Published: Jan. 12, 2023

Jeff  0:00  
Welcome to Creative Distillation where we distill entrepreneurship research into actionable insights. My name is Jeff York, research director at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado, in lovely Boulder, Colorado, and I'm here as always with my co host. Hi,

Brad  0:17  
I'm Brad Warner. And Jeff, it is great to see

Jeff  0:20  
you. Cheers. Cheers. J start drinking that bad

Brad  0:23  
a little while, you know, we both work at the Deming center, and I was down with COVID. So I screwed up our flow, but it's nice to be together. Having a beer again.

Jeff  0:33  
It was all you Brad it was like Brad got COVID We had this amazing, very detailed laid out production schedule. Joel, our producer worked tirelessly to put together we had back to back record. It was never a slowing. Last minute. No, no. And that didn't that Google sheets that was very well I know we made the first time this we made a Google Sheet this season. going pro Yeah.

Brad  0:55  
Yeah. But it is actually truthfully it's good to see Are you feeling okay, great. And what I was worried about at the intro is you have so many titles now. Yeah, I didn't know if we would even be able to get through that. Yeah,

Jeff  1:05  
I know. I'm really wanting somebody to call me grand Pooh bah or something that would be like a Flintstones. Yeah, there was the Grand Poobah of the buffalo Zoo. I don't. I don't know. For sure. Anyway, I want to introduce our guests. Sure. We

Brad  1:21  
have David Helden. He's the founder and owner of liquid mechanics in Lafayette, Colorado. The great thing is first of all, this place is awesome, right? Yeah, it's a tasting room. And we're in the back room here looking at

Jeff  1:32  
all these barrels. Awesome. Like pinball machines. This place is super cool.

Brad  1:37  
But even better, is that Davin is a CU alum, not only undergrad, but he got his MBA. So he's kind of one of the team and he's the founder and owner of this awesome establishment where I mean, think about that. Think about that, taking that MBA and go in and open a new brewery.

Jeff  1:51  
I tried to do that and didn't quite get around to it. I ended up here. I have to do this for a living instead. So it makes it a nightmare fuel to you know, again.

Davin Helden  2:02  
My first guess would be River North brewing in Denver, Colorado.

Jeff  2:07  
I think you're right. I think you're right. And then I also got cold arms Oktoberfest. That is fantastic. Really nice beer and then I got now this brewery, you'll know Is it true? Is that what they're called? They have the like heavy metal your V?

Davin Helden  2:21  
Yes, exactly.

Yeah, so the V is a eu language. It's a Norwegian thing. Yeah, it's they're kind of like a heavy metal Yes. type of brewery. This

Jeff  2:33  
is my go to beer for d&d simply because of the labels. Sure. Because they have like skeletons and monsters on the labels and had their fist beer as well. Yeah. So these are these are things like they've got a good

Davin Helden  2:43  
niche going on. They know what they're, they know what their brand is. They know I mean, the employees dressed in black. You take a picture of them. There's never smiling, you know exactly.

Brad  2:54  
What's cool, though. Sounds like your

Jeff  2:57  
people bread. Oh, yeah.

Brad  2:59  
Right. And but Devon, Devon, you know, the local beer scene, which is great, right? Not only about competition, but the collaboration that happens amongst all the Brewers here. And every time that we go to a different brewery, we find that and I think that's freaking awesome.

Jeff  3:11  
I think it's so cool compared to most industries, because like, people actually want to see each other succeed, and they collaborate. That's right. Cool.

Davin Helden  3:20  
I was just on my phone. I apologize for that. But there's a brewery up in little Nederland, Colorado called very nice Brewing Company. And his keg washer broke, and he's coming down on Wednesday, and he's gonna use our keg washer.

Jeff  3:33  
That's our first really great,

Davin Helden  3:34  
he will be the 14th brewery that we've done that for many years. That's incredible. Takes community right. Yeah. And you know, the large guys have such economies of scale, that's kind of our way of, you know, chipping away at that. By helping to help them people out with you know, people want to buy grain and cheaper the more you buy. So you go in together. And that's how you start to get economies of scale. Something breaks you somebody else's until you can figure out how to fix it. Love that.

