Founder of Heavy Seas Beer discusses the art of craft brewing
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Only a couple months down. I think I recognize it.
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Rob Lee
Welcome to the truth in this hour. I am your host, Rob Lee. And today, I have the privilege of being in conversation with the founder and owner of Heavy Seas Beer, which is celebrating 26 years of brewing craft beer in Baltimore and has taken a complete 1 to 80 from their typical beer brewing and recently announced their new line of canned, crafted cocktails.
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Rob Lee
Please welcome Hugh Sisson. Welcome to the podcast.
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Hugh Sisson
Absolutely. I feel welcome.
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Rob Lee
Thank you for coming on and congratulations. I want to start off with that. You know, if we're being honest, you had to say congratulations when you do nearly three decades. You know, you correctly, you had the 27. So nearly three decades. So congratulations.
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Hugh Sisson
Well, I'm actually been doing this for 33 years because I had my family and I started the first brew pub in the state of Maryland. So I started brewing there in 1989. Oh, wow. And then left that company in the end of 94 to start this venture. So we're closing up 27 years on the current venture. But I've been doing this for a long time.
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Rob Lee
Well, that's that's that's great to hear. And it's great to hear about longevity and all of that great stuff. So as we start off, I want to go really like, you know, high level and ask about what was the thinking in getting into like brewing craft brewing and so on. What was the thinking that brought you to the initial venture which led to, you know, heavy seas?
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Hugh Sisson
Well, I was in the bar restaurant business. My family owned a little bar and what at the time was an emerging area of Baltimore. And I was running it and I didn't know anything about business, but I knew that there were eight bars on our block and we needed to do something to be different. So I turned the family bar called Sessions into a beer joint back in like 81 and 82 when nobody was doing this.
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Hugh Sisson
That sort of led me to doing, you know, informal beer tastings out of, like, wine tastings in order to learn what I was talking about. I started doing some homebrewing, which I did badly, and then in about 84 or five, my father and I got this crazy idea, Gee, what would happen if we could actually make beer here in our bar?
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Hugh Sisson
I think there were two, maybe three operating brew pubs in the entire country at that time. It wasn't legal in most of the states, so we did a bunch of research to figure out if we could actually do it. We did kind of figure it out. In 1987, we introduced a bill in the Maryland legislature to legalize Brewpubs.
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Hugh Sisson
I fully expected it to fail. It passed so I had the requisite OS moment and had to get my fanning gear and in 1989 we became the first brew pub in the state of Maryland. And so that's how that happened. And then, as I alluded to earlier, you know, I stayed there for another five years or thereabouts and then finally left to strike out on my own, which is how heavy C slash clipper city brewing company came to be.
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Rob Lee
Thank you. Thank you for for walking us through through that history in an abbreviated way because as you said, you got the scars to prove it. So I'm sure I a lot more in there.
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Hugh Sisson
Well, you know, the whole thing is right or wrong or indifferent. And all ego aside, I really helped blazed the trail for for all of this craft beer stuff in the state of Maryland. And when you're when you're the first guy, you know, you don't know where this is going to go. I mean, I remember because I had to go back to the state legislature on numerous occasions lobbying for this change or that change.
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Hugh Sisson
And I remember walking into a legislative session one year and some gentleman looked up me and said, Oh, Mr. Sir, what do you want now?
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Rob Lee
Oh, that's that's great. It's like, you know, when it's like you say you touched on where when you're the first person and you're kind of making that move, you don't have much of a safety net anyway. Yeah, I got to figure this out.
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Hugh Sisson
I mean, there's no template to follow. You know, we had to figure all this stuff out. You know, there's 8000 new breweries in the last eight years in this country. And the conversations now run something along the lines of. Hello? Yes, I'd like to order a brewery, please. I guess next week we'll be fine. Thank you. Like, you know, we don't have any of that, right, Colonel?
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Hugh Sisson
You figure this stuff up from the ground.
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Rob Lee
Up, then things have changed. Things have changed. So. So in. In. In doing that. The research or what have you in reading over, you know, like a bit about, you know, heavy seas. So, you know, 27 years now and words like and I believe they're on the website, fearless, bold and independent, if you will. What would be the next three words in describing like your brand?
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Rob Lee
Your brand of cocktails now and your brand of beer? How would you what would be those next three words?
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Hugh Sisson
One would be terrified, but honestly, one would be wanting to be fearless, bold and and the better. But nobody said you can't be scared. All right. I mean, it says fearless, but. Yeah, come on. I think the other thing is, it's not just a single word, but courage of your convictions. I mean, you have to you have to be willing to reinvent yourself.
