Marshall Brewing Company, Tulsa’s 1st Production Craft Brewery

In this episode of the Tulsa podcast Scales & Ales, Marshall Morris and Eric Chupp sit down with Eric Marshall & Adam Marshall to discuss what makes the beer at Marshall Brewing Company so spectacular. Adam Marshall also breaks down how all of the new beer and liquor laws will affect Tulsa patrons and establishments!

OUTLINE

1. So Eric… as you probably know, Adam and I live in the same neighborhood and our kids go to the same school and we met through mutual friends and events and such and I think he is great but I have to tell you…..
2. I am such a fanboy. I never thought that I would be star struck to sit down with a brewmaster but you literally make my favorite beer on the planet. I absolutely love Sundown Wheat. So thank you for what you have done there. You are like my urban shaman and your sweet wheat heaven’s nectar is what I am looking for after a long day… so again, I thank you.
3. So, we are here in the snug, at The Tap Room at Marshall’s Brewing Co. and I have to tell you, this place is legit. It’s a great mix of bar and family friendly fun with the great beer, TV’s, food trucks, the wall of games, the snug. It is such a great idea. So can you guys explain to the listeners what the snug is? So they we will know why we titled it “the Snugcast”?
4. So Eric, Is The Tap Room something you have always wanted to do… what inspired you to build this place?
5. Eric, as I understand it, you went to Germany and earned International Diploma in Brewing Technology from the World Brewing Academy. That sounds pretty epic, there’s really a WORLD BREWING ACADEMY?
6. So Adam has told me a few things about your time in Germany and it sounds amazing so I am coming in hot with a line of questions about that time in your life:
7. Give us a breakdown of the timeframe when you were there. How old were you, what years were you there? Were you single/married? What was going on with you?
8. While you were there studying what did that process look like? Walk us through what a typical day was like.
9. What do yo miss most about living in Germany?
10. And when did you know you wanted to start Marshall Brewing Company?
11. What does it mean to be Tulsa’s 1st Production Craft Brewery?
12. Now Adam, did Eric always like beer this much?
13. Now Adam, as a subject expert on the legality of brewing beer, why is there so much hype around Oklahoma Question 792? It passed in the 2016 general elections, and just started October 1, 2018,. What’s the big deal?
14. As part of Oklahoma Question 792, any establishment with a beer and wine license will be permitted to sell beer of up to 9% ABV as well as wine up to 15% ABV, under refrigeration. How does that affect you guys and other breweries?
15. What does it mean for on-premise sales versus off-premise sales?
16. How have hours been affected with the places that sell alcohol?
17. Am I totally wrong here or did you tell us at one point that it is legal and we are allowed to, get this Marshall, walk around outside while drinking beer in town? Please correct me if I am wrong and if this is some kind of joke you are playing on me it is not funny!
18. What are the most common misconceptions when it comes to the laws of brewing beer?
19. Adam’s Powerpoint – https://www.okrestaurants.com/docs/REVISED_Answers_to_Liquor_Law_Changes_Coming_October_1.pdf
20. Adam, Is there something you are working on right now or something you are passionate about that you would like for people to check out or go and learn about?
21. Eric, same questions what is something that you would to  promote or spread the word about or something you would like for the people out there to go and do? Obviously now that your beer is available pretty much everywhere we want people to go out and buy it. But is there anything else you would like to share?

 

TRANSCRIPT

Marshall Morris: Today we interview Eric Marshall and Adam Marshall, the founders of Marshall Brewing Company. Here we go. Welcome back. My name is Marshall Morris, and I’m joined with the always hilarious Mr. Eric Chupp. And on today’s episode we have some phenomenal guests. We have the brewmaster and founder of Marshall Brewing Company—Tulsa’s first production craft brewery. Mr. Eric Marshall, and he’s been awarded actually the international diploma in brewing technology from the world brewing academy and next to him is his brother, co-founder and vice president of Marsh Brewing Company, Mr. Adam Marshall. And he’s a practicing attorney and partner at Barrow and Grimm. How are you guys? It’s exciting to launch the podcast.

Adam Marshall: You can get any credentials you need online. It’s really easy. So you know all this.

Eric Chupp: University of Phoenix.

Adam Marshall: Yeah.

Eric Chupp: So you’re saying you bought those, that’s what you’re saying?

Adam Marshall: In one form or the other.

Eric Chupp: We’re going to need a website we can go check this out at.

Adam Marshall: International what? No.

Marshall Morris: Now you guys have been doing Marshall Brewing Company for how many years?

Eric Marshall: A little over 10 years. So about 10 and a half years.

Marshall Morris: Okay. 10 and a half years and has the Snugcast, has that always been a vision for you guys or how did it start?

Eric Marshall: No, so we opened the taproom about a little over two months ago I guess. And when we got this old building we kind of bought it because the price was right and it was kind of one of those, we don’t want to regret not being able to get the building. And once the laws started to change and we realized that we would be able to operate taprooms and really grow that side of things we saw this was going to be a great space for it. And so as we started going through the building, there was always this cool old vault in here that I guess a lot of the old buildings around, it wasn’t a bank or anything like that, but a lot of the old businesses in this area, the old buildings had these vaults like Mother Road Market that just the opened and they have one in there using it as kind of a popup shop for people. So we didn’t want to get rid of it. We didn’t really know what to do first off, you know, kind of thought maybe we could retrofit it and it’d be the beer cooler. But then it was like, eh, not really. It’s cool. And then, so we just kinda took a play of or took part of the playbook from Elliot and the McNellie’s group when they built a snug, which is part of the Irish tradition of basically kind of a private area in the bar. Historically in Ireland it was where the priests and the nuns would go drink and…

Marshall Morris: Secretive.

Eric Marshall: Yeah, kind of have that secretive area…

Eric Chupp: Ahh this is what I want to know. This is good stuff.

Eric Marshall: So there’s a little light switch you can flip and alert somebody at the bar that will open a open a secret window there to…

Eric Chupp: Yeah, for the listener’s out there they can’t see were in like maybe what a 12 x 12, 14 x 14 room.

Eric Marshall: I think it’s 12 x 12.

Eric Chupp: Concrete walls. Maybe 14 ft. tall, a cool metal door, some awesome lights you guys put in. And so I always wanted to know the story behind what a snug was.

Adam Marshall: But in here you get survive a nuclear blast in this, I mean, these walls are two feet, you know, steldschool steel doors and so this is something really special. We really tried to use as much of what was here, but then put our spin and our flavor on it, so…

Eric Chupp: Very cool. they’ve got the little window. What do you guys call this? Just like the little window, the bartender just slides open….

Eric Marshall: Yeah, just the service window.

Eric Chupp: Yeah, little service window. So very cool. So Eric, as you probably know, Adam and I know each other through our kids go to school together and he’s a cool guy, we’re friends and everything. But I gotta tell you, man, I’m a huge fan boy. I never thought I’d be a superfan of a master brewer, but Sundown Wheat is literally my favorite beer on the planet and I don’t know how I got lucky enough to be in town. Can you kind of just maybe tell me how you guys came up with the Sundown Wheat or how’d you get this flavor that I love so much?

Eric Marshall: Well, first off…

Eric Chupp: Just give us all the secrets too. All of the stuff… We’ll just keep it between us and nobody else will know.

Adam Marshall: You can have the recipe. You just can’t have the name.

Eric Chupp: There you go.

Eric Marshall: First off, now that we’re actually meeting, getting to know each other, hopefully you’re not like, “Oh man.” But no, when we started the process, it was probably about 12 years ago and kind of looking at the market. It was still very, very early on here. In fact, there was only our friends down at Krebs Choc Brewing, who now owns The Prairie Brand, but it was just a Choc at that point. And so, it was kind of one of those things where we were—craft brewing was new. I always like to say things start on the coast and worked their way to Oklahoma and…

Eric Chupp: Right. Like the faux hawk and short pants and things like that.

Eric Marshall: Yes. Exactly.

Adam Marshall: And Santa pub crawls.

Eric Chupp: Yup, San Francisco. Yup!

Eric Marshall: So it was kind of one of those things as the market was new, McNellie’s had opened downtown—this was the first multi-tap establishment kind of introducing people to craft beer. So it was very much an idea of, okay, if we’re going to do this, we need to understand sort of what the market is with craft beer being in its infancy, at least in this part of the world. You know, what is going to be the beer styles if you come out with…

Eric Chupp: What year was this?

Eric Marshall: This was probably…

Adam Marshall: This was 2007, when we were doing the research.

Eric Marshall: Yeah 2006, 2007 And so you know…

Adam Marshall: And we had some good research.

Eric Marshall: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, you come out with a double IPA as your flagship in a heavily dominated Miller, Coors, Bud market, or throw Boulevard Wheat is that mix, which boulevard wheat, I’d like to give them a lot of credit. I like to give Boulevard a lot of credit because, you know, they really focused hard in this market being a neighbor, neighboring market. But it also, you know, that was really one of the first local-ish craft beers to this part of the world that got people thinking differently.