Brad  3:59  
Especially when we're talking about beer and people having a good time sitting around having

Jeff  4:03  
Absolutely. We have another person sitting here with us. I'll introduce Tony. Okay, so Tony Khan is Associate Professor of organizational behavior at Leeds School. He's just join us. Welcome, Tony. Thank you for having me. Oh, this is awesome. Good to see you. But you need a beer. Yeah, we do need we do need to get Tony a beer. And he's

Davin Helden  4:21  
waiting for the tasting so you can fully enjoy it. Oh, yeah. You guys are just gonna be

Jeff  4:27  
so bright, and I went ahead and got the German pills because we're just like, kind of German pills. Yeah, junkies. Pretty much everywhere we go. We're like we'll have a German pills. And this one is, man. So So I always like with the pills just to hold it up and look at it first. Because like a good pills is just crystal clear. And you see that lovely carbonation. This is a beautiful beer. And then you taste it. The other thing that people I think screw up with joint pills. I don't know what you think them but I think sometimes they were Hapa like because they're like it's a pill so we'll go like chick pills route but with hot water or something else instead.

Davin Helden  5:00  
We're in America. We use hops a lot. Yeah. America, which by

Jeff  5:03  
the way, I smell hops while I walked in the door this place. It was awesome.

Davin Helden  5:07  
We specialize in IPAs. So hops are over sweet.

Jeff  5:10  
But this beer is dead on the style and perfect. Is it one of the awards? I would think it probably has.

Davin Helden  5:18  
Yeah. I mean, there's 64 Professional beer awards on that wall.

Jeff  5:22  
So you probably can't keep track, which by

Brad  5:26  
looking at the website, though, and the website is packed with them, liquid mechanic brewing.com Just go through the list. There are six more of them.

Davin Helden  5:35  
I don't know about that one in particular, right? Well, you're not. It's kind of a it's kind of a seasonal beer for us. The coal, also like a hybrid German do right. I'd say a third of the metals on the wall. Are that beer

Jeff  5:48  
alone? Yeah. Koelsch is interesting, because it's brewed with ale yeast, but a lager temperature. Yeah, yeah. Which is always like people are like, Well, what's between a lager and a nail? And you're like, well, it's this kind of yeast situation, it's usually temperature. But Kolsch is this weird hybrid, which is also a little weird, because it's German. And the Germans are usually the ones that are like

Davin Helden  6:10  
if you're gonna log

Brad  6:11  
in as the German at the table here, I'm gonna move

to here, don't worry about it. I really like to hear your story, though. From see you MBA to Brewer. Are you a brewer before you got your MBA or tell us the story in your entrepreneurial journey to date here? So probably

Davin Helden  6:32  
Yeah, for sure. So I my undergraduate was, even before that, I wanted to be a medical doctor, and did really good in high school and did all the volunteering things were supposed to do and then chose biochemistry for my undergraduate. So I became an EMT. Now not actually working but certified as an EMT, just to kind of, you know, along with academics get my foot in that doors, as well see if I liked it turns out that I am horribly afraid of needles. Like

Brad  7:07  
that. Now, we're talking how the beer came in. Yeah,

Davin Helden  7:09  
I mean, blood can be spraying from somebody's artery on the wall, fine. Show me a needle hole, you know. So I figured that might be the first problem, we're going to medical school because you have to do that, right. And the other thing is that I'm a really bad standardized test taker. And so I don't know if it's the stress of it, or whatever. But my AC t, it was horrible. And I had to like, talk myself into getting it to see you in the first place, just based off of grades and other things that I've done, right, got in there did well in biochemistry, took the MCAT twice, and basically got a good enough score to get into like, Kansas State or Guatemala, nothing against those schools. But what happened to the other it was, it was bad scores a bad score. So I'm sorry, I did biotech for a long time at a company called Amgen, California in Colorado and kind of worked my way up there started in manufacturing, so tanks and valves and piping. And so it's something that I kind of understood. And one of my Well, both of my business partners, Eric and Seth, we were working all together, transitioned to a Generic Pharmaceutical Company, after about 13 years of Amgen, worked there for three years. And Seth had been home brewing for 18 years. Wow. Like he started before craft beer was even a thing. And he'd won a bunch of local and national homebrew awards. And we were at a meeting at Sandow, the Generic Pharmaceutical company that was in Broomfield. And we were in a meeting and it was a meeting where nobody knew why they were there. And the only action item coming out of it was to have another meeting about the meeting that we just had,

Jeff  8:55  
if you macademia the department chair meetings? No, no, no, this is in academia. All meetings are very productive and straightforward. And your experience Tony

like to go into meetings about other meetings, yeah. So

Davin Helden  9:15  
we went to lunch after that meeting. And my business partner asked Seth, who was the home brewer, what's going to take for you to open a brewery and he said, Well, I need to make what I'm making now, which was at the time it's pretty sick. Six figures. Right. And also, I want to ride

Brad  9:32  
my bike to work. Is that his motorcycle sitting outside? That's mine. That's yours. I saw the triumph. It took a walk around

Davin Helden  9:38  
at 800 miles. Yeah. mileage on it.

