(electrified squelchy music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Working Capital" is provided by the friends of KTWU, and Go Topeka.

(upbeat music) - Welcome back to "Working Capital."

And once again, we're out of the studio.

And today, we have a special treat for you.

And here, beer, food and friends; well, they're all on the menu.

Stick around, you're watching "Working Capital."

(upbeat music) All right, we're finally inside of 785 Beer Company, and we're here with Luke and Ashley Loewen.

This place looks amazing.

I remember when I was a little kid, the skating rink out here.

So of course I walk in, I'm just kind of hoping there's still a skating rink here.

But, I think it went in another direction with that, and we'll talk about here a little later.

But, congratulations on this place.

- Thank you.

- It looks fantastic.

- Thank you.

- Brewery, though?

I know it takes a lot of work.

- Yeah.

- And you guys started off kind of, you have a big space here.

- Yeah.

- Where did this idea come from?

- So... how many years ago?

- 12 years ago.

- Going on 12 years ago, we had a newborn baby at home.

We weren't getting out much, and it was cold in the winter.

And for a Christmas present, she got me a home brewing kit.

So, I enjoyed beer, but I hadn't really gotten into craft beer.

That kit changed all that.

Brewed a few batches, and researched heavily how to make it, and trying to make it better.

Quickly fell down the rabbit hole, in just constantly wanting to make more and better beer.

And so gosh, I can't even count, imagine what a count of batches of beer later is, but eventually it become something that we thought maybe we wanna do this for real.

And, go ahead- - Okay so, that very first batch, was this like a Mr. Beer Kit, or was it something a little bigger?

- No, it was a little bit bigger.

- Okay, okay.

- So, it was five gallon buckets, actually what it was, plastic buckets.

But yeah, you had to have a big burner in it, did it in the yard.

- First batch then, was it drinkable?

- No.

- No.

- Okay, 'cause I just wanna get that out there, too.

Because a lot of people, well, I didn't get it right off the bat, I must be horrible at it.

- [Ashley] Yeah.

- Yeah.

A lot do a good job with their first batch.

It's probably because it wasn't drinkable, it was probably part of why I got so into it.

It took three batches for me to figure out the thing that was going wrong, and it was actually nothing wrong with the process, it was the water.

- Okay.

- City water has chloramine in it in Topeka, Kansas.

And that's more stable than chlorine.

And it needed to be treated a little different way.

None of the normal kits had in their instructions.

And so, three batches in, was make or break, I was gonna find out what it was.

And I researched so many things, I learned so much about brewing beer before I found it.

That I really got myself interested even more in it.

Once I solved the problem, the next batch of beer was great.

- So, did you have to add something to the Topeka water, or did you end up- - Yep, yep.

- Okay.

- So, we filter here, but home brewing, it was just the addition of one little tablet about the size of an aspirin, and it neutralized it, it fixes it immediately.

So, a simple, simple change.

But here, we don't use that.

We actually go a different route by filtering that out of the water before we ever use it.

- That's awesome.

- It was such a small change to discover that was the big thing, was I guess, it was wonderful to find that out, the time you put into each batch, but then- - And most people would had already quit, probably.

Two, or three batch, "Well, this just isn't for me."

- [Luke] I was stubborn.

- Was there any point in the first three weeks, or a year, you're like, "Maybe I shouldn't had gotten him this kit?"

(Ashley chuckling) - No, that was many years later.

Maybe in the process of doing this, I was like, man, this turned to (indistinct).

- So maybe once he's like, "Hey, I want something a little bit bigger," is that when it kind of set in like, "Oh, I may have-" - Well, we- - We had steps along the way.

So home brewing, you originally start by bottling.

And so you get whole town bottles.

You have to clean them, and you have to fill them.

And that was the process she helped me with the first few times.

It was a nice, little messy bonding experience.

You bought, you got bottles all over the kitchen.