Eric Chupp: Yeah! That’s the one I was thinking. As I was becoming of drinking age that was different than the other ones. Right

Eric Marshall: Sure. And so when you look at that, it very much is, the flavors are non-offensive I guess in a lot of ways, but more so, it has sort of a mass appeal, but it’s different enough that people change your mind about the way beer has to taste. For the longest time it had to taste one way.

Adam Marshall: Or call it crossover beer.

Marshall Morris: Eric Chupp. This is going to be one of the most fun podcasts because we have Eric Marshall, we have Adam Marshall, we have Marshall Morris, and Eric Chupp. And so this is going to get confusing. Chupp is underselling how much he likes Sundown Wheat. He likes it so much that I’m required to keep a six pack in my refrigerator at all times.

Eric Chupp: I’m pissed if it’s not there.

Adam Marshall: Oh Man, he’s got a mind job on you is what it sounds like. You’re like twice as tall as him. What does he got on you? What did you do?

Marshall Morris: He will not order anything else at any other restaurant anywhere. He won’t order it. He’s always asking, “I don’t see sundown on draft. Can I get a bottle? Where, where is that?”

Eric Chupp: I’m like, “Yeah, where can I find that?”

Eric Marshall: All right. Well like fanboy status. Let’s get this like do you have a child named Sundown? That’s the next question. I definitely was told someone that they have a child named Atlas because of the beer.

Eric Chupp: I don’t yet. How about that?

Eric Marshall: Man, that takes it to…

Marshall Morris: What about the local tattoo parlors?

Adam Marshall: You don’t as far as Candice knows, right?

Eric Chupp: Right, right. But, my daughter is eight and she does have a Sundown Wheat tattoo.

Eric Marshall: Oh wow!

Eric Chupp: Started the branding game early.

Eric Marshall: I used to work at this brewery Victory up in Pennsylvania, right outside of Philadelphia. And one of their flagship brands is called hop devil and it’s basically like this–menacingly delicious was their tag—but it’s basically this little hop cone that kind of has this like happy devil face on it. And I remember being at the brewery one day and some dude showed up. He’s like, “Check out my new tattoo!” He had this giant hop devil on his neck and I’m like, “Sh*t, that’s crazy!”

Eric Chupp: That’s funny, you know…

Adam Marshall: Go big or go home.

Eric Chupp: So Marshall and I do another podcast and radio show with our boss said the thrive time show and we focus on small business entrepreneurship. And we interviewed last night, the guy who, uh, kind of rescued the Harley brand from the late eighties. And so were one of things we’re talking about is how to create a culture of business culture and a community where people will tattoo your name because that’s what Harlan is known for. Right. Tons of peoples. That’s just funny that you brought that up.

Adam Marshall: But it’s really interesting you brought that up because when we were starting out, I mean, what is it? And we still use, I still use Harley as an example—the new Harley, post, you know…

Eric Chupp: Yeah, the 94 Harley.

Adam Marshall: Because you know, in craft, if you ask them, and maybe you did, I don’t know, but I’ve heard this interview, “Do you guys sell motorcycles?” No, they sell an experience.

Eric Chupp: Right. That’s the whole deal.

Adam Marshall: That’s what we’re doing. There’s a level of authenticity with us that’s very, very difficult for big beer to obtain. They’ve tried to, they bought, they’re making some, some good inroads with some of the craft beers they bought that do have authenticity—still hard to buy. But Harley’s the one. They sell an experience. They’re not a motorcycle company, they’re an experience company. I mean, that’s what we’ve got here. We’re selling experience.

Eric Chupp: And the cool parallel is that he was literally saying that when they went into their revamp process they were telling the company, all the people in the company, our product is amazing. We’ve got the best product we’ve ever made, huge budget to launch this product. And nobody cared. Nobody cared about the product because the Japanese bikes, every other bikes, we’re awesome. And one of the things that he said is exactly what you just said. He said—he related it to writing. I don’t know if you guys ride motorcycles at all—but he said the way the Colt, they change the culture was by teaching everybody to look through the turn. So when you’re riding a bike, you can’t look at the turn, you got to look where you want the bike to go. And he said that’s what they do when the, you know, he was like, don’t give me all this bullshit about creating a relationship and all this corporate speak. He’s like, no, build a real experience that people are passionate about. And when your clients are passionate, they’ll spread the word. And so that’s…

Adam Marshall: If you gotta tell people you’re awesome or you’re cool, you’re not awesome.

Eric Chupp: Exactly, it’s the wow factor. Right. It’s the wow factor.

Marshall Morris: One of the things I want to get from you guys is because I think one of the factors that contributes to a really competitive nature within the industries is that your competitors, you’ll step over your competitors in order to get there. And you don’t see that a whole lot in craft brewing. It rather, it’s almost like an entire team or a network and that you want others to succeed. I was wondering, Eric, if you’d talk a little bit about that.

Eric Marshall: Yeah, I think that’s one of the greatest things about this industry is the camaraderie. You’ve got an industry based on an art or a craft that everybody for the most part gets into. And, now, I say everybody I’ll kind of go back from that. But most people get into it because they love, they’re passionate about it, and it’s a great time to be a beer drinker right now. But for the longest time when we started about 5,500 breweries ago—meaning when we started, there were about 1500 breweries in the US. There’s 7,000–7,500 or something like that.

Adam Marshall: 10 years ago when we started, there were less breweries still in America than there were prior to prohibition.

Eric Chupp: Really?!

Adam Marshall: Around 2013 is when nationwide we finally eclipsed at about the 2,400 mark. Fast forward 2017, 7,000 breweries.

Marshall Morris: That’s incredible.

Adam Marshall: Yeah, I mean it’s been an explosion and there’s a cost to that.

Eric Marshall: And then another probably 1500 and in planning or in various stages of planning or whatever. And so I think that at that point you’re looking at the market and it’s way less than 10% market share. So I mean, you’ve got all these small breweries, which 1500 breweries or so at that point, that’s a lot of breweries. And then you’ve got three major breweries who control over 90% of the beer market in the US. So I think that there was a lot of that sort of…

Adam Marshall: Yeah, brewery conglomerates. I mean, what’s a brewery, what’s a conglomerate, but you know, the big three.

Eric Marshall: But I think there was a lot of this sort of spirit of like us against them type of mentality. And I think you still have some of that. You know, Adam kind of mentioned about, you know, some of the bigger brewers starting to buy up some of the craft brewers or try to encroach in that market. You know, there’s still this fight of independent craft and, you know, this new campaign of who’s truly independent, that I think there’s still a lot of working together to try to do that. But at the end of the day, the majority of the people that got in this business got in this business because they love beer. And there’s so much innovation. There’s so much great things happening right now. But the coolest thing about this industry is you’re finding big players like Sierra Nevada–I always like to use them, for example—who they’ve been around a long time. They were one of the pioneers. They’re still one of the great American Breweries that could use their experience there—the money that they spend on research and develop and the money that they spend on ensuring their quality is top notch—they could use that as a competitive advantage. But no, they share every bit of that with all the small breweries…

Eric Chupp: So it’s kind of like open for everyone.

Eric Marshall: to make everybody better. And so I think that that’s such a great thing and you see that there’s a lot of information share. There’s a lot of, “Hey, I spent a sh*t load of money making this mistake and trying to fix it. Don’t do the same thing.” Because if you do it and you put out a whole bunch of sh*tty beer and it lessens the quality, it hurts the whole industry. And I think that that’s really cool. So you see this great spirit of collaboration—this information share. And that’s the greatest part about this industry. You go to a big conference, you go to a beer event—the red carpet really is rolled out. And, and again, these guys could use, these bigger guys could use it as competitive advantage, but they’re not because they want to see you succeed because they started at the same place you did. They started because they loved great beer and they wanted to do their part to continue to make that better. And I think that’s really cool and we’re kind of in the position here in Oklahoma where we’re still—I’d like to say—we’re still in our infancy in craft beer. I mean, most of the breweries here in Tulsa are less than 18 months old. I would say probably 90 plus percent are less than 18 months old. And so we’ve navigated all of the hoops. We’ve navigated all the hurdles when nobody else did. We had a blazer on trail because there was a lot of stuff that, you know, there wasn’t a production brewery in Tulsa since 1940 or something like that, but there had never been a brewery before making beer in excess at 3.2 percent. So we had to do a lot of education on, you know, this is what we’re trying to do, this is what is done in other places. This is what it, you know, the kind of navigating some of that stuff and their stuff that like, I’m still fighting to make better for somebody who’s thinking about starting a brewery. I did a deal with the health department for a long time about washable ceilings above production area and all of that stuff. Once I finally got the people to kind of understand, hey, this is a little bit excessive. We’re having to spend money here when we should be spending money here. This is why it’s a little bit different. And then finally, once you get the ear and you get people to understand it makes it better for everybody. I mean, we spent a lot of money on a ceiling that seven years down the road, they finally agreed with me that like, “Yeah, this is a little bit excessive.” You know they’re coming from a great point because they want to, you know, consumer food safety and production and we’re all for that obviously.

Eric Chupp: But everybody else now that’s popping up, they don’t have to go through that. They don’t have those trials and tribulations.

Eric Marshall: They don’t have to go through some of that stuff. Yeah and part of it it’s just educating people to understand what the process is and what we know. But that thing always to me was, hey, you know, there’s people before me that helped us out and, and not that we’re trying to be a public master or something like that. I don’t even know what…

Adam Marshall: Paying it forward.