Brad  9:41  
Yeah, I thought it was 860 It's 8000 808 1000. Okay. 60 But it looks bike looks like it's brand new. Yeah, it's,

Davin Helden  9:49  
it's been a great bike. Cool. I forgot let us talk about motorcycles.

Jeff  9:56  
Like he wants to make more as much money as he was going to Yeah. Uh

Davin Helden  10:00  
oh, and ride his bike to work. And I looked at him, I said, I can probably get you one of those things, but it's not going to be both. So he rides his bike.

Jeff  10:11  
Congratulations. He did.

Davin Helden  10:15  
He's happy he's. So that is what started a year and a half to two year process of me writing a business plan and a financial model, because I had gone to in 2007. So I'm much older now is maybe seven years into working for Amgen natives program where they would pay for you to get an advanced degree. And I was like, that's fantastic. These evening courses like 36 grand and so I took the MCAT and did horribly because standardized tests love this. It's a standardized tests that like you sit down and there's Proctor's I can't deal with it. Anyway. So I did the MCI thing. I talked my way into that program, again, you know, kept calm or like, I know the MCAT Sox it's not getting any better. And MCAT GMAT,

Jeff  10:59  
GMAT. Oh, God, now that we know Yeah,

Davin Helden  11:02  
yeah. So I think my score is horrible. So I kept calling and I emailed, I said, you know, I do better in school, the standardized testing is not for me, I know, it's horrible. It's not gonna get any better. And they had a meeting with me, and I convinced them to let me get into lead school business. Wow. Good for you.

Brad  11:21  
You have a beer, we can say cheers. Yeah. Cheers. All right.

Davin Helden  11:24  
I, I convinced them to let me in. And I knew I wanted to focus on entrepreneurialship. stuff. And graduated first class. Wow. Congratulations.

Brad  11:33  
We're

Jeff  11:33  
Eric Muller student. Yep. Eric Mueller, who demands actionable insights. Yes, our boss. Yeah. So do you have any actionable insights for entrepreneurs? Because if you're not Eric's gonna be really upset with us. I don't know pressure.

Brad  11:47  
will listen to this episode may be

Jeff  11:49  
in about six. He will send us his notes and actionable insights

Davin Helden  11:53  
for him on campus. Startups in sandwiches. Oh, that's

Brad  11:59  
very cool. We're gonna do here just because of our cu friends. Yeah.

Jeff  12:03  
Well, we're gonna actually have our department happy hour here, too. Yeah, they're open every day. Well, we should take some beers. This German pills. Amazing. That's great. What else have we got out here? Like, social all the beers are in a buffet? Yeah.

Davin Helden  12:15  
So Eric Mueller will like this. We we save money where we can and Dollar Store cupcake trays worked fantastically for tasted glasses. That's $1 apiece. People. steal them. Drop okereke. I don't care. Yeah, I don't care.

Brad  12:33  
starting all the way at the end here.

Davin Helden  12:34  
So these four these four are lucid AF, which is our flagship IPA. And then the red ones are the prickly pears. Lucid and fancy, right? We had to tell King Soopers it was always fresh. They still didn't let us in there. Like we know what that means.

Jeff  12:54  
King Soopers

Davin Helden  12:56  
mom's mom moms are gonna complain at us. So to this day ever be a sponsor? Right.

Jeff  13:03  
We're on the verge of landing that King Soopers deal.

Brad  13:06  
Yeah. Okay, let's give it a shot.

Jeff  13:10  
All right, cool. All right. Cheers, everyone. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Okay,

Brad  13:15  
now we got Tony.

Jeff  13:17  
Awesome academic life. This is yes, this is the hard life we have.

