If I pull this one out with the whole thing fall down
Yeah
65-70 percent of every beer that we produce out here as Bombshell Blonde
65 to 70 percent of all my craft beer money gets spent on bombshell blonde, so I mean there we go
On this episode of three shots three questions. We're at Southern Star Brewing Company in Conroe, Texas
We're here to meet up with Dave Fougeron founder of Southern Star
We're gonna find out how he turned his passion for craft beer into one of the largest craft beer
breweries in Texas, say that three times. Let's go take some shots already
geez
Dave I'll tell you how that how the show goes we're gonna take a shot
And I'll ask you a question
And then we'll repeat that for questions two and question three.
Sounds like my kinda interview
I can tell this is gonna be a good interview already. Well. We're at the brewery wants to tell us what we'll be
Washing these shots down with. We have a one-off beer that we made
Earlier this fall called Hecho en Conroe. It's a Mexican style lager. All the corn is, Texas grown, Texas ground
We're really excited about it. It's the first time.
We've ever tried something like this, and I think it turned out really well should go great with tequila
That tastes like bad decisions. That's we were going for
shot number one
How does one
become a brew master?
I first started home brewing in 1994, in my apartment college and
It wasn't very good, so I never in a million years thought that I would be doing this
But uh it kind of escalated. I started getting better at it, and when I graduated from college
I applied for an assistant brewer position
at St. Arnold in Houston. Turns out I beat out 100 applicants and got the job. I think mostly
It was I my personality clicked with the guy that was gonna go on to become my brewing mentor his name's
Dr. Pete Norwood. When he left I became the head brewer at
Saint Arnold worked. Did that for six years and then decided it was time to make a break.
Let's take the second shot. Alight shot number two
So question number two. How did Southern Star Brewing Company start?
I was tossing around the idea with a friend of mine. He was a home brewer
we decided let's do this. My dad was very supportive too.
At first we thought we were gonna do a brew pub because there was
There weren't any brew pubs around but I wanted to do some realistic business planning
And I got to about 5 million dollars on paper. It's like
There's no way we're gonna be able to do this to do it right so we ended up brewing in a warehouse
Yeah, just thought well you know
I've got more experience doing this anyway
I didn't really know how to run a brewery
but at least I knew how to to run the brew side of a brewery, so I thought how hard could it be
we started building this warehouse out to be a brewery and took us almost a year. We didn't must-have work ourselves
The only thing new in that whole brewery was the canning line, and we were the first to can craft beer in, Texas
You know all of our cans now are made right down the street from here
So everything, we keep a lot of stuff local. There was a lot of reasons. Why we went with cans, but I think
Having a different package was was part of it. It was definitely part of it and has definitely helped us
Let's take the third shot cuz I'm interested in I genuinely really want to know the answer to this third question.
so third shot third question
13.1 acres this beautiful
craft beer estate, I want to call it. Tell me about the new facility, tell me about the move
Tell me what what's going on here.
I am so happy to be here. We actually had this land for four years
We found this through the economic development council
This is a landlocked piece of land
So it was pretty cheap. So we decided to you know move pulled the trigger and build a brewery like
like a brewery should be built. You know what I love you come down the driveway, and you kind of escape
You know what I love you come down the driveway, and you kind of escape
That's one of my favorite things about this piece of land
We've got a you know 1200 foot long driveway, and it's got that little S
curve in it to where you come down you're like where am I you know is this is kind of you know hillbilly land and
Then all of a sudden it's like this little pocket of isolation
We've got a stage out there, and you know put the disc golf course back there
Which I think is the only disc golf course at the bar right in the middle of it. You know but leave it to us.
I've never been to an actual brewery. I'm a brewery virgin right now.
Well, we'll be gentle
We are standing right next to the brew house, this is the heart of our brewery
That's all different than 1994 huh? Little bit. The magic really happens in the fermenters
After our beer is done fermenting and crash cooled
We put it through this machine. That's the time machine
We used to have to wait until everything settled out yeah
That's effectively known as the Kentucky Time Machine.
This things runs at 5.51 Gigawatts!
Let's check out the rest of the place
Goes through there goes into one of these tanks. If there's beer in here. It's ready to be packaged
This is where the canning happens
Yeah, they talk about robots taking over human jobs. We used to have a human that did this job
He still works here, but he doesn't want to do that job anymore cuz that jobs. He's eight hours
Just pushing cans and feed him into a belt. That's probably the worst job. You could do here
What is his new task now though?
He's actually the logistics manager, and he loads and unloads everything and makes sure everything's good
He got a promotion. Robots gave him a promotion.
Robots gave him a promotion and this robot will never get a promotion. Sorry
Yeah, but robots don't have any feelings. That's funny.
How many cans can you fill like what is the measurement? How many per hour?
It's per minute. It's per minute
Yeah
This this was this machine was designed to do 27 cans a minute
Like is there any way I can fill my beer like up with one of these like
Badass, like fresh beer like from the.
I can give you a taste of what beer tastes. Yeah sure
It's got a little carbonation in it. This is a bombshell blonde.
that's bombshell blonde before it's been and it's ready to transfer
That's (expletive) delicious.
Zar, you should try this actually
That's some fresh ass shit : this is an Instagram like a moment right here
We're here with Dave from Southern Star Brewing
And we just got this fresh out of what we call this? a fermenter. Fresh out of the fermenter
You know it's bombshell blonde
Guys if we weren't filming today, we would just spend all day here.
The tables have turned Europe
If you want some fresh beer come to Southern Star Brewing Company.
Dave, thank you for the tour
Thank you for showing us some of the seasonals
thank you for letting us taste the beer right out of the the heart of where it comes from
I think the guys deserve a beer. I think so too
Let's do this. Let's do it. All right guys
Thanks Dave. Thanks Dave, we'll see you