Eric Marshall: Paying it forward. But there’s a big level of, you know, we knew that when we started and yes, we were the first one in the market, but we want other breweries, we want other breweries because we’re trying to build a culture. We’re trying to add something to Oklahoma or to Tulsa in general. And we want more people. I mean, we were joking before we started the podcast about Lime scooters and I’ve ridden one once and it was last week our head brewer was like, “Hey man, there’s a couple of these scooters over there…

Eric Chupp: Let’s go grab’em!

Eric Marshall: I’m gonna ride down to Heirloom—and we had bottled a couple of our 10th anniversary beers—”I’m gonna ride down to Heirloom and drop a couple of bottles of not even going to have a beer.” And I was like, “No, let’s write those down there and let’s have a beer. And then come back.” And so, you know, it’s great to be able to walk down the street to Cabin Boys or Lime over to Renaissance or to Heirloom and have a beer because we’re all good friends and we all want to see each other, we understand that if people are doing things the right way and have the right passion about it, it’s great for our business, but it’s also just great for the community.

Adam Marshall: And as your attorney. I just want to make it clear he’s not saying you should drink beer and ride Lime scooters around.

Eric Chupp: Uber! He’s saying he was going to Uber back

Eric Marshall: That’s exactly what I was saying.

Eric Chupp: Lime over there and Uber back.

Adam Marshall: I mean, that’s the thing but…

Eric Chupp: Be safe. Be safe. Well, and the cool thing I think about what you said a minute ago is it sounds to me like—and correct me if I’m wrong—but the market is right for you guys to be friendly with the competition because there’s some big players that have 90% of the market share.

Eric Marshall: Sure.

Eric Chupp: So there’s room for you guys to all grow and kind of steal that from the big guys, right?

Eric Marshall: Yeah. And I mean at the end of the day if you really want to boil it down and the people who want to look at business models and competition and all of that stuff, when you boil it down, yes, we’re competing for shelf space, we’re competing for tap space, all of that stuff. But I think you’ll find as a whole when people… Our philosophy sales wise has always been you know, you go in, you want to promote craft, do you want to get people drinking local and you develop those relationships and, and there’s a lot more, I think back in the day you saw a lot more, okay, dedicated taps. You have this, you have this, you have this, you have this and maybe you have one beer that’ll rotate twice a year or something like that.

Eric Chupp: Everybody’s stuck with those same choices, right?

Eric Marshall: That’s not the case anymore because there’s so much great beer and people want to do something different and people expect variety and all of that stuff. But I think the fight has been—or not the fight—but the push has really been selling craft beer, selling Oklahoma beer because again, there’s a lot of great beer being made right here in this state that…

Eric Chupp: Heck yeah there is. Sundown Wheat. What, what!!

Eric Marshall: That you know, Oklahoman’s are proud people and to be able to have great beer that they can get behind and really share. I think that’s awesome.

Eric Chupp: Especially Tulsans too, right? Just take it down even further. Just like this is the Tulsa flag, right? Like we got all of this stuff, you know, don’t hate the 918. Like everybody, the downtown revitalization has just been awesome and was that kind of a springboard for you guys to be able to start building this or how did that fall into that timeline?

Adam Marshall: We were part of it. I mean, I’m just going to say. We didn’t catalyze it. We didn’t start it, but there was momentum of people figuring out that this place could be better and now it is better and it’s going to continue to get better.

Eric Chupp: It was beer-mentum.

Eric Marshall: I think a lot of it too, I mean, you know, a lot of people will point to McNellie’s obviously he’s being kind of one of the first places that that opened in an area that a lot of people are like, “Man, you’re crazy. Like, people aren’t going to come…”

Adam Marshall: But then put 30 taps on… Who would’ve done that around here?

Eric Marshall: 60 taps. And so, people got excited about it and Elliot really had a vision of what he wanted to do, but also just continued to push forward. And a lot of people who don’t know Elliot may think, “Oh man, this guy, he’s opened a bunch of restaurants, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” But he really is a champion of Tulsa and you’ll see him out supporting everybody else’s places because he wants to see cool thing in Tulsa. And he was very instrumental in just saying, “Hey, I’m really interested in what you’re doing.” In fact, I met him, McNellie’s opened right at the time I took like my first final or something like that, or my last final in college and so he was down there glad handing. And I went back and ate with my parents and went back with a bunch of buddies that night, I was like, “Man, we’ve got to check this place out.” And he and I had a beer and just continued to talk about sort of what I was getting ready to go do because once I graduated TU, I went off to Germany and did that…

Eric Chupp: It’s a good segue.

Eric Marshall: And he was very interested in that and we just developed a friendship and kept up. And he was the person who was kind of like, “Hey, what’s going on here? Timing’s right for you to come back.” He was like, “It may not, it may not be right in terms of your schedule or what you kind of had in mind. But I think timing’s right. People want a local beer, I really want to help support this. We want to push it forward.”

Eric Chupp: So I really need to be thanking him that we have Sundown Wheat.

Eric Marshall: Yeah, absolutely.

Adam Marshall: You actually need to thank the McKenzie Brothers because all this entrepreneur like hell we started bullsh*t. We were just obsessed with Bob and Doug McKinsey growing up. I mean honestly, we didn’t drink a whole lot of beer growing up, being honest, and we were underage of course, but you know, we were just so obsessed with Bob and Doug McKenzie and so that’s why. Their dream was to like dying a beer vat or something like that. You know, we’re still working on that. Maybe that’s just me. I don’t know for all of you young people who don’t know what my brother talking about, you should watch the movie Strange Brew. Great movie.

Eric Chupp: Show notes. We’ll put that on there. Yeah.

Marshall Morris: So a lot of people think of Germany and Oktoberfest as a great place where beer generates and a lot of beer culture comes from and you were over in Germany and you were at the World Brewing academy. That sounds epic. Now a lot of craft brewers are getting started like out of their homes or starting or anywhere that they can, you know, can do it and learning from others. But you were actually over in Germany learning to do that. Was that experience as epic as it sounds as the World Crewing academy? Explain that to me because I read that and I was like, oh my gosh.

Adam Marshall: Tell us Obi Wan Kenobi.

Eric Chupp: Where the beer flows like wine.

Eric Marshall: So yeah, it was pretty awesome. So kind of a little background, I studied international business in German at TU. I went over and lived in Germany for about seven months in college and studied abroad with a family and just really loved the experience and also had the opportunity to drink a lot of fresh local beer and just really loved the whole cultural aspect of it. And then obviously coming back for my senior year of college didn’t really have the opportunity, the widespread opportunity, to drink good, fresh, local beer. And so saw an opportunity and a need and just kind of started researching a little bit. Adam had just moved back from law school and so we started home brewing quite a bit. And so got just very serious into it and happened to mention to some family friends that, hey, this is something I’m interested in doing once I’m done with school.

Adam Marshall: Church friends.

Eric Marshall: Just a side note, they were like, “Oh, well our son’s best friend is a German brew master who’s from Munich and you guys…”

Eric Chupp: Yeah (German accent).

Eric Marshall: “And you guys should meet sometime.” And I guess this guy had spent about a year living with their son in Norman. And he helped as a consultant to help open Royal Bavaria, which is a little brew pub in Moore that’s still operating. And so he had a soft spot in his heart for Oklahoma. And so they got home that night and called their sons and like, “Hey, you should reach out to Stefan and tell him that there’s a guy from Oklahoma interested in brewing. And I got a call from him the next day there was like, “Hey, do you want to come over here?” And so stars kind of aligned. And so after I graduated…

Eric Chupp: So I have him to thank for the Sundown. My god. The hole goes deeper and deeper!

Eric Marshall: Yeah, exactly. And so stars kind of aligned and it just worked out to where once I graduated, I went over and met up with him and he said, okay this is what I think the best. There’s a couple of routes you can go. The four year basically in brewing engineering degree from vine, Stefan, which is the oldest continuously operated brewery. And you know, very prestigious. And I said, “Well, I just finish a four year degree,” or he’s like there’s a program through the Doemens Academy in Munich, which is kind of a private brewing academy there. They do a twin campus deal with the Siebel Institute in Chicago, which is called the World Brewing Academy. And you do a bunch of theory work in Chicago and then you do a bunch of hands on practical stuff.

Eric Chupp: Cool.

Eric Marshall: In Germany. And then he basically said, “That seems like a good program. We can get you into that and do that. And then once you’re done with that, I’ve got a bunch of contacts that you come back to Germany and I’ll get you a bunch of contacts apprenticing.” And so he got me hooked up with a guy who helped me kind of farm out to a bunch of different places. So I apprenticed in about six or seven different locations all over Germany.

Eric Chupp: That was one thing I wanted to ask you about is like when you were apprenticing, you’re over their learning this craft and this trade. What did a typical day look like? Were you guys slammed from morning to sundown or was it like you worked… How’s that look?