But then along the way, you start to do things to make it easier, and you start kegging.

And then you build kegerators for it.

And then, completely rebuilt the entire brew system a couple of times to build it up, which made it easier to brew better beer, more efficient.

It was a lot easier to try, so we could actually make two batches, side-by-side.

And test out different things as we went.

And so we kind of, I learned a lot through all that process that got us closer to this.

Which, we could of never opened it, had we not done that experimenting for years.

- Yeah we, anytime we travel, our favorite thing is to go to as many breweries as we possibly can.

So we kind of do the tourist thing, but then we try to put ourself in the center of all the breweries that we can go to.

So, that was kind of thing, and that we enjoyed doing.

So as we went to those different breweries, we were like, "Oh, kind of like this about this one."

Or, "I wouldn't of done this with that one."

And so, we kind of tried to take those different puzzle pieces, and make it into what we try to do here.

- So, you're talking even the fixtures inside the bars?

Just kind of the hominess of it?

And also, probably the flavors?

- [Luke] Yeah.

- When you go to a different bar is it, do you kind of pick your favorite?

Or, are you going for the really outrageous flavors just to see if they work or not?

- [Ashley] I would say a little of both.

- [Luke] That's a good question.

Yeah, a little bit.

We're always looking for something new.

But my favorite thing, if I go to a brewery and they do the traditional beers, great.

That's a great brewery in my mind.

That, the heavy flavors, anybody can add tons and tons of flavor to something and it will seem different.

- 'Cause it's something, 'cause it's probably small batch, it won't be there that long.

So yeah, you can over-flavor something.

Some people may like it, some people may not.

But, you really need your staple beers.

- [Ashley] Right.

- [Luke] They got a good clean lager beer, that tends to be a good sign for us that they're probably good at what they do.

- So, what's the longest beer you've been brewing, then?

Probably starting at home?

What's your favorite throughout the years?

- Oh!

So, I'll say our Farmer's Daughter, is one of the originals that we made over and over again.

But the earliest, most unique one that we made is called the Humdinger, on our menu.

It's a cucumber blonde, or cucumber cream ale.

That beer now has basil in it.

We experimented for a long time.

But that was one of them, as we were making beers, wanted something I never tried in a beer before.

Now there are a few commercial cucumber beers.

But, I just wanted to do it.

And the very first time we made it, it was great.

I knew I was gonna make it over, and over, and over again.

- Just a big hit?

- [Ashley] Yeah.

- [Luke] Yeah.

- So, is that a summer beer?

Is that a year-round, then?

Because of how popular it is?

- [Luke] That's your opinion.

- [Ashley] Well, we thought it was gonna be a summer beer, but people love it.

And so, we actually just put it back on the menu, 'cause we were like- - [Luke] It's my favorite.

And so when the ran out, I was ready to make it again.

And she said, "No, no, that's a summer beer."

And I said, "I think people are gonna want it back."

So we had enough requests that we got it back on tap now.

- It's summer year-round in here, really.

You got enough space.

And, we'll talk again later why it's you know, there are some other fun things to do here, along with drinking beer, and having good food, so.

We're getting ready to come up on a break, and we'll talk about this more in the next break.

But this building, I drove by it for a few years, where it just sat empty.

And then I think you guys, maybe you found a jewel in the rough, or was this the first spot you looked at?

- [Luke] Far from it.

We shopped forever, once we finally got the wild idea that we wanted to open a brewery.

Just looking for the perfect spot.

And, a number of things fell through.

In fact, we were planning on to build, and it turned out the lot that we were looking at wouldn't work, or actually just wouldn't work.

And we kind of had to go back to the drawing board after a lot of commitment down another road.

And it just, pure luck.

In fact what happened was, my son, who was, I think I would say was probably seven at the time, had a birthday party that we had to go to.

So, I went to this birthday party.

It was mid-COVID.

But, it was a skating rink.