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Hugh Sisson
Yeah. So so, I mean, if you have we said fear less than that implies the courage. But it's, you know, it's it's you've got to be innovative and you've got to have the courage to be innovative. And then comes terrifying.
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Rob Lee
Yeah. And, and I think that goes into this vein of, you know, I think it takes Mike Yeah. It takes courage to create it takes courage to kind of do things differently. And when you're the first, you know, you had to be like, I got to figure this out. I got I got to do this. And, you know, this is the goal.
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Rob Lee
And sometimes it's going to be different bumps in the road and and different things that are kind of impediments. Yeah.
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Hugh Sisson
Yeah. I mean, I mean, it's, it's all right. So I've been an entrepreneur preneur now for basically my entire adult life. One of the lessons that I've learned about being entrepreneurial is there is no fixed path from you. You know, you start going down this way and then all of a sudden, you know, that's an interesting opportunity over there.
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Hugh Sisson
Maybe I should. And so it's it's a constant thing of sort of, you know, tweaking the sails, as it were. Anybody who's ever been a sailor knows that there's no such thing as a straight line, right? So I think you have to be willing to accept the fact that there's no such thing as a straight line. And that's not an easy thing for a lot of people, you know, to it to accept and inherent in the fact that there's no straight line means that you you are going to constantly be finding yourself in a position of risk.
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Rob Lee
I like to use the car sort of analogy or what have you like. You know, in some of the things that I'm doing and doing this podcast and doing it at the the rate in which I'm doing it, I'm like, I'm, I'm carving my own lane. And when I tell people how long I've been doing this, like 14 years really.
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Rob Lee
Like, yeah, you know, before this became a thing. Yeah.
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Hugh Sisson
Well, so, so you you understand where I'm coming from? I do. Yeah. I mean, you are absolutely. You know, you're you're cutting your own way. And it's I. I really wouldn't have it any other way. I mean, this is this is this is all I know. I think I'd be a terrible employee, but but but this this this is all I know.
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Hugh Sisson
So I'm stuck.
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Rob Lee
So. So for for folks that are in that sort of spot where they're they know that they're not going to be able to work for someone else. They have to kind of do their their own thing and carve their own path, make their own lane, you know, not sail and that sort of straight line. What do you believe contributed to the longevity and the success of of Clipper and now heavy seas?
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Hugh Sisson
Oh, well, I think I mean, part of it is is clearly tenacity. I mean, it's it's a truism, but failure was never an option. Sure. So no matter what happened, I, you know, I had to figure out how I was going to go. And there were a lot of bumps in the road. And there are still bumps in the road.
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Hugh Sisson
I mean, you know, the beer business is is is tough business right now. I mean, beer has been losing share of alcohol beverage dollars to to wine and spirits, particularly spirits for the last ten years or so. So yeah, so so the beer market isn't growing and when you've got 8000 new competitors, albeit on the small scale in that sense, I mean, how many, how many times can you cut that slice of pizza?
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Hugh Sisson
This is.
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Rob Lee
True. This is true, though.
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Hugh Sisson
So tenacity is a major thing. The other thing that I that I believe is is critically important is you have to understand the basic finances. I mean, you know, you see all these things where they're saying, you know, well, take care of your books. Well, you know what? That's great. But if you don't really understand what your financial statements are telling you, you're screwed.
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Hugh Sisson
I mean, you have to understand that. So and I think the third thing that is critically important, that you really, really, really need to understand your market and also understand that your market is going to be constantly evolving. There is no such thing as I'm done. Suddenly forget that I had a hard lesson to learn when I first started working at the bar restaurant because my undergraduate and graduate work work was in theater and as a as somebody who was directing plays, you know, you did all of your experimentation in rehearsal.
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Hugh Sisson
And then theory, once the curtain opened and your show opened, you're supposed to do it exactly the same. Yeah, well, so I, you know, when I first got in the business was, okay, how do I get it to where it's perfect and then just leave it alone. And then I rapidly figured out there's no such thing as leave it alone.
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Hugh Sisson
So and I think once I came, I became comfortable with that notion. It was all I wouldn't say was any easier, but at least it was. I live with.
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Rob Lee
You know, one of the things that one of the pieces of advice that I got in kind of transitioning because I have a business side of what I'm doing in this creative side of things. And I remember speaking to someone about building my website and they were like, Oh, your website's never done. You're always tweaking, you're always working on it.
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Rob Lee
And you know, as you said, like, you know, it's almost the same thing with I always joke about painters. You're never done painting. You just kind of start, you know, it's like, so I, I. So you touched on it a moment ago. Like how it's a smaller slice of the pizza, small slice of the, you know, smaller piece of the slice.