Davin Helden  13:21  
So cultures we talked about a little bit before. Oh, this is delicious. These have warmed up a bit, but it's still delicious. It's a hybrid ale. One of the few from Germany. The other hybrid ale is all beer that you can get from Germany, ale yeast, but lagered so cold conditioned. And you get a little bit more flavors out of ale yeast. I get like, little bit of Cheerio. Ready green apple a little bit of bread toasted say Cheerio. Cheerio, like Cheerios

Jeff  13:53  
like breakfast cereal near where I taste that is unlike the front part of my tongue. So when you taste beer, like you know, you kind of gotta figure out where on your tongue while flavors it's different for every human but

Davin Helden  14:04  
it's so that's the thing. So you know, when we do our sensory program here. There's some genetic components to what you can taste and I cannot do diacetyl it's a very common off labor. It's like a butter popcorn or butter. You can dump straight diacid right in front. I can't get it.

Jeff  14:23  
Beer judge training you like is it Budweiser or another green apple is definitely causes a green apple flavor as well as that's a no

Davin Helden  14:30  
Yeah, that's a forgot the name of an EB

Jeff  14:34  
space exam and

Brad  14:35  
it's like a beer that I could drink all afternoon. So

Davin Helden  14:40  
I go clean Apple most most people would say it's more of a Pinot Grigio type of sweetness. So

Jeff  14:46  
yeah, Dry Finish

Davin Helden  14:47  
Cheerio. bready dry cleaners do I get a

Jeff  14:51  
lot of bread flavor off of it and there's a weak component in Kohl's usually too, isn't

Davin Helden  14:55  
there? I don't know that we use any we might for a little bit of a head retention right but I don't I don't think it's a big component of this.

Jeff  15:02  
This is nice. Really nice.

Brad  15:04  
Is this on the menu all year?

Davin Helden  15:05  
Is this is the only beer that's been on the menu since we opened? No. Yeah, we've changed the whole the whole all of it. We opened in Boulder County in Colorado, the Napa Valley beers have no IPA on tap. Today 1014 Okay, people would come in and say not even look at the menu board, but new brewery try it out. I'll have your IPA. Well, oh, well, we focus on German ales and log anyway, three days after we opened we were brewing our first IPA. Yeah. Now, you know, among all the beers I think in Colorado, we're most known for our IPAs. It's been a lot of work. Yeah. But you got to change to what customers are wanting. Thank you. There's

Jeff  15:51  
Mueller actionable insight. I'll say it again that we've had the signal.

Brad  15:56  
Let's talk about your customers, right? And understanding. The actual insight is paying attention to your customers.

Jeff  16:02  
We've never said that on the podcast. We've never said anything about customers. If you're gonna be an entrepreneur, you know what screw the customers. You're right. You know, you stick with your vision you

Brad  16:15  
write and then pick me up in your Uber and about

Jeff  16:20  
so much in classes. Yeah. I mean, I've always told you that, but then you're right. It's like, I don't really want to brew an IPA. But

Davin Helden  16:27  
you have to ended up being the prickly pear. You know, as the dudes doing the brewing. They want to just make beer that tastes like beer. Sure, but we have a marshmallow milk stout on tap, and we've got a prickly pear pastry stout. You know that? We'll try a little bit in a little bit.

Brad  16:46  
Yeah, how do we go from the coach to the IPA? I understand right with your customers to prickly pear. 20 people walk in and say, you know, what were the hell's a prickly pear? Reporter

Davin Helden  17:02  
It's, um, you know, we do Yeah, it's a it's a hard peanut butter Porter is gonna put us on the mat. team that got us on Nine News. And

Brad  17:14  
I knew saying these guys are so insane. Peanut butter in there.

Davin Helden  17:20  
Who would ever try this? You should try it just so you can borrow?

Brad  17:25  
How does that even happen? It's really hard to do. But the creativity of hey, let's throw some peanut butter and beer. How does how does that even work?

Davin Helden  17:32  
So my business partner and who used to brew the beer at the time he doesn't anymore. We've got really great people back there that have professional brewing experience that was all 18 years homebrew. And so we've grown past the needing a founder that homebrew before to brew the beer. We've got professional brewers. But he was still brewing at a time and one of his very good friends was a guy named Justin gold of Justin's nut butter out of Boulder, Colorado. And so he uses all organic peanut stuff is great. And Valentine's Day was coming up. And I don't know who reached out to who but Seth and Justin decided to do peanut butter beer for Valentine's Day. And it was organic peanut flour to this day still proprietary to us because he said you can after we're done with the collaboration. We're like, people are lining up out the door for this. So we want to keep making he's like, I'll tell you where I got it. But you don't tell anybody else. That is

Jeff  18:29  
a great story.