And, I'm sitting there looking around at this building.

We tried so many different buildings, we were trying to figure out how to make them work.

And I'm looking around going, there's no beams in here, it's big and wide open.

- [Ashley] Wide open.

- [Luke] The ceilings look pretty high, this would work great.

So I went home and I asked her, I said, "What do you think about us calling skating rinks, "and seeing whether or not they're for sale?"

And the one that we were in was actually an old skating rink across town.

It didn't happen to be, but this one was.

We had no idea.

I came here as a kid for birthday parties, and I had no idea that it had been shut down for a little while.

And so, it just ended up being perfect.

We closed on the building, what?

A few months later.

- [Ashley] Yeah.

We purchased it in August of 2020.

- [Luke] Yeah, we were excited.

- [Ashley] So, right after COVID.

- [Luke] It was way bigger than we originally planned.

- So, that's been kind of a theme with some of us, figuring out what happens from COVID and post-COVID.

So right after the break, we'll talk a little more, and see how COVID may have shaped this new purchase.

So stick around, we'll be right back.

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(gentle music) (gentle music continues) - Welcome back to "Working Capital."

Okay guys, August 2020.

Not really post-COVID, it kind of in the heights of it.

But you wanna open up a restaurant, when everything had just been coming back from closing down.

How does that work?

Of course, maybe I gave you a little bit of time to actually do the prep work, and planning, and getting it built out.

But, what was your game plan there?

- [Luke] Yeah, you would hope so.

So, we bought the building kind of quickly, because we stumbled across it, which was wonderful.

And ended up, we knew it was gonna work out.

But we had, we still had a lot of planning to do.

We needed to meet with architects, and engineers, and everything.

And what we found with COVID was way more of a challenge than we every expected.

We thought that maybe at that time, we were coming out of COVID.

And as you know, everybody knows, it took way longer.

The interesting thing during COVID for us was all the construction components were busy, busier.

There was a lot of construction going on.

So the architectural process took longer.

Engineering took a little bit longer.

The construction process took way longer.

And then supplies, everybody knows.

- [Ashley] Supplies is what took the longest.

- [Luke] That was the worse, yeah.

- [Ashley] Yeah.

- [Luke] As an example, just the rooftop units to put new heating and cooling in, because it needed to be new.

How long was that?

- [Ashley] Over a year.

- [Luke] Yeah.

- [Ashley] Yeah.

- [Luke] So, it was- - [Ashley] We purchased them in March, and they weren't delivered until July of the following year.

- Was that part of COVID?

Or, is that also COVID mixed with anything and more, just chips?

You know, we had that microchip shortage.

Was that part of it, too?

Just, those kind of components and all those?

- [Ashley] Different components with the shortage of it.

- [Luke] There were electronic components in them, that basically most of it was waiting on those pieces.

So, yeah, yeah.

- Because coming at that point in time, I think even some of the big auto manufacturers, they had cars and trucks sitting in parking lots, just waiting for a chip to go in there, so it would work and they could sell it.

- [Luke] I got no doubt they were hoping, they would of loved to had sold these to us.

They just didn't have all the parts.

So yeah, it was a challenge.

- So, you get all your permits, you start building out.

How much of this is your own blood, sweat and tears inside?

Were you helping with the building?

- [Luke] A lot.

- [Ashley] Yes.

- [Luke] Yes.

So really, all of the demo we did.

With the exception of some cutting that we weren't able to do, saw cutting and that.

But, removing the entire dropped ceiling.

If you remember this building, there was a ceiling that wasn't that much higher.

The ceiling did not look this high before.

All of that came out.

We took down tons and tons of concrete block walls in here.

We wanted to keep a ton of it originally.

Our original plans were kind of built around a lot of the original structure.

It just turned out from the architecture phase that we realized we weren't able to keep it.

What else did we do?

- [Ashley] Well like you said, all of the demo.