Eric Marshall: So it varied. I had the good opportunity to kind of bounce around to a bunch of different breweries. Maybe it was a week here or a month there. Or I spent four or five days with this one guy tearing down a brewery that was sold and shipped up to Russia. So kinda got a good experience doing a little bit of everything. And so it varied some of the places, you know, one in particular, it was a guy that used to be a border guard, the check German border guard who retired and wanted to do something different. And so he put a small brewery restaurant in and he was just trained by this other guy. He didn’t have any background as a brewer. So a lot of the stuff I was kind of helping him understand.

Eric Chupp: That’s crazy.

Eric Marshall: I mean he knew what to do and he knew that, hey, you have to do this. But then some of the other stuff, it was very much like you’d get in early and you’re grinding and doing different stuff all day long. And this brewery’s hundreds of years old that that’s been producing for a long time. And so it was just a great opportunity to kind of get, need to kind of get experience in a bunch of different areas and really gain confidence in what you’re doing. And then of course, after that, I came back and went to work for a great craft brewery in Philadelphia, or just outside of Philadelphia, called Victory.

Eric Chupp: Okay, so you didn’t come straight back to Tulsa.

Eric Marshall: Yeah, I wanted to get a little experience in your craft industry and

Adam Marshall: On the American side.

Eric Marshall: On the American side. And it was a great opportunity too. So, I mean, I’m very fortunate and I’ve kept up with the majority of the people that I either apprenticed with or that I worked with over at victory. And it’s really been a great—again, the community has grown considerably over the last 10 and a half years. But you see a lot of the same people. There’s a lot of contacts that I made way early on that are still really valuable and really close to me for sure.

Eric Chupp: Kind of cool being on that echelon, right? That’s awesome.

Adam Marshall: You can basically walk in just about any major city and know somebody that knows somebody if there’s a craft brewery there that maybe… There was a pretty tight, I think, pedigree for awhile when there were 1500 breweries back when, I mean, we started. But you are even at victory in Downingtown—outside Philly—just before that. And so, you know, there was kind of a pretty tight pedigree when people came and then even went over to the west coast. And so you knew somebody that knew somebody. It’s a harder to keep track of now, but beer traveling with this guy’s not too bad.

Eric Chupp: Okay. I got one more question about your time in Germany, or actually reflecting upon your time in Germany. What’s a couple of things you miss most about living in Germany? Just about life. Not necessarily about brewing beer, anything. Just was there some really cool things about, you know, living outside the United States that you miss?

Eric Marshall: Yeah, I mean there’s, there’s obviously a lot of great stuff. Um, you know, one thing that I really do miss is the opportunity to really not even have to have a car and to kind of get around using public transportation, which sounds ridiculous…

Adam Marshall: You got Lime now man. I don’t know if they do there.

Eric Marshall: Which sounds a little bit ridiculous. I mean, I think there’s opportunities still around here, but even when I was there in college, it was like, oh man, you know, you don’t have to plan, you’d have to plan to catch this train at a certain time and catch this bus at a certain time. Or you’re walking up a mountain basically to get to class and so you’re like, man, this is great. I love this. when I get back to TU, which is a super small campus, it was three days and I was driving from one end of campus to the other. Like just this lazy American mentality. I don’t know. But pace of life obviously is a little bit different. I love sort of the, you know, the German people are great. The resourcefulness, the people care about their space that they have. Obviously great beer that they’ve been making for a long, long time. But you know, I mean, the ability to get around to travel to, you know, you can hop on a train and in three hours have gone through five different countries.

Eric Chupp: That’s wild.

Eric Marshall: A lot of people don’t understand here and a lot of, and on the flip side, a lot of Europeans don’t understand about the US they look at a map and they’re like, “Oh yeah, I’m going to fly into Seattle and I’m going to…”

Eric Chupp: Just drive all the way across. Yeah

Eric Marshall: Yeah, just drive all the way across. And it’s like, “No. So you just drove across the state of Montana. That’s like a bigger than the whole country of Germany.”

Eric Chupp: Yeah, that’s pretty wild.

Eric Marshall: So I definitely miss that. But, I tried to go back. I’ve got a great relationship with the family that I lived with that we’re still really close with. And so I try to make it back as often as possible, which with little kids makes it a little harder.

Eric Chupp: Oh yeah, no, man. That’s cool man. Very cool.

Marshall Morris: But so after Germany you move to Victory. Or you go move back to Pennsylvania, you work at Victory. And then did you begin formulating in your mind the, the brewing company here in Tulsa and plan that while you were still in Pennsylvania are you come back and there was a transition period or how did that work?

Eric Marshall: So there was, you know, there was always the idea obviously to open a brewery in Tulsa. Um, you know, my original goal was that, you know, I kind of wanted to get experience in a production brewery in the u s and then maybe spend some time at a brew pub as well. Okay. Just different sizes, different models. Um, and then my brother and my dad started doing a lot of like some of the due diligence stuff while I was there. We all kind of were working somewhat together and you know, looking at the laws, what made the most sense.

Adam Marshall: Yeah. I was trying to figure out if it was even possible here.I tell people, yeah, I went to, I went to law school to learn how to, you know, be a brewery, you know, something. I say that now, but, but it was, uh, I was, uh, I was a younger lawyer at the time, but I was like, you know, I started homebrewing when I was 22 and I’m, I’m, I’m a little bit older than Eric. And then I got dad into it. Eric, when he was older and, and, and not totally distracted by college, which yeah, right. Yeah. I started doing that, but then, but then we were like, yeah. So, so I got back from OU and I was here for a few years. I graduated with a law degree and a masters in business from, OU in 2003 came back here, started my family, started my career and then, you know, he was finishing things up. We were, we were brewing. We started, we started making this great home brew system. I mean, it went from making five gallons at a time, 10 gallons at a time to 15 gallons at a time. But it was like, but we had dad, dad in the background, dad are dead, you know, he’s crazy. So anyway, that’s one way to say it in a very respectful way. But he, he, uh, he, he is, he’s a, he’s a Bagpiper, you know, he’s all into Scotland, everything. And so when they did a big remodel on their house he had a room that he was gonna have be a study. Right.

Eric Chupp: Is he like a renaissance man?

Adam Marshall: My old, but you know, and, and you know, help me with my memory cause I’m old. Uh, but, but, uh, but, but he’s old and tired, man. But Dad had this, had this room that, uh, that he was going to make a study, but then he was like, you know what, he went on this big trip to Scotland. He loved the pubs over there and everything. He’s like I’m putting a Scottish pub in my house, the house, and this is a great old house in midtown. It’s built in 1923 it was like the original house in the neighborhood. It used to actually be a vineyard in prohibition. These people made wine in this house. Yeah. Yeah. It’s crazy they had one owner, the old lady died when she was like 99 they had no kids. I have a nephew got it and never really lived there. And then we, you know, my family again, it’s so, it’s got an interesting history, interesting bones. And there was a basement there. It does. Like I can’t get the beer I really want. And I’d been home brewing at the time. I was like, well dad, we can make it, you know. So we got dad to finance equipment, and we started build and the homebrew, a homebrew system that then became a hot rod, you know, I mean some people were getting in there, they’re putting their machines, all this. Some people are hot rod and computers. I mean we’re, we’re hot and rod and a brewery system and we’re cutting old kegs up that we legally purchased by the way. So we’re kind of old kegs up. We’re getting some, we’d learned in how to weld, you know, to make these brewery stands. And it became actually that Brew System, the last iteration at home and that brew system and became the pilot system really in our, in our, in our, in our current brewery. Now we’ve got a new or pilot sisters in the tap room. But, um, but, but, but we were, we started, so we actually in that house, he’s got a pub, he’s got one of those tap towers. It’s like a mushroom looking thing in there. I mean, this is crazy. Maybe we need to go, maybe we need a good cast. And so a podcasts, so maybe you can call a little OCD, but that’s the one he was, he was, he was, he was financing the, yeah, no beer in our beer brewed. Eric started getting into it. Um, and so, uh, uh, and then the basement, you know, kegerator down. We’re piping it through the floor to this thing. I mean, this is one house, but they know, I mean, dad had some real buy in on this. You, you know,

Eric Chupp: He help set the vision.

Adam Marshall: I mean, you know, he was, we’ll do it, dad, just here’s what we need, uh, which, which is, which was great. And uh, and, and then like in the fall we were to work, we’d, we’d sit around, pull the Trinitron out on the backyard TV now TV back and like, you know that back when they were like phasing out Trinitron to XBR, well I don’t know whether it’d be a hundred million pounds, don’t mix it. A good TV, which is awesome.

Eric Chupp: My Buddy Dan, I don’t have a TV for in his living room with my buddy multiple times and every time like you can’t get rid of that harness. So stupid. The, any of those, one of those old school like yeah,

Adam Marshall: We pull that out. And then we threw on Saturdays watching football and we do 15 gallons, we got to this so we can pull hole, we could squeeze a barrel of beer out of this system. 31 gallons. Yes. So we really started brewing it. Really an Eric was just, and then, and then, you know, that was kind of the…

Eric Chupp: How old were you at this time, Eric?

Adam Marshall: 21, 22.

Eric Marshall: I was older than us. Probably 23, 24

Eric Chupp: End of college. That is awesome. That is such an interesting story.