Brad  18:30  
Dustin Sal though the Hormel

Jeff  18:32  
so next coming up Thanksgiving span beer.

Davin Helden  18:36  
Yeah, that's a good for him. Yeah. It's, it was great. It

Brad  18:39  
was a great point.

Davin Helden  18:40  
He's still involved,

Brad  18:41  
I believe we don't know a little bit and talk about a guy that loves his nut butters. He loves it. Right. It's

Jeff  18:49  
really, really true. It's also interesting with him when you talk to him about that company, which he came on here some time. He'd be good. He talks about like, yeah, the numbers going organic, all the different flavors of chocolate hazelnut, but it was just putting the stuff in a pouch. And why did that matter? Because it was convenient for bicycling, hiking,

Brad  19:07  
and your customers. Yeah, there

Jeff  19:09  
we go. So once again,

Brad  19:13  
because it was expensive. Also, I mean, a $10 Peanut butter was really a mind blower to folks and to be able to taste in the small packages as well. Yeah, it was just a different. It's a low risk

Jeff  19:24  
investment. Right? So if you can take something, I mean, here's the thing people always like I was just teaching the Executive MBA and like they're like, oh, customers are gonna love this product because we love it and we interviewed 50 people and they all said they buy it. I'm like, nobody's gonna buy this. Like they're just lying to you like they don't care. They do not care. But if you can make it a small investment right to like, cross that catch a small sample. Oh, I tried that right now but in a jar now I actually will buy it really. I mean, you've got to make the cost to adopt very small And that novelty of doing the peanut butter Porter. It's like well, okay, I don't know I wasn't planning to drive out and off yet but they got this peanut butter pour. So now I'll go out there and now sudden oh, wow, they make really good

Brad  20:11  
thing is then they go into Hazel's and they buy name right. And they buy pick this up because they know the quality. They know there's creativity. They know the people because you're here, you're here every day. Yep. And so actually having some sort of connection with the brewery is a big deal as well.

Jeff  20:27  
Yeah. And then they come out to this place, which is really a cool space. I mean, if you haven't ever been out here and you live in anywhere nearby, or even if you're visiting, get out to Lafayette get to liquid mechanics, because it's super cool. He's got some awesome like vintage pinball machines got kids pinball machine. He's got a Star Wars pinball machine. The kids pinball machine like has Gene Simmons voice.

Davin Helden  20:47  
Call from Eric and Frank and Wayne boss. Interestingly enough. You did what? I said. I learned all this from Eric and Frank and Wayne boss. That's awesome. So this is lucid AF. Wow, that's got some I won't I won't go through the proper pronunciation. But it's West Coast IPA. It's featuring Citra mosaic and Amarillo hops. So those are going to give you like a little bit of tropical flavor. Wow, I get a little bit of like Ruby Red grapefruit

Jeff  21:20  
red and I have skipped the description. Now we're just triggers. These are pictures. Serious grapefruit. Big time. Yeah. Is that

Brad  21:30  
perhaps Yeah. brings that grapefruit out? Yep. Yep. Incredible. All the flavors are hopped, arrived.

Davin Helden  21:35  
And again, this has been sitting out for an hour. So they're a little more,

Jeff  21:43  
but actually liked to let craft brew warm up a little bit more of a flavor profile. Man, this is a this is a very clever beer. Because you get that great fruity bite on the back of your tongue as it finishes. Which makes you immediately want to take another sip.

Davin Helden  22:01  
Yeah, right. Right when we finish it dry, too.

Jeff  22:03  
Right? It's super, really? You actually thought that through? Yeah, you guys are smart. Yeah, that

Davin Helden  22:08  
dryer the beer, the more your palate wants another sip of it. Right? It's kind of like these pretzels.

Jeff  22:16  
The tongue of Seinfeld. At least you got that.

Davin Helden  22:19  
And you know 90% Of what we taste is what we smell right. You know,

Jeff  22:24  
now this has got some syrup. I love it. I love it. This is the first IPA bread is ever. So I love grapefruit. Okay, the less flavor the better. As far as beer is concerned for bread. This is a good one, we convert him into a beer guy now we're working on converting him into a we are beer guys.

Davin Helden  22:41  
I have to have at least one lucid IPA every night.

Brad  22:46  
To actually be able to say it's, you

Davin Helden  22:48  
know, it's it's now I've got I've got rules about drink. I don't drink after five. Really? So

Brad  22:57  
I have the other rule.