Really, what we didn't do was the heating and cooling, the electrical, the plumbing.

But really everything else aside from that, yeah.

Everything outside of that was us.

- Yeah, all the painting, removing the paint on the outside, completely repainting the entire outside of the building.

Everyone of these beams up here, you probably can't see them in the video.

They were kind of a rusty red, I mean so.

Just being up on a ledge.

- You gotta touch every surface.

- [Ashley] Yeah.

- Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Hand scraping them, priming, painting, all of it.

- You make a big purchase.

Was the demo part a little bit of a stress reliever a little bit?

You're jumping in this?

Or, was it scary knocking your own stuff down?

- [Ashley] Not scary.

- [Luke] We didn't mind knocking it down.

(Ashley laughing) The hard part is committing to knocking something down, when you try to keep it.

And you finally, you have to convince yourself, "Okay, I can't keep that wall."

Every time we did that, it was like a- - [Ashley] Yeah, going back- - [Luke] It's hard to accept.

- [Ashley] Going back- - [Luke] Because we really thought we were gonna be able to keep some of the walls.

And every time you knock one down, it means you have to put one back up.

So just- - [Ashley] Going back and knowing all of the things that we did, we could do it so much quicker now.

Because like he said, we thought we were gonna save a wall.

So, we'd work around it.

And then, a month later we're like, all right, we just gotta get rid of the wall.

And it's like, had we just gotten rid of that wall from the get-go.

- Four inch straight through then at that point.

And yeah.

- [Ashley] Yeah.

- [Luke] It would, everything.

- [Ashley] A whole lot faster.

- That's awesome, you learn things along the way.

So, you get it built out.

It's painted.

How do you figure out your other furnishings?

You talked a little bit about your travels.

And finding inspiration from other bars and breweries.

I mean, I see little touches in here like I haven't seen in other places.

You're using a projector on the wall for your menu, so you can update instantaneously.

I kind of like that.

I do love the old chalk boards, with people doing their creative writing.

But this is just, it looks nice, it's chic with the look.

So tell us about kind of filling out the decor in here?

- There's a lot of different components to it.

Like but, as you said, we just notice stuff everywhere we went.

And one of our things is, we saw digital menus on TVs, we liked them.

But we didn't like that most of the programs, you'd watch it for a minute, and then the menu would change.

And say, "I didn't finish reading it."

So we want something bigger, but we needed it to be different.

And eventually it was, "Why don't we just project it right on the wall?"

So that was a, we loved the way it turned out.

But, that was one of our own ideas.

And then furniture and that kind of stuff, we never stopped shopping.

A lot of the stuff in here, we got at different places here and there, and here and there.

And we, I don't know how we ended up doing, getting the perfect mix.

But when we finally got through so much construction, we would look at all our tables, and all of our chairs that we had been storing forever.

And I had to go, "How in the world do we get these in here?"

And it turned out really, pretty good.

We didn't have that much extra.

But we also didn't have not enough.

So, we got lucky, I think.

Or, we were just really smart, we didn't know what we were doing.

(all chuckling) - I know when we're building a set, or something else in the studio, lots of times we find one item.

And then all of a sudden, everything kind of comes from that.

Is there one thing you found that kind of started it all in here?

- [Luke] No.

- [Ashley] I don't think so, no.

And honestly I would say like, we're still adding things, too.

We just put up these string lights last Saturday, so.

- Okay.

Yeah.

- [Luke] I think our- - So, organic growth.

- [Ashley] Yeah, yeah.

- [Luke] Our strategy has been to take it slow.

We're not, neither one of us have taken tons of credit for being awesome at design.

We go in and we see stuff and go, "That looks great."

But then coming up with that same thing on our own, it's tough.

So, we slowly are filling it out.

We see something and go, "That would go great there."

So, it's been piece-by-piece.

I mean yeah, it's a beautiful space.

And that's kind of a nice way to do it.

