah. when we, when we developed out here, it was right after the mayor made a mandate that we were gonna push sidewalks, you know?
00:56:40 And I was very supportive that, yeah. But all of a sudden code said, okay, well if you're doing anything to develop, you've got to add sidewalks. Yeah. So when we were building our expansion out here three ish years ago we all of a sudden we're looking at making the last sidewalk West of Nashville. Tell Memphis, Oh my, you know, like on highway 70. So we kinda had to have a common sense conversation of like, there isn't a sidewalk out here. Like yeah, you can't connect it to anything else. You want us to spend over $50,000 for, you know, a standalone sidewalk that people aren't gonna use. So, I mean, I tell that story is just kind of like an example of, it's easy for me to sit here and say we need bike lanes, but I very intimately understand that there's a lot that goes into it.
00:57:25 Yeah. But I don't think that it's that challenging where personally, and this is not, you know, any representation of the business, cause I'm very hesitant to kind of give any personal opinions that are tied to the business in any way. But personally I think that I, I am fortunate that I know a lot of people that are on city council and in the mayor's office and that sort of thing. I think we've got the right people that can figure that stuff out. Yeah. But they just need to, it's time and money. Yeah. That's, yeah. Everything, right. Everything is time and money. Yes. But they, if, if they decide that they're going to commit to that, then spend the money, yeah. Then they'll do it. You know? I mean it's, we're at these points to where if you don't do it, it's only going to get dramatically.
00:58:05 My small town in upstate New York has 90% coverage of sidewalks and we had 2000 people and population. Yeah. Nashville can figure it out. You know where I went recently is I went to Boston for 36 hours. It's an amazing walking city. Yes. We walked everywhere and it was like, I hate driving in Boston. It's one of, I hate it more than New York. We didn't even, we didn't even try. I mean we were lucky. The weather was good, but we were there for a short amount of time and you know, they have this whole like walking trail, you know, revolutionary walking trail. But like everything was connected via these great sidewalks. And if we had like half of that, I feel like it would just be so much more fun for everybody else. The one thing that with Boston though is it was made to walk.
00:58:46 Yes. Made for horse and trolley to like suck at this. Like we went in and like looked at the, somebody made a history of like the building of the city itself, all racial like grids. It started in 1890s and it was like, alright, here's a grid system. Let's lay it on top of the map. And it's like somebody said, here's the grid system. And then one [inaudible] went and built the city a completely different [inaudible] Hills and so they built right downtown roads based on bison trails. Yeah. So, so maybe we don't need a bicycle trails. We need bikes. I'd be jumping at some of those from land between the lakes. Yeah, to come down to Nashville and make a trail. If there is a bison or a bicycle in a side lane, I would be happy with either at this point, very happy if there is a bison.
00:59:31 Yeah, right. We would be remiss if we didn't talk about a few of the beers that are in front of us right now. We have a flood. My favorite, I did not see this until like 20 minutes ago is Taylor brew on. Right. Which is amazing. Is that one that you consulted with him and be like, Hey, what's your beers? Or did you just pick the name? So here's, here's the story. Last year we made a beer called Marcus Maris Otter and Marisol butter. It's pretty silly. Marisol is like a Brewer's grain and you know, we drew this Otter, the animal and then like a football Jersey and thing. A couple, I remember this one. Can you that it's a, you have a picture of it and the Midtown location? Yes. Yeah. But that was a tribute and you know, we didn't talk to Marcus about it and you know, the way we do these hazy IPAs and we make like at most hundred cases and then when they're gone, they're gone.
01:00:17 You know? So it's, it's really limited. Ron Taylor Bruin was less than that. It was maybe even 60 cases. Hopefully he'll be able to play a game by the time somebody takes the hit. Yeah, it came out and here's how this one came out. And I think the story is really important is I did reach him and I asked his permission and I kind of told the same story. I said, Hey, we did this last year. It's just a tribute. But now we're a little bit bigger today and we would like to make sure it's okay with you. And he had every right and every reason to say, yeah, but only if I get a royalty or whatever. But like he didn't even go down that road. He would, he could not have been cooler. And I just think he's like one of the good dudes in this city.
01:00:54 He is sit that deserves to be recognized as one cause he just thought it was fun. Yeah. And that's so rare nowadays. You know, we're like, he's, he's successful in his space. He does a lot of cool stuff. Like I remember reading some article where like he was standing behind someone at target and he just picked up her tab. That's cool. Yeah. He's been out here and playing corn hole and like some dude posted on Instagram like, Hey, I'm at tailgate and I was playing corn hole with Taylor Luan and he like commented on his post. Like it's just a good guy. He is. And I, and I think that that, that is like my favorite part about this beer. The beer is delicious. It's super juicy. Couldn't be happier with the way it came out, but the, the can was we, we made him look like the Apollo tight to the Titan Apollo, you know, like the original Greek Titans.