Davin Helden  23:01  
No Mondays and Tuesdays just because that's hard. I mean, it's like, yeah, I mean, it's it's free. And it's everywhere.

Jeff  23:09  
Right? Right. I was homebrew. Like six beers on tap. And like, well, if I was an alcoholic, I would totally be out of a job. Beer here all the time. Control.

Davin Helden  23:23  
It's been a lot of people in our industry. Oh, there be no doubt kind of serious for like two seconds. But you gotta watch.

Jeff  23:31  
You gotta be aware, because it's fun to write. It's fun. It's all fun again.

Davin Helden  23:36  
Everybody hears drinking beers. And it's very communal and sociable. I just want to keep doing it. Right. So anyway,

Jeff  23:44  
to me. So I think as long as it is a communal and social activity. Yes. In my experience anyway. And I've had many friends that actually did struggle with alcoholism and family members. And it's like, as long as you can keep it where it is this this thing you do to celebrate your connections with other people? That's great. Yes. But it becomes something you do because it's just what you do. By yourself. Yeah, that's a yeah, we've all seen a slippery slope. Yeah. So all right, this beer is fantastic. Get back to the topic. This is really nice. So the first reader

Davin Helden  24:22  
know we've gone through, really, I mean, seven years, to this day, the recipe of this IPA that every batch is different than the last really.

Jeff  24:33  
Like you guys can't different. Yeah,

Davin Helden  24:35  
I mean, the subtleties are so small that people the general population wouldn't be able to catch on but that is why I drink wine every night. This is our best selling beer. Because I keep my palate at like a baseline. Just so I get that little thing. Remember every night except for Mondays and Tuesdays. So this

Brad  24:52  
is a work thing. I had to do this to be alert because the training series because that training though, can you tell about that really subtle? Yep.

Davin Helden  25:03  
Yep, extra 10 pounds of grain or extra half ounce of hops?

Brad  25:08  
Are those changes due to customer feedback? Or is it just kind of nature of handmade, you know, stuff that we pay

Davin Helden  25:14  
a lot of attention to other breweries that we think are doing IPAs very well, well, drink bears will try to reverse engineer what we think went into their beers. If somebody wins, you know, Medal for an IPA and one of the competitions were in will seek that beer out. You know, those judges thought that beer was good and

Jeff  25:33  
almost reverse engineer, tried to reverse engineer but be inspired by your talent and understand a hyper competitive like segment of the market IPAs, where everybody goes head to head?

Brad  25:43  
Would it be cool to have like these from the day you started all the way through? If we can actually yeah, check that total flavor profile will be

Jeff  25:50  
better, we better move on because you know, Joe's done us too. And, you know, these are the sacrifices we make at the Deming center for entrepreneurship to bring you these actionable insights. We come and drink beer with people like Devin in these beautiful settings. Actually, it's hard. We do it for work. But we do it for you. I drive next year. This is where

Brad  26:10  
our marketing a little nervous now.

Jeff  26:13  
Okay, you're getting nervous. Why do you feel nervous spread?

Brad  26:16  
Well, because I like beer. I don't like anything with chairs. This beer is red.

Jeff  26:22  
I'm so excited. It's like neon. Right and before we taste it What are

Davin Helden  26:26  
we having? Prickly Pear? Doughboys interestingly, this will be my first time having it too seriously.

Jeff  26:34  
Today man, I can't the smell is actually not that strong. It's got something

Davin Helden  26:40  
so oh my god.

Brad  26:42  
watermelon Jolly Ranchers. Actually I want to have him to talk us through buying his first one

Davin Helden  26:47  
watermelon. Watermelon Jolly Rancher dead on?

Brad  26:52  
Good. Oh, I love it. Yeah, okay. That is your I like the brewery here.

Give me the s or the call. So this beer the lager spirits

Jeff  27:05  
super this this looks like watermelon juice. Kinda it tastes like a watermelon Jolly,

Davin Helden  27:10  
but it's prickly pear. So that's interesting. That is interesting. So we do a rotating series for like people like fruits and a series called Doughboys. And it's because it's a pastry sour. So it's a kettle sour. It's gonna be a little tart.

Jeff  27:23  
explain where the kale sour is real quick.

Davin Helden  27:25  
I am not gonna be able to do that very well, but generally go ahead.