'Cause really, once you're in this business for is the beer, and the food, and we'll talk about that in the next segment, so.

Stick around.

We'll find out more about what you can have to eat and drink here at 785 Beer Company, right after the break.

- [Announcer] This is KTWU, local public television.

(upbeat music) (peaceful string music) - Welcome back to "Working Capital."

Well now's the time that I think we've all been waiting for.

Is, we're gonna talk about the brews and the food.

And really I, this kind of, I think, says it all here.

Beer, food and friends.

Is that your slogan?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Absolutely it is, it is.

- I mean, from the get-go, when you started brewing beer, were your friends the recipients of it?

- Yes.

- So, they probably became the best friends of everybody around here.

- Yeah, so I made a lot of batches.

You have to dispose of this one way, or another.

And I couldn't do it by myself.

So, we had some help from good friends and neighbors.

- Yeah, we live in a- - It's always social.

- We live in a cul-de-sac, so we got basically our six best friends surrounding us that we lived there forever.

And so, many summer nights in the driveway.

And they indulged in his beer.

(both chuckling) - We got plenty of feedback.

- Yeah.

- Okay, you're getting ready to open.

How did you decide how many beers you start with?

And how have you've grown those from them?

- Yeah so, first we knew we wanted to have a decent selection when we first opened, because we've been to many breweries when they opened up, and we're always so excited to go.

And we realized they had two, three, four beers.

And they run out really quickly.

So, we wanted to have a good lineup.

I knew that I had a good lineup of beers that I'd been making for a long time.

So our goal was just to get those on tap.

Construction, we were still waiting on stuff.

But we focused on getting the beer area done as quickly as possible.

So, as soon as that happened, we just started brewing beer as fast as we could, her and I did.

And, we filled up our tanks.

And so we started with, did we have 12 on tap?

- Mm-hm.

- Or, was it 10?

Somewhere between.

- I think it was 10.

I think you're right, 10.

- 10 tap, two more quickly followed.

But that was the goal, we're all about the beer.

We wanna have good beer to show friends, for people to enjoy, and with new people that come in.

Because I think that everybody that was most excited about this, was because of the beer.

- What are a few of your top flavors, or, what are your favorites?

- So, I gotta name The Wizard, our IPA.

That is actually my dad's favorite beer.

It's hard to get him to drink anything else.

But I really enjoy IPAs, but I also like varieties.

So the lighter beers, like our Driveway Drink, that's our most popular beer.

That's a light lager.

- Okay.

- And I'm proud of it, because you don't go to many breweries and find a good light lager.

It's known as one of the more challenging styles to make, although you can get them in a 30 pack everywhere.

But what they do to make your light beers, whether it be Busch Light, or Coors Light, or Michelob Ultra, to make them that good, and that consistently is really hard to do.

So, we enjoy that; but, what's your favorite?

- Well, the Humdinger, which we talked about earlier, is one of my top favorites.

But my second is to Toto.

It's a dark, coconut brown.

And so, when a lot of times when people see dark beer, they think that it's a heavy beer, and it's not at all.

You can sit and have several of them and not feel full.

And it's, the flavor is amazing.

- That sounds delicious.

And of course, on the other side to pair with this now, you have quite a tasty menu.

So, how do you decide on what food, the food mix?

- So we, from the very beginning, we knew we wanted food.

And the reason is, we would go to breweries, and travel through different cities, and often time eventually, you're having drinks and you realize "I need to eat."

And it's always a bummer to leave a place that you really were enjoying to go get food.

So we wanted to make sure we had that.

As far as our starting menu, it was pizzas and salads.

And we actually got that because we went to a place that specialized in it, and learned from some, actually brewers, that brewing was a passion of theirs, but a second passion to pizza-making.

They actually traveled the country and did pizza competitions.

And so, we took a course with them, where they actually taught us how to make their pizzas, which is where we originated our dough from, and we've made some customizations to the recipes.