Adam Marshall: Yeah, I’m sorry. So that’s [inaudible] we were, we were doing that and then, um, you know, that really was what was, uh, uh, so then, so there was the passion there and we’ve got, oh, that’d be great. And, and, and, and honestly, before that, we grew up vacationing. Sometimes summer, sometimes winter out in Colorado. And, and chuck, you and I were recently on a trip to crested Butte. That’s a great time. They got to blast other, some other dads and we, it was a, it was an auction item for our schools who will Carnegie Elementary PTA. And we bought, we went out there. We would go out there, Chris [inaudible], he should have, the crest would be marine company. It’s not there anymore. They’ve got another brewery there. But, but dad was always, he was, there was always a six pack around. It was usually bud heavy, something like that. Uh, but, uh, we go out to like to try these beers. And I remember I was even in high school one time, he was like, oh, we thought it’d be cool to have maybe a little do a little little brewery like this or something, you know? And, and it was almost like one of them did it and went down the road and we were obsessed with the Mckenzie brothers. So we, you know, want to, you know, all that kind of stuff. So there was this passion there. And so when I came back, young lawyer doing the career start looking at the laws, why has nobody done this? And then in 2000 there had been, so 1996 or 98, there had been a big vote, a big constitutional question. And if I’m going too far in the law…

Eric Chupp: No this is good. This is where we were going to go.

Adam Marshall: There was a big constitutional question that the wine makers, a few wine makers, there weren’t that many, but there was a guy who was, he used to be an eye…

Eric Chupp: The state constitution?

Adam Marshall: Yes, the state constitution, an ophthalmologist. And the ophthalmologist, a former eye surgeon here in town, kind of Bob McBratney. And he had a, what was the winery?

Eric Marshall: Stone Bluff

Adam Marshall: Stone Bluff Winery out in Haskell. Well before he did that, you know, he funded this grassroots campaign to put Oklahoma eat up the, to allow it to be done because what a lot of people don’t realize is in Oklahoma at at statehood, our Constitution had prohibition written into the constitution. Constitution, one of the few states in the nation, one of the few states that had it. And so like, um, I mean it really, and we in fact didn’t repeal prohibition in this state until 1959. Now we talked about before you call bullshit on me, wait a minute, wait a minute. Your brother just said there was a brewery in the 30s, uh, here in Tulsa. Low Point, weird history in the nation. FDR, low point beer was defined federally as non-intoxicating. And if you look at the 18th amendment, which are the ushered in pro,

Eric Chupp: Hey, you know, my high school experience would disagree with that.

Adam Marshall: And so did so did the Oklahoma Highway Commission and Highway Patrol, which, which in 1995 went to the state legislature and said, so that’s, you know, this stuff on the, on the laws. It’s, that’s called non-intoxicating beverage. Uh, it’s actually involved in

Eric Chupp: That ain’t no duals. That ain’t no duals right there.

Adam Marshall: Don’t want to change the low-point beer but but non intoxicating beer, low point beer. 3.2 alcohol by weight was a national thing. FDR ran on repealing prohibition. And so while the states had to go around and ratify when it finally the 21st amendment, which repealed prohibition, finally got across the line, the states had this right, this federal right, for this non intoxicating beverage, which was low-point beer. I mean it doesn’t make sense but that’s how sausage is made at the government level. So, so you know, there was that, but then we repealed prohibition, you know, finally in the state. But then finally in the winery, they had to amend the constitution again because we have this constitutional separate no manufacturer can also be a distributor can also sell its own stuff direct. And that passed out of the blue like overwhelmingly by a majority. And that was like, Ooh, maybe a little shift in the wind. Because before, I mean prohibition was still a very political, you do political lines,, moral political lines at alcohol still in this state, not, isn’t not really anymore, but you did then and then you can fast forward. And then in 2000, the, uh, the fellows are Krebs brewing company along with another guy named Rick Hubert, who had an old brewery called Hubert Brewing Company in Oklahoma City that made a good run at it early on, went and got the Oklahoma brewer’s license passed in like 2000, and that was done legislatively. And so that started open the door. So I was looking at can we do this? There had been two brew pubs in Tulsa at the time. There had been, when we came around, they’d come and gone, but there’d been Tulsa brewing company and Cherry Street brewing company. They were low-point brewers regulated by the Oklahoma Tax Commission, not able, they could be restaurants, but they were very limited to 3.2 by weight, which is 4.1 by volume 4.0–4.1 by volume. And so what we had was, we had this situation where you’d had these, these, these runs at it in the early, mid nineties and with these brew pubs or kind of going around and things, but there hadn’t been a production, why is nobody making strong beer? And everybody was afraid to, the guys down at Choc were doing it, Rick Hubert was doing it. So he’s off in Germany still did not get on the phone with these people. What’s going on? I just started talking to them and they’re the nicest folks in the world. I fact, really, Rick Huber talk your ear off. I give a shout out to him. I haven’t seen the guy and years and years and years, but the Prichard family, which now is on their fourth generation of ownership of Pete’s Place down in Krebs, one of the most, just ride outside, you know, I mean Krebs is, I’m not want to take anything as Krebs, but it’s the most bad ass borough of the metropolis, you know, the Italian. But they’ve got a great family history. Pete’s Place is amazing. They were doing it all there and Joe Prichard, who’s third generation in that family owning it, this was before the younger son who’s about Eric’s age, Zach, who now owns The Prairie and all that and does this, started doing it? Joe just was a great, great resource. And so it starts to, I call Eric Cop. I talked to him were email and this was, email was tough, there wasn’t even texting, you know, I mean it was 2005. I think we can do this.

Eric Chupp: You guys were on aol chat with each other.

Adam Marshall: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, uh, but I said, hey, I think we can do this. Um, I’m going to keep running some traps. And so I spent a lot of time after billing, you know, young lawyer hours, just really seeing what could do it. And, and we, we started popping a business plan back and forth on email while he was at Victory and all that kind of stuff.

Marshall Morris: This is approximately 2000?

Adam Marshall: Now 2000 is when the Oklahoma brewer license came in, which was a small brewer kind of license, you know, $125 license before then. I’m sure it was just a bruise is a burden if you’re going to set one up, which there wasn’t any at the time. It’s a $1,200 license, you know.

Eric Marshall: So this was 2005–2006.

Adam Marshall: Yeah this was 2005–2006 is when we start popping a business plan back and forth. I’m looking at the laws. He’s going to the school of hard knocks…

Eric Chupp: Did this instantly kind of fire you up?

Adam Marshall: Oh, for sure.

Eric Chupp: Were you bought in like, “Hell yes, this is great!”

Eric Marshall: I knew that if… I ultimately wanted to be back in Tulsa.

Adam Marshall: And I wanted my brother back! The Mckenzie brothers man! We could be the local Mckenzie brothers!

Eric Marshall: So I knew that it was one of those where if we, uh, they didn’t know if I wanted to do this in Oklahoma, that have to, we’d have to start something

Marshall Morris: So between 2000 and 2016 the most recent question that that’s been passed. Was there a lot of change in the legal landscape? Uh, was it, uh, has it always been developing and growing towards what it is now or has the most recent question being past been like the biggest change over the, that amount of time?

Adam Marshall: How much time we got?

Eric Marshall: Basically, really how it is, is the snowball effect was once we started, you know, we had built a little area to kind of do some sampling and when the ABLE agent came through to do the inspection he was basically like, this is great, but you can’t do it legally.

Adam Marshall: You legally can’t give samples away.

Eric Marshall: You legally can’t do it. But he basically was like, and I don’t think that’s right, but you’re going to have to get some, but we have to enforce, we have to enforce. And so, you know, he gave me the name of a couple of different state representatives that he said, hey, these are guys that I know would be interested to, to maybe look at doing some of this stuff. So that kind of started a three year process basically before we actually got sampling passed…

Adam Marshall: In 2013 finally. We opened in 2008.

Eric Marshall: And once we got sampling past, um, then I think that kind of that start

Adam Marshall: It was a crack in the dyke.

Eric Marshall: Yeah, it was a crack in the dyke and that I can then it started to get other people aware of, okay the people want to see a change. How are we going to get there? And so then there was just a big meeting of all the different players in the industry of how do we get from point A to point B and try to make everybody as happy as they can be. And so once we got involved in that, obviously it’s a very slippery slope because there’s multiple sides of it. But our thing always all along was, okay, if this happens, we need to be involved and we need to get in there and have our voice heard to protect small brewers and small brewer rights and access to market. And oh by the way, there’s some other things we would like to see happen. We would like to be able to have tap rooms. We would like to do that stuff. And so that really was kind of to basically just summarize it down to a very small explanation. Cause like Adam said, we can probably talk for three days on this stuff.

Eric Chupp: Well, you said it was years of your life, right?

Eric Marshall: And so honestly from that meeting to the time it changed happened really fast in the grand scheme of things. And, and then, you know, once the vote on it, people were like, why is it two years before all of this goes into effect? But fortunately there was another bill that went into effect to allow us to operate a tap room and sell our beer out of there but at a limited, I mean there were some limitations to it, but the two years really was, um, you know, a lot of infrastructure stuff.

Adam Marshall: I mean we wrote, not we, but the royal “we”:.

Eric Chupp: Preferbial “we”.