Jeff  27:30  
Well, so sour beers are usually brewed due to the yeast issues, and kettle sours are not brewed sour but there's an addition of sour beer to them. And the kettle

Davin Helden  27:42  
sour. Yeah, like a sour yeast. Or what we do some people do is just leave the top open right for the kettle before it's boiled. Yeah. And then like the facility, the yeast and bacteria from the environment rain down on it start to chew away at the sugars, right? And then you boil it also dies. Right? And that is what makes the acidic contents

Jeff  28:03  
actually you did a great job much better.

Brad  28:06  
It doesn't taste like beer to me. I'm sticking with you. Well,

Jeff  28:12  
that's right. Beer is a big category. Yeah, it's

Brad  28:14  
a huge category. And if I find three out of four, first of all, I think read to me is a freaking flag. If you're going to read beer now it's time for a bourbon pretty.

Davin Helden  28:29  
And he liked I love it. Yeah, people

Brad  28:32  
you've got to

Davin Helden  28:35  
so I'll be honest with you like I don't drink our peanut butter Porter never liked the beer. Sure it really, but actual insight, right? We're brewing to what sells there's always gonna be two or three beers on the menu that I personally just really love and drink as much as I can. I would drink a prickly pear Doughboy, but I probably wouldn't do another one. I'd get a Mexican lager. Yeah,

Jeff  28:57  
I'm not gonna drink like this is not like something you got to drink all night. And somebody's gonna drink.

Davin Helden  29:03  
Yeah, so we've done last year that was on was key lime. Doughboys. We paint the tasting has been

Brad  29:08  
awesome. Thank you. So to have and thank you. Yeah, this has been great. Your establishment is awesome. Liquid mechanics. In what time? Are we gonna go

Davin Helden  29:20  
10 minutes used to Boulder off a baseline. Yeah, it's

Jeff  29:23  
awesome. It's very easy to get to. It's amazing. The space is beautiful. And your beer is available all across Colorado. I

Davin Helden  29:28  
know. Just the hoppy ones. Really? Yeah, yeah, we only can lucid AF jiggle juice, which is a hazy IPA. Yep. Hot nectar, which is a hazy Pale Ale. And how opacity which is west coast, paleo

Jeff  29:42  
and those are across Colorado are 16

Davin Helden  29:45  
Yeah, more Front Range. 60 liquor stores. The majority of our business is a tasting room. Yeah, that's where the profit. That's where the margin is. Yeah, you're looking at percent profit margin. By pulling sticks into glass. It's it's and you're looking at like it's so good. 11 in cans. Tasting Room is the key. It's more marketing on liquor store shelves than anything. If we could just sell everything we make over over the bar. We do that. That's absolutely,

Jeff  30:11  
absolutely, Devin, it's been awesome talking to you. Likewise. Thank you

Brad  30:16  
might stick around anytime.

Jeff  30:19  
So yeah. All right now that we have properly prepared ourselves prepared, Brett, I actually am fine with talking about academic papers. But I have to do this with Brad to get him in the mood for talking about this. You know, he's he's looking excited about talking about an academic paper. Look at this, look at his joy. pumpkin beer, just to explain that

Brad  30:39  
you have something to help entrepreneurs. I really am helping. listeners would love it. They haven't talked about takeaways from going into leads that actually helped them about customer discovery.

Jeff  30:52  
Awesome. So Devin held and I proud to time buff and the founder and owner of liquid mechanics in lovely Lafayette, Colorado. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been awesome. Thank you so much. You got to hang around and talk to us about the same thing.

Davin Helden  31:05  
So all right, well, I like beer and Akademia.

Jeff  31:08  
Well, hey, who doesn't? Spear? All right, so so that's awesome. We talked about beer. Now we're going to talk about research. So come back. Join us for the next episode. We're going to talk about Tony Kong's paper. Will the startup succeed in your eyes, Ninja evaluation of resource providers during entrepreneurs and promotional certainly

Brad  31:27  
that title is just the hook. Man.

Jeff  31:29  
I love it. I love this title. So come back next time. You'll hear us talk about that on now that we've properly enjoyed multiple beers. So once again, this is creative distillation. I'm Jeff York, research director at the lead School of Business Deming Center for Entrepreneurship and

Brad  31:45  
Brad Warner and it was great to be with you, Jeff. I'm the faculty director and do a lot of things at Deming as well. But I've really had a great time today I think I have to being at like mechanics was was a blast looking and looking forward to talking to Tony in our next episode about some freaking crazy title. But we'll get there in a second. Thanks, Brett. You bet

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