Photo | Logan Hickel
Tim Daley, head brewer at Ground Effect Brewing Co.
September 22, 2020
Q&A: Ground Effect Brewing Co. approaches two-year anniversary with lessons learned
Photo | Logan Hickel
From left: Ground Effect Brewing Co. front-of-house manager Lindsay Monroe and head bartender Danielle MacMillan
Ground Effect Brewing Co. in Hudson is closing in on its two-year anniversary, a milestone the young brewery will officially hit this November. Like every other business, and especially those which are customer-facing, the company had to make swift adjustments in the face of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. But as temperatures drop and leaves begin to change, Ground Effect’s eyes are on both the fall and the future. Brewer Tim Daley and front-of-house manager Lindsay Monroe, who founded the company with owners Marc Ferlo and Alexi Bobolia, spoke to WBJ about what the start has been like so far.
You're coming up on your two-year anniversary. How does it feel to hit that milestone?
The past four years have blown by so fast, but the almost two years of actually being open have been an exciting blur. We have had so much support from our Hudson community, surrounding towns and people from all over, we are so grateful every single day for every customer. It's been a wild ride, but we have enjoyed almost every second of it.
What have been some of the biggest lessons you've learned during your nearly two years as a new business?
Everything is unpredictable. As much as you have got your game plan together, people will never stop surprising you, and the most unexpected stuff can happen. Like all of a sudden we started doing weddings here, then it became a thing. We have learned to roll with the punches.
We also learned to never take anything for granted. The pandemic came out of nowhere, and we immediately had to change everything we were doing. We had to start canning everything in the tanks for to-go only sales. We had to let staff go. We had no idea when we would be able to be open again. We just kept pushing forward and brewing and canning and doing what we could.
We have learned how to change our entire approach and service style, and build a patio in two days. So, again, I guess you could say we learned how to be flexible, and we got a good lesson in having very little control of our own situation.
How do you decide what kinds of beers to brew, and how often do you change them up?
I would say it’s based on three or four things: What we personally like, what is popular in the craft beer market, whether enough people ask for the same thing enough times. The fourth thing would be when we taste a certain cocktail or flavor we love so much we want to turn it into a beer, somehow.
We always have four beers year-round that everyone can kind of count on as our staples -- our Felton's Fancy Double New England IPA, Common Cow Oatmeal Milk Stout, "The Mills" Pils czech pilsner, and The Luck of the Draw, which is a rotating sour beer. We typically always have two IP's on draft as well as two sours, and two dark beers. We try to always have different seasonals on, like our dubbel, saison, Oktoberfest, summer ale, pale ale, ginger mule sour, dunkel. You know -- all the stuff.
Will there be any special fall and winter brews on rotation in the coming months?
Our Oktoberfest should be out in about a week. Down the pipeline will definitely be our Christmas Crapple, a cranberry apple sour.
How has it been adjusting to business and life during the pandemic?
Ugh. We were doing great, sales were awesome going into our second year, smiles were everywhere. March 17th happened, and everything just came to a crashing halt. We saw it coming a little bit and kind of had some ideas on how to handle it, but we had no idea how long it was going to last or what it meant for our business.
During the three months that things were shut down, things were hard, they were really hard. We went down to just the front-of-house manager and the brewer working, and we were open about 20 hours a week for to-go sales. People were amazing, they showed up and would buy cases of beer and tip like crazy. Our community kept us in business and took such good care of our staff. We canned everything, and cans and labels were hard to get due to every other brewery doing the same thing.
Then the middle of June came and we were pushed up into Phase Two of the governor's economic reopening plan, and allowed to open to customers both outside and inside. We made a patio in two days, and people showed up on day one and have not stopped showing up and showing us the most amazing support, and patting us on the back for following all the rules and regulations and making them feel safe. Nothing makes us feel better than customers telling us that they feel safe here and they love bringing their kids and grandparents here.
Do you have any other exciting developments coming down the pipeline?
As far as the future and exciting developments go, due to the pandemic we are just kind of focused on the present and the couple of weeks in front of us. We have learned that you never know what can happen and we are just rolling with the punches.
This interview was conducted and edited for length and clarity by WBJ Staff Writer Monica Busch.
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