Adam Marshall: We wrote 60 years of alcohol laws in this state. I mean, overnight…

Eric Marshall: In two years basically.

Adam Marshall: In two years. And so, but this is one of these things where I’m, you know, we, I know you guys talk a lot about, you do, you haven’t mentioned podcasts about entrepreneurship and stuff like that. This is really just kind of, you got to get involved and you got to just, just talk and get out there. If you’re not at the table with laws and legislation, you’re going to be on the menu. Especially if you’re in a highly regulated industry.

Eric Chupp: Oh! Say that again!

Adam Marshall: If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. Yeah, or you could be, but here’s where the road takes you sometimes. So we got involved in our sampling stuff. First we started out with 2008. We’re going to put our head down and work because there is a lot of people want to do a new business. I’m going to go get the laws changed and getting the business…

Eric Chupp: We call them ‘want-trepreneurs.’

Adam Marshall: Yeah, want-trepreneurs. Yeah I’m gonna start a new business, but I’m going to go get the laws changed for… No, they don’t care. Especially, if it’s going to be something like alcohol, which still at that point was, you know, we’d had some vote…every vote that had come up, constitutional was passed. But it’s still, people were afraid down there to spend political capital honestly on this kind of stuff. And so what happened was we jumped in with the chamber and we’ve had a lot of ROI we feel like from the Tulsa Chamber because they’ve got a legislative ground game. Honestly, it’s second to none for local business. And we jumped in as a small business to try to get some relationships. We didn’t know anybody, we didn’t have anybody. And so we jumped in there. We got to know people that helped in our three year efforts to go get sampling past. Once sampling passed in 2013 people kind of saw, hey, you know, this might not be, you might not have to spend a whole lot of political capital because we’re seeing a change in the conservatives. It’s not… The moral ground, the moral political ground, wasn’t being drawn at alcohol anymore.

Eric Chupp: Hey, we like to drink too!

Adam Marshall: Yeah. Are there some neo-prohibitionists down there with my term down there in the state legislature? Sure, sure. But I would tell people, you know, Jesus is not the obstacle to changing the laws in this industry, you know, and so it really was, it was just kind of calculated political. Would this go with it? And it ended up being very popular with an up and coming voting block. You know, that, hey, we want to see this. There was feedback, but we just, so we would go at least once a year, even after we got our sampling law down with the chamber for One Voice Day at the Capitol, which is this big at one voice is as big regional legislative effort to try to get everybody on the same page and look for pro business, pro community, all this kind of stuff. We go down there and so one day we’re down there, things wrap up. And then, Mike Thornbrugh, Vice President of Government Affairs for QuikTrip Corporation, God bless him. He says, Hey, you know what? There’s actually a meeting, uh, this afternoon. You guys should come to. You know, this bill that Senator Stephanie Bice put in to allow liquor to sell cold beer. There’s a meeting in Senator Jollies office, she was at the time the junior state senator from Edmond. He was a senior state senator from Edmond. So, you know, they’ve already got that there. I mean he, she was kind of, my perception maybe under his wing a little bit. They were definitely allies. He was very powerful in charge of budget appropriations and at that time and we go okay. And then we run into guy, we’d seen a lobbyist we’d worked with in the past for the beer distributors of Oklahoma. He says the same thing while we’re just down there walking around. Come on, come on. Three o’clock. We go into this office into the, in the little conference room. Cause when you’re a committee chair he’d get a conference room. It’s still pretty small but you get conference room. So we walk in there. Who’s there? Okay. Michael Thornbrugh from QuikTrip, and we got the beer distributors there. We got the Oklahoma wholesalers, you know, we’re talking about the Jar-Bose, and the…

Marshall Morris: They were tracking you. They knew you were going to be walking around down there.

Adam Marshall: Walmart, Reasors, the Petroleum Marketers Association, which is the c-store lobby. We got the Grocers Association. We got the Retail Liquor Association.

Eric Marshall: We got somebody from Budweiser, from the corporate offices.

Adam Marshall: We got Budweiser corporate offices there. Miller Coors…

Eric Chupp: It’s like heavy hitters.

Adam Marshall: Miller Coors piped in on the phone. Miller Coors piped in on the phone.

Eric Chupp: Hey it’s like, “This is Miller here!”

Adam Marshall: Yeah, piped in on the phone and we’re these two….

Eric Marshall: DSC, which is the Distilled Spirits Council…

Adam Marshall: And were these two craft brewers just kind of sitting over in the corner and one of the lobbyists for Walmart who’s a big pollster here, one of the top pollsters here in the state had done some polling, it says on this grocery, wine and spirits and grocery stores passed, you know, this has been floated around the, and so senator Jollie goes with, with, with senator buys through, this was her bill. She was brand new, idealistic, but she was very practical. She’s like, listen, I’m Catholic. I want to buy a cold Guinness on the way home. She’s, I mean really been a great catalyst, great ally, great champion of developing some stuff that was pretty, some policy that was very outdated in this state. And so before it became modernization, it was just cold beer and wine. And liquor stores and grocery stores. So what happens is Jollie goes around, you know, if this is good, this polling stuff the people are coming, they want to see this so we can either all get together and try to do this now and, and do a slow burn on this and phase it in over a couple of years because we’re gonna rewrite six years of alcohol law. It’s going to take us a few sessions and we’ve got to amend the constitution. Or there’s a few of y’all in here, Walmart, QuikTrip, who could probably circulate petitions anytime and run train on everybody. So how are we going to do this? And what do y’all want? Everybody go around the room, what do you want? Because you’re not going to get everything, but what’s your one thing that’s great.

Eric Chupp: That’s crazy.

Adam Marshall: And that’s what February of… 2015 or 2014?

Eric Marshall: 2015.

Adam Marshall: 2015 and then the initial bill vehicles, because they can last two years in the legislative session. So it was session one, I don’t remember what number it was, but the initial vehicles got lobbed up, they got set aside to committee so they can last in the 2016. 2016 is when the grand bargain happened. And it was two pieces. It was the state question to amend the constitution and then the legislative counterpart that went with it. So that goes through and it was, I mean, industry groups meeting all summer. I mean, yeah, I mean, and there are some people in this industry that were so paranoid. I mean, in various industries out there eat their own young, you know, I mean, this was not an easy task. And so then the vote goes and then we got two years and now we’re here. I mean, it’s been,

Eric Chupp: So speaking of the laws, I got to ask you a question here, Adam. Correct me if I’m wrong, but did you tell me recently in the past that I could walk around and drink and Tulsa now is that new or has that always been a thing? And, and if this is some kind of joke that you’re trying to play on me, I don’t find it funny. I just want you to know that.

Adam Marshall: Chupp, I wouldn’t do that to you. You know that. Come on. No, you’re exactly right. But here’s the nuance well, hey man, I could buy three, two beer at may fest and walk around with that. Sure he could low-point beer, not beer. This was the weird thing. We had this dual system. Anything three, two by way, again, four point by volume governed by the Oklahoma tax commission. They’re busy people. They don’t have able agents that are law enforcement officers, they protect the revenue. That’s their job. So there’s a lot more freedom there. It was really more regulated like food rather than it was like alcohol. So on the ABLE side, 3.2 by weight above. So four point above 4.0 volume and above strong beer. Before October one you would violate what a lot of people refer to as open container laws by walking around with an open strong beer, a wine or a Jack and crack. A bottle of Jack and coke. A bottle of Jack Daniels. I mean, I still wouldn’t walk around the street with you still get a public intox… But now for the first time history of our state after October one the only thing you can’t walk around in public places drinking are spirits, mixed drinks, wine, strong beer. I mean, even if the beer is like Sam Adams Utopias 20% or what was that? What was that crazy shit that Brewdog made that was in a taxidermied squirrel bottle. I mean, it’s crazy. She was like 30% alcohol. Naturally fermented. Yeah. Craziest stuff. Uh, those guys had their own airline now too, I think. I don’t know. It’s crazy. But Brewdog guys are crazy. But anyway, so yeah, you’re exactly right. So

Eric Chupp: Well see, as you’re talking about all of these…

Adam Marshall: You get a public intox, you can still be bad Chupp. You can still be bad.

Eric Chupp: As you were talking about all these laws. I’m an only child, so I was thinking about myself, only. So that’s what I only care about, so I just want to know if I can walk around drinking a bottle of Sundown Wheat. And

Marshall Morris: Of course. Very selfishly.

Eric Chupp: I got what I wanted out of this whole…

Eric Marshall: Mad Dog 2020

Eric Chupp: Either way. Right? Yeah.

Adam Marshall: But we’re still, every state’s got screwy laws and we still ended up with a patchwork of weird stuff. So for example, the Sundown Wheat you’re enjoying in front of you. Enjoyed.

Eric Chupp: Enjoyed.

Adam Marshall: Enjoyed. Past tense.

Eric Chupp: That was gone a while back.

Adam Marshall: Yeah. If you walked outside our taproom door off our brewery premises. Um, illegal. You can’t do that. We get in trouble. But if I sell you a bottle of can you walk out a bottle of it unopened or a crowler, which I can do, unopened. You walk outside the door [opening a beer sound effect] you’re off.

Eric Chupp: Deal!

Adam Marshall: You’re done. You’re good!

