A Night With Lagunitas

A couple of weeks ago, Lagunitas founder, Tony Magee stopped by my law school to talk about starting a business, and of course to talk beer.  Apparently he went to the Illinois Institute of Technology for a year at their design program and I believe his wife went to my law school (I believe that is what he said?).  Anyways, he has significant ties to the Chicago area and he both agreed to talk at the school as well as play some blues at our 125th anniversary street festival.

The night started with samples of Maximus, Lagunitas IPA, Pils, and the relatively new DayTime.  After the samples (and me sneaking a beer since it was only 2 ozs at a time with a relatively long wait for a sample), we entered the auditorium to have a "fireside chat."

It was generally informal with Mr. Magee giving a lot of history of the brewery.  Some highlights included receiving a brewing kit and starting a brewery by the end of that year, rigging Kinko's timing/fee system in order to print labels as a reduced cost, and the uhhhhhhh substance abuse story behind "Censored."  Notably, Mr. Magee also talked about the Chicago brewery/brew pub that has pushed back its opening
date multiple times (he claims it will be coming at the end of the year, mostly because he faces significant taxes/fines if it does not), and interestingly enough, his plans to purchase land in Greece to open another brewery that will supply Europe with his beer.

Come question time, there was a lot of focus on the news of the Chicago brewery, comparisons/difficulties dealing with BMC products and advertising, as well as what the future looks like for Lagunitas.  Luckily, I got in a quick question about whether Mr. Magee saw the rise of sour beers as a parallel with the rise of the West Coast IPA or more of a fad, and whether Lagunitas had any plan for a more significant souring/barrel program outside of Little Sumpin Wild and some smaller scale sours that are only on tap at the brewery.  He seemed to appreciate a good sour, but thought of the style as more of a blip on the craft beer radar (he was not disrespectful though) and seemed to think that the style in general was better left to his peers rather than jumping in on the popularity at this point.  I got to speak to him very briefly after the talk, but only to say thanks as him and other from the brewery had been hanging around for quite some time.

All that being said, it was great the I was able to both attend such an event, and get to talk to one of the bigger heads of craft brewery.  Mr. Magee seemed to be more business driven than others in the industry (and I do not mean this in any negative sense) and motivated to make Lagunitas a leading name similar to Sam Adams, or possibly surpassing.  He did mention that he is at the point where he feels that he wants to muscle out some of the "quasi craft" beers from the market that are made by BMC without their name attached, but it seemed any such plans are still a little of the ways off.  However, he was great to listen to and hopefully this will not be a one time event at the school.