But we started with pizza and salads, and then we grew from there.

- So, do you just have a regular oven for pizzas, or do you?

- We have a great big pizza oven.

- Yeah, so it's- - Gas.

- It's a wood stone pizza oven.

- Okay.

- It's a big fire deck oven.

Where you gotta slide the pizzas in.

It takes a little bit more skill, but it does create an awesome pizza.

It's a little nicer than the traditional conveyor belt, or the oven that you have at home.

- And I would add that like our menu is always evolving.

So we will always have our pizzas and salads, but we've just recently added wings, and some sandwiches, and things like that.

But, we want to keep our menu always fresh and new.

So, people always have a reason to come back.

If they don't wanna come here for the beer, then hopefully, they'll come for the food and the friends.

And, they'll always find something new that they can try.

- And besides food, beer; if you had your friends here, there's a lot of other stuff to do.

Whether it's Pac-Man.

I saw a yard-sized Connect Four.

Some electronic golf.

But really when lots of times when people talk about alcohol, may talk about getting pickled.

But here if you're gonna get pickled, I think it's maybe because they do have an indoor pickle ball court.

- Yeah.

- How did you guys decide on pickle ball with a brewery?

- So mid-COVID we buy this crazy big building, way bigger than what we thought we needed, and knew we needed.

And our question was, "What do we do with all the extra space?"

We had the option to maybe try to lease it out, or all these other things that would be real complicated.

And our original goal was to let's try to keep that something that we could control.

So that we know what it is.

And so we thought, "Can we do something fun?"

And our neighbor in our cul-de-sac taped out a pickle ball court.

We'd never played before, in the cul-de-sac during COVID, so there's nothing to do, and we went out and only played, gosh I think, three or four games.

And her and I both said, "This is what we wanna do."

We wanna have pickle ball courts in there, and it's perfect.

- So we went in mid-demo here, we came and we taped out a court.

And so when it got cold, all of our neighbors would come here, and we'd play pickle ball in between our construction.

- So you knew people would come for it, because you already had people coming for it.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah, yeah.

- That's fantastic.

So, tell us a little bit about that.

I mean, is it per-play?

Do you get that by the hour?

- Yeah.

- Do you have tournaments?

- Not yet.

We probably will.

Right now if you wanna reserve courts, you just go online and make a reservation.

Or, you can walk in if nobody's using it, and you just rent it by the hour.

So, it's only $20 an hour, which you get to put four people on a team, that's $5 a person.

And you can casually play, you can come in with eight people and take turns.

A lot of people come in and have drinks and eat food as they play.

But we also have a lot of big groups that come in, and they'll rent two or three courts, because we have three courts that you can play on.

And, it's a lot of fun.

The best part about it for us is watching people come in, and just having a blast.

And coming and go, "That was really cool."

Because a lot of times people who don't play pickle ball all the time, then they have a drink after, and have fun.

And next thing you know, they've been here for a few hours, and they're going home saying, "That was a really fun night."

And they say pickle ball is the fastest growing sport right now.

And I truly believe it, because when we have kids in there that are six-years-old, and we have people who are 80-years-old.

And, everyone can play the sport.

- And I heard it's kind of an equalizer, because I've seen a lot of the pro athletes who like to follow, they're playing it.

But then they're like, "Well, I just got rammed by this 50 and 60 year old."

And, they're peak, primed athletes.

And so, it's fun for all ages.

- Yeah.

- Absolutely.

- Do you have equipment here if they don't have their own equipment?

- Yeah, yeah.

We have equipment here that they can rent, or you're welcome to bring your own.

- This is great.

Thank you both, Ashley and Luke.

Thank you so much for having us in today.

- Thank you, Jay.

If you enjoy beer, food, pickle ball, even Pac-Man, come out and try 785 Beer Company.

You won't forget it, so.

Thanks for watching "Working Capital."

We'll see you next time.

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