Marshall Morris: You’re in the clear.

Eric Chupp: Alright, alright. Thank you for clarifying.

Eric Marshall: But you can’t come back in with that beer to use the bathroom.

Eric Chupp: So I have to chug it, throw it away, and then I come in. Buy another one.

Eric Marshall: But we don’t promote that.

Eric Chupp: Take it home responsibly. I’m just messing with you.

Adam Marshall: You had an issue with street festivals cause may fast, it’s like some issues we, what are we going to do? People need to be aware of walk around with a beer. Yeah. So, I mean we got patchwork or issues and you know, one of the blow back from this was like there’s no more buckets of beer at restaurants, I mean there’s still little things we’re trying to.. And so while we had two years to phase this in, you really don’t know what’s wrong with the system until you start using it.

Marshall Morris: Right. And so for anybody that’s unfamiliar with the state question, what are some of the highlights? We walking around with an open container. We covered that.

Adam Marshall: Well the state question actually. The state question is interesting. This is all the statutory side. So the state question needed to amend the constitution because the constitution was so rigid, it enforced our regulatory system, a three tier regulatory system. And it still does to an extent, but we took, but you had to go in the prior constitution Article 28 of Oklahoma Constitution. Now we, it has been replaced with Article 28A the whole Article 28, anytime you wanted to make really any kind of material change, you are amending the constitution. That’s why this aircraft carrier never turned off course. We got a lot of that out to where we do it by statute now.

Marshall Morris: You can make changes now.

Adam Marshall: Now there are certain things that are mandated in the constitution, but it’s easy, right? So then all this other stuff, you know, making sure that, okay, what, what, what, what, what’s the open container law, um, is, is done by statute.

Marshall Morris: So what, what are these statutes that are top ones that, that as somebody who just loves drinking beer or are going to see, see out at the breweries, at the stores, at the, at the different places that sell alcohol, where are we going to see that and what are we going to see? What are the changes? What are the differences?

Adam Marshall: You know, there, there are a ton. I mean we, but here’s the big ones. The big one that people were, were voting on. What they thought they were voting on is, let me go to Reasors and Costco and at Sam, wherever, and let me purchase a wine and beer

Marshall Morris: That I think the big overwhelming…

Adam Marshall: This is stupid. This is stupid. I go to Missouri, I go to neighboring states. They’ve been doing this for, you know, quarter century or more. Now it’s not Mad Max beyond Thunderdome. And there’s places, you know, it’s fine. Let me do it. It’s food, it’s food, you know, but to get there, I mean it really was, you had to re-structure distribution systems and how rights, I mean, we’re talking businesses…

Eric Chupp: Yeah, there was a beer-pocalyps. Right?

Adam Marshall: Family businesses that were around since 1959 with the initial repeal of prohibition or still there. And they, and change is hard. It’s hard.

Eric Chupp: It’s expensive, it’s new…

Adam Marshall: Yeah it Is. And so, but for the consumer, because this would not have happened without the consumer, it really wouldn’t, we couldn’t have, our industry could have made it happen alone. You know, one sampling lot of time, not going to happen.

Eric Chupp: The demand was…

Adam Marshall: But the demand was there. Things were changing. So beer and wine and grocery and liquor stores, grocery stores, convenience stores, other stores like that. Uh, you also now can the brewery laws and I talked about come to a brewery, enjoy a taproom…

Eric Chupp: That’s so good.

Adam Marshall: That you can, you can purchase beer for on premise, premise consumption and off premises consumption…

Eric Marshall: You could bring your kids with you.

Adam Marshall: You can bring your kids in the brewery. They can’t be in the alcohol ordering, serving area. But, you know the general tables where their stuff, because these are family friendly places.

Eric Chupp: The first time we came in…

Adam Marshall: They are in Germany!

Eric Chupp: The first time we came in was just a few weeks ago, I came in with you and Marshall here. My wife and daughter came in. I was like, look at this place. It’s a bar. You can hang out, have fun. And there’s, you know, the whole bar section..

Adam Marshall: And they got their Jenga on!

Eric Chupp: A wall of games. That’s right? Wall of games. They got the tables here. So it’s such a cool place that you guys have built here. I’m really excited for you guys.

Marshall Morris: I wanted to ask you guys, um, I got, uh, just a couple more questions for ya is as you’ve built all this and it’s really cool, this, this new tap room is, is awesome. Got to come check it out and you gotta you gotta check it out. Um, reflecting on the history of what you guys have built here, if you were talking to yourself when you were first getting started, what advice would you give yourself as part of this process? You’re mentoring a younger version of yourself and, and Adam, we’ll start with you. Start with you. I’m curious to know because

Eric Chupp: Time machine, Back to the Future, Doc, Marty.

Marshall Morris: Back to the future, what type of advice would you give yourself if you were, maybe not do it differently, but maybe mentally prepare yourself for what you’re doing?

Adam Marshall: You want to know the first thing that comes to my mind?

Marshall Morris: Yeah, yeah. I really want to.

Adam Marshall: I’d be so excited to have a time machine that I would be like, oh, man!

Eric Chupp: Marshall would never even start. He’s just off the rails.

Adam Marshall: I want to talk about was up there. Like, see, you know,

Eric Chupp: maybe we should have started with Eric on this question.

Adam Marshall: And here’s the thing, here’s the thing. But honestly, first thing comes to my mind after that one

Eric Chupp: Second thing.

Adam Marshall: is go back. Okay. I come back out of Marshall, uh, 2000, 2007, 2008 when we started, maybe, maybe 2006, 2007, uh, me out of Marshall goes back talk though about a Marshall. I’d be like, dude, what young Adam Marshall would be like first? Like do what happened to you, you second. Second thing would be like, I’d be like, listen, listen, young out of Marshall, um, coming October, 2018, uh, this 3.2 beer stuff going away and

Eric Chupp: it’s all going to be worth it.

Adam Marshall: And state’s going to be regulating medical marijuana. I would have been like, “No way! You are not from the future. Get out of here.” It’s like go away. Ain’t happening.

Eric Marshall: And there’s going to be 7,000 craft brewers. Yeah, bullshit.

Adam Marshall: No, no, but the, let’s, let’s make it more serious. What, what, what would, uh, what would, I’ve gone back and done and said, I probably would have gone back and, and been a little bit hesitant to talk to myself cause, while this was a big risk and a water, people see it as a business. I’m a very risk averse person and, and, and I probably would have been afraid that I’d scared the shit out of myself and what’s coming down the road, what’s coming down the road because this took over our lives. You know, it’s been very rewarding. We look around and we see an industry, my side, you know, Eric makes the magic happen. I mean this guy’s got the pedigree, he went to the old world, he brought it back to the new world. Um, you know, we’ve got this on our labels. You’ll find somewhere, you know, brewing in America, but influenced by the world. I mean that, that, that’s, that’s the story in a capsulation of, of my brother. Me, it was the legislative fight and jumping in and, and man, I did not know what I was getting into. And it there, but I can look around now on my side because, yeah. Even though I’m not going to take anything away from, uh, from, from our, our, the, the Senate and the house authors, there was drafting of that language and I’ve been involved heavily in an drafts of, of that language, developing the drafts of that language for the craft beer industry. And 18 months ago in this town, you couldn’t do a brewery tap room crawl and now you can, we founded an organization to help, cause we were the only ones doing lobbying for years on ourself. Found an organization a little over two years ago. Craft Brewers Association of Oklahoma…

Eric Chupp: Like, come on guys, come on!

Adam Marshall: nine breweries in the state, nine federally and state licensed breweries got together and founded this thing. We’ve got 25 now and, and, and, and, and we’re, we’re, we are a force to be reckoned with, you know, because what, what’s, what’s the, what’s the, what’s the phrase of the day? If you’re not at the table, you can be on the menu. Oh man, there’s alcohol low. Yeah. So I’ll kick it to my brother.

Eric Chupp: Yeah man, that’s good.

Eric Marshall: Yeah. I mean I think that a lot of it, you could sit here and say, yeah, I would’ve done this differently. I would have done that differently. But I think to me, I think it would’ve just been like, uh, you know, I’d say something like, stick stick with your idea that I’m growing too fast as the wrong way to go. And so I think that that, that’s something that I’ve strived to do from the beginning is, is more sort of organic growth, not trying to ride the wave of expansion like everybody else did six or seven years ago when the industry was growing 20% every year.

Eric Chupp: Right.

Eric Marshall: Because a lot of those people are in position now where they went out and borrowed too much money and chasing their dad, and there’s four, there’s 4,000 more berries who are…

Adam Marshall: Leverage is dangerous.

Eric Marshall: uh, is, is killing a lot of those people. And so I think that, you know, there was, there were certainly lost sleep times of like, man, am I doing this right? Are we doing? We’d go on the right way. And I’m not saying we’ve done it right, but I will save it. Um, I think we’re in a good position of, you know, depending on what the market does, we could scale up or scale down relatively easily. Uh, and a lot of people can’t say that. And so I think that that’s a… While there’s been probably missed opportunities, um, at what cost and, and so I think that that’s probably the biggest thing to me is like, hey, you’re going to make mistakes. There’s going to be some things that don’t work out the way you want it to, but as long as you kind of keep that mentality, there’s going to be other opportunities that pop up, there’s going to be good things that come from that. And so, um, I think that probably at the end of the day, the positivity that I can look back and say, okay, I still feel like that’s the right way that we’ve taught us. So.