01:01:39 Wow. You know, cause Oh, I've got to see that. Yeah. We wanted to be a little bit creative, you know, cause you know that there is copyright consideration in that world, but if we can make it to shut you down, they won't hurt you. But if we can make some sort of tribute to, you know, like some sort of local, I mean in his case it, he has a local celebrity. Yes. But like we did a beer called thanks Paul, to the announcer, the predators. Cool. And that one's probably gonna come back. But when we can do stuff like that, we really like it cause it's just a local tie and you know, that's, that's what we're here for. You know, we're all just Nashville locals. Yeah. That's, and then I also have hashtag basic, it's a good fall beer. It's a good one. That's
01:02:20 The name is perfect. Yeah. The beer is, it's my favorite on this flight. That's the art of the girl with it. That, yeah, he's just amazing. It's at Midtown. I think
01:02:29 We didn't can it this year? Hashtag basic was just a joke of obviously all things fall and it is every fall flavor you can think of. Not just pumpkin spice but like vanilla, maple, nutmeg, all spice. Yeah. Every single fall smell. It's all into one, but it's delicious. It is, yes. It really is through, you have a flight as well.
01:02:53 Did I have the, what did you, we'll talk to, we talked about that earlier. They weren't fresh beer and then this mixed Berry sour. Yeah. I'm still trying to change my palette till like sours. I love sours in like a weird sense, but like I have a love hate relationship with them so I'm still like trying to develop like the journey of the sour is crazy. It depends on the sour, right? So
01:03:13 We have you know, these, these ones that you guys have, like you're doing a collaboration that we did with tween odd story, which is incredible brewery at a Chattanooga. They make some of the best sour beers in the United States and we had them up. We made a blueberry lavender lemonade sour. That sounds amazing. Yeah, it's wild. It's, it's delicious. Like it doesn't really taste sour at all. Like it tastes like tart blueberries. Yeah. here's the secret with drinking beer. And the best thing that you can do when you're drinking beer is you swallow the beer and don't exhale through your mouth. Exhale through your nose. You've got all kinds of different senses that happen through, it's called your olfactory where like it's going through your nasal cavity and if you drink beer that way, there's a lot more flavor that you're in. Julian files all the notes.
01:03:57 But the South, especially because you know, we have so many great distilleries, people learned to drink like liquor. Yeah. So you, you swallow and then you exhale out your mouth because you know, if you exhale out your nose after a shot, you're going gonna fall over dead. It's not a good experience. But if you do that with beer it is a completely different adventure. And it's a great tip. I didn't know that honestly and that that will help you if you, if you're saying stuff like I like sours but I want to learn to like them more. That's how you actually taste it. Does beer have one of those things? Cause I like coffee a lot and saw hand brew coffee and everything and I know coffee has, you know, even a certain temperature of where it's better. What do you recommend for beer with, with that kind of stuff with temperature.
01:04:38 So you don't want to be like, you know, there's some restaurant chains that will say like, Oh we have 27 degree lines and we serve only in cold pints. Like that's not good for beer. You know, probably somewhere between 35 and 40 degrees. Okay. You want to room temperature pint, you want wherever you're drinking to be rinsing your pint. You know, like with the glass rinser more and more we're seeing stuff like proper glass where, you know, when I moved here, most glasses that were called pints were like 12 ounce glasses with like three inch chunks of glass on the bottom. I was like, Oh, this is a pint. No, it's 12 ounces, but it's sold like a pint. Those are the kinds of places that you want to drink at. Those are the places that really care about their beer. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Wes,
01:05:18 This is incredible. Thank you so much for joining us on the Nashville daily podcast. You go ahead and plug away. Where can people find you guys on social media? Anything you guys have coming up like that event, you know, what's the best way for people to get in touch and visit you guys? The main page is at tailgate brewery. That's for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. Each tap room has one. It's at tailgate. Be your mr. At tailgate beer, E N for East Nashville. Your boy has one Wes underscore from underscore tailgate. Nice. that's where I, I handle all my fans like, so I'm not sure she follows me, but she might. Yeah, listen, there's 300 followers on there, so it's a big dancer, huh? Yeah. but that's, that's what we do with the socials and you know, we've got three different locations and anywhere that you drink craft beer, you can find us.
01:06:09 So, you know, what we recommend to people is if you do not see us, just ask. Because if they don't have us on draft, they can certainly get us. And that's, that's how we get to spread where our distribution is, is when somebody who's bartending says, Hey, these guys have been coming in and they've been asking for tailgate, they're gonna put it on draft. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Well, thank you West for joining you guys on the stand. Appreciate this. Great. So this is the Nashville daily podcast. Make sure to go follow us on Instagram at X PLR dot. Nash, what's our Twitter, Aaron? We are on Twitter X PLR, underscore Nash. We try to tweet [inaudible] and then also go watch our YouTube channel or videos on our YouTube channel, and that's X PLR. Dot. Nash and have a great day.