Eric Chupp: Yeah. Very good.

Marshall Morris: So, um, as, as we’re wrapping up here, what is the next project that you guys are working on? You get into the tap room. Rockin okay, wait, is there something that like you would want everybody to check out? Everybody come here and check out the Snug or, or, or what, what is the

Eric Chupp: Obviously buy all the Marshall’s beer you can, leave some Sundown Wheat for me, but it’s everywhere you go now. So go ahead and pick all that up. But what else are you guys working on? What’s…

Adam Marshall: No more big ones? Really. You know, we, we made a statement this year and…

Eric Chupp: Slow down.

Adam Marshall: This is, you know, no, I mean we made a statement. It was, it was a, it was a year where we injected a lot more capital into this for, you know, for the tap rooms.

Eric Chupp: Yeah. Place is beautiful.

Adam Marshall: I mean when we got started of course couldn’t have a tap room. These, the, most of the breweries, like Eric said, that are in Tulsa, are less than 18 months old. They were there after this little tweak in the law for a couple of years at allowed production breweries to sell. To have tap rooms, they could plan a tap room. We, you know, we had this little lobby, there’s an afterthought that in a little corner had a, you know, how to, how to add a headed partition for a cubicle for his, his desk. Um, and so, uh, and so that goes both ways. That put our people that visit us in touch with our brewery, they could stand with the tapper order beer and look around and see Eric at the desk.

Eric Chupp: Hey, what’s up man!

Adam Marshall: You know, and, and I’ll be honest, when you’re selling an experience, an authentic experience that’s there. I mean, one of the things like, like, you know, you, you, there’s all, everybody’s got their, their, their, their good creative names and branding and all this stuff, but we put our name on this brewery and, and there are people out there that inspired us that don’t even know it. And some of them were like, guys like Doug O’Dell and hotels brewing in Fort Collins. I remember going and seeing Odells, uh, when he was our size. I mean, Doug was running around in overalls welding stuff, right. You know, you can say hi to Doug. You know, he, he, he was there that I, um, and I’ll drink O’Dell’s huge now there are two states at that time. I will, because of that authentic experience, every time I can go get good O’Dell beer, I’m going to get it. You know, so, so we, you know, we’ve, we’ve got that, you know, that, that, that, that side of it that I think is, is, is really valuable. But that was a big project. This was a big project. We also put a quarter million dollar canning line in weeks after we opened this place. It’s a lot. So now it’s just little projects,

Marshall Morris: Small projects. Let’s avoid any more big projects for a while.

Adam Marshall: How can we utilize this space now for our community, for this? So, you know, some of the ideas that were coming in or just really kind of more event ideas. I mean, we’re, we’re doing a little bit of more expansion out the back with a beer garden that we’ll have in the spring. But like also in the spring, Eric and I were both eagle scouts were involved in local scouting. You know, we want to do a a pint wood derby where it’s not for kids, but hey, you just got done raising your kids car a watch on and going over here and race it and we’ll have a lot of fun and yeah, and, and drink some beer and we’re going to raise some money for a good cause that we believe in. So it’s that kind of stuff that we, this allows an avenue for us to almost like rethink about our passion again for our community. I don’t, that’s the way I feel, Eric.

Eric Marshall: No, I agree.

Adam Marshall: Eric Marshall.

Eric Chupp: Yeah, what me?

Eric Marshall: You know, I think there’s a lot of stuff still ongoing. Obviously the tap room, the canning line has been a big deal. We’re still kind of working, working to learn all the ins and outs of that thing. But then I’m also the little pilot system that we put in here. I haven’t even gotten a fire up yet because we’ve had so much going on. So I’m excited about…

Adam Marshall: I want to brew again on that man!

Eric Marshall: About getting that going and, as Adam mentioned, the, the beer garden should be underway here pretty quick. We’re trying to get some trees planted before we miss the planting window. We’re about a week away from our offices upstairs being done, which is nice. So I don’t have to be in that cubicle..

Eric Chupp: Yeah very cool. There’s a fence being built right now. Like right now, there’s a fence being built out there.

Eric Marshall: Yeah right now, there’s a fence being built right now. Don’t have to work in that tiny cubicle anymore. So excited about that stuff and it’s just, we’ve got some other expansion. We’ve got some more tanks coming. Um, it’s just, you know, what the law change and more points of sale, there’s a lot more, a lot more volume going out the door, which, I mean, we’re smart enough. We’ve been around 10 years to know that, you know, it started out at this level here and October 1 we’re waiting to hear, but that’s not the, the normal it’s going to settle out in here, which is still higher than that. So we got to see, so you’ve got to, you know, kind of manage expectations there and again, not go out and over-leverage. And so there’s a lot of that stuff. Try and trying to be figured out at the moment and try and trying to be wise about that. And so there’s, there’s just a bunch of stuff that, because we’ve done this stuff and because the laws have changed, uh, that still have to be figured out, but there’s a lot of little things to be excited about too. Um, and, and of course the taproom and I’m still excited about this place. Still excited for people to come see…

Eric Chupp: Absolutely, you guys have built something cool over here. Marshall and I worked with a lot of small businesses and we see the path and the trajectory of a lot of small businesses. And you guys have done it right? Like what you said.

Eric Marshall: Thank you.

Eric Chupp: You go back and tell yourself, it’s the right thing to do. You know, it doesn’t sound like you guys ever really got super over leveraged. Um, and, and I’m, I’m super excited to see what the future holds for you guys. So any parting words, Marshall?

Marshall Morris: Everybody come and checkout the Snug.

Eric Chupp: Gotta check out this Snug. The taproom’s amazing.

Marshall Morris: Bring the kids. They can play with the wall games and then all…

Adam Marshall: We’ve got all sorts of games. We’ve got shuffleboard. That’s a big hit with the kids.

Eric Chupp: The Snug’s got a game system and a TV in it. Right? So yeah.

Adam Marshall: Yeah. I got a little game system on there.

Eric Marshall: And so obviously we want you guys to come here but check out all the local breweries.

Eric Chupp: Yeah.

Eric Marshall: That’s another thing I think I’m excited about. I think the growth of the breweries gives us as an or as a group, as a collective, an opportunity to do some cool stuff. Um, you know, I think we’re collectively to to make, make a positive impact on the community. We floated the idea with a couple of different breweries about, you know, trying to organize something, whether it’s monthly or quarterly, of kind of a day of service type of thing that each brewery hosts a, um, you know, hosts. You go out and do a little service project and maybe you pick something that you see it through and respond to something else, but whoever’s hosting that month and you go back to their taproom. And so I think, I think the more, you know, the more breweries there are that buy in and that realize, um, you know the opportunity we have to support the community and give back. I think there’s a lot of positivity…

Eric Chupp: That’s so funny that you say that because you think about, Adam, you were talking about the history of alcohol laws and it was illegal forever and now you guys are coming together and doing exactly what they…

Eric Marshall: Making a positive impact?

Eric Chupp: The opposite of what they thought alcohol was going to do.

Eric Marshall: You mean teen pregnancy has an increase with underage, you know…

Eric Chupp: Alcohol’s going to tear apart the communities and here are all these breweries saying let’s do service days, let’s build the community, lets.. You know what I’m saying. It’s so ironic.

Adam Marshall: Let’s bring manufacturing back to Main street. That’s what we’ve done.

Eric Chupp: Yeah, it’s awesome man!

Eric Marshall: No, I mean obviously this industry is quality over quantity, and you know, that’s an important part to us. And I think it’s hard for some people to understand that, that have, you know, preconceived notions of what alcohol does. And there’s back well it and to give credit to some of those folks, there’s people who have had some sort of experience in their past that has developed those, those ideas. But I think the, the more opportunity we have as a collective to bring positive light to make a positive impact in the community, all of that, I think that that better is that path all along. And there’s no doubt. I mean people, people go in excess and people abuse and

Eric Chupp: Yeah but that’s with anything, right?

Eric Marshall: And that’s with anything.

Adam Marshall: French fries.

Eric Chupp: Shut up over there.

Eric Marshall: So it’s, it’s, you know, it’s up to us to promote responsibility…

Adam Marshall: People abuse anything.

Eric Chupp: Yeah that’s right.

Eric Marshall: And to try to make a positive impact. And I think that that’s super important moving forward that, you know, as a collective we can, we can push towards a higher goal to be better partners in the community to make a positive impact. And I think that’s super important.

Eric Chupp: Well I’d like to say cheers to you guys. What would you say in Germany right now as we’re wrapping this up?

Adam Marshall: Prost.

Eric Marhshall: Pros would be cheers.

Eric Chupp: Alright, very good. So cheers to you guys. Wish the best for you guys. I’ll definitely be buying a lot of Sundown and…

Eric Marshall: I appreciate that.

Eric Chupp: Marshall, anything else you want to say?

Marshall Morris: We’ll say prost on three. Ready? One, two, three.

Everyone: Prost!

Eric Marshall: Awesome.