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Rob Lee
And I look at podcasting the same way. Where would set you aside? You know, what makes you unique and is really cloud crowded like overblown sort of industry? And I always looked at craft brewing as imaginative. So where do some of the ideas come from? Tell me about that.
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Hugh Sisson
Well, you know, it it's not easy. I mean, I've been doing this for for, as we said earlier, a long, long, long time. So when when we when all of us who were really there in the beginning were first getting started to differentiate yourself, differentiate yourself. All you had to be was not Budweiser.
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Rob Lee
Right.
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Hugh Sisson
Okay. Well, then days gone because I mean, you can't walk into a store now without seeing a mountain of different brands, etc.. So it's harder and harder to differentiate yourself. It has led to some the creation of a bunch of beers that probably should never have been created. Right. And part of the reason for that is, um, so, so IPA is the dominant style of beer in craft beer.
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Hugh Sisson
If you're a brand new brewers starting up, you're going to make an IPA. But how are you going to differentiate yourselves from if you're if you're in the in this mid-Atlantic market, you know, you've got me and dogfish and a number of other players who are already dominating the IPA category in this area. So we're going to be different.
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Hugh Sisson
And there's I mean, there's some really funky stuff going out there. Some of it's actually pretty interesting. You know, some of it probably shouldn't have been brewed, but it's all right. And having said that, you know, I'm not a beer snob. I'm this is all it's all completely subjective. There is no one best bottle of beer. It's what somebody likes that important.
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Hugh Sisson
So yeah. But yeah, differentiation is challenging. And when you when you create a brand, you have to create a personality that that that brand carries. And then you've got to be willing to let it evolve because people evolve. So it's sometimes it evolves in good ways and sometimes you go, Wait a minute. I think we turned left when we should have turned right.
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Hugh Sisson
Come on, double back. Let's get back where we belong. Come on, let's go.
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Rob Lee
It's like that. New and improved. Go back of the day.
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Hugh Sisson
Yeah, yeah. I mean, every marketing study they did told them that was the right thing to do.
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Rob Lee
You falsely.
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Hugh Sisson
Yeah. Talk about stepping on your spots nicely.
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Rob Lee
I'll say, like when I when I go to like pick up beer, pick up drinks the way I especially during this time of the year football season, I, I joke with my girlfriend, I'm like, Yo, look, we need beer. What are we doing? The game is in 2 minutes like we can. We just get some beer. And I take so long looking for beer because I'm looking for something in terms of the branding, something in terms of like if I'm going with my kind of standards, everyone has a certain beer that they go with.
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Rob Lee
But you know, if I'm going to be a little risque and I like to try new things, I'm looking at the branding I'm looking at does this seem interesting things of that nature like you touched on with some of these funkier things that are coming out? What what are some of the considerations within like the branding and how heavy is presented?
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Hugh Sisson
Well, I mean, we've had this pirate theme for four years. And so I think that, you know, it's important that we kind of stay true to that to that concept. We've refined it over the years. We've made it a little less, quote unquote guy, graphic, you know, comic. We've we've kind of stepped away from the comic book thing, but I don't think we've completely you can't completely lose sight of the fact that still a pirate and it still should be fine.
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Hugh Sisson
Yeah. So so I think that's really, you know, that's the way we're trying to continue to move the brand loose cannon as our best selling product. Loose Cannon is actually going to be 20 years old in 2023. Oh, wow. So we're going to be making some noise about that because it is considered one of the top, you know, 20 or 30 IPAs in the whole country.
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Hugh Sisson
And I think it deserves the accolades. But but, you know, Loose Cannon was also the perfect name for a for a beer because everybody kind of gets a twinkle in their eye. So so we're now inventing this new line called impending doom, which is even bigger than loose cannon. And I think we're going to kind of really wrap our arms around that going into 2023.
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Hugh Sisson
And there'll be a whole variety of styles there that are all about that. And that's also about, you know, not only innovation but embracing, you know, what the whole branding thing is all about? When we've tried to do lower ABV products, we have not been very successful. And I think a lot of the reason for that is because it doesn't fit with whatever else we've done right.
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Hugh Sisson
So if we want to continue to do some of those products and there's probably merit in doing that, we probably need to figure out another branding strategy just for those products.
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Rob Lee
That make sense.
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Hugh Sisson
Yeah, well, it makes sense logically, but, you know, making it happen from an executional standpoint is always a challenge. We do the same thing with these new cocktails. We've gotten the cans, this is where we named them. So it's part of the heavy seas, heavy seas, craft cocktails. But the the packaging is very different. And it's probably it's some of the same customers that we've already got.
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Hugh Sisson
But we do it specifically under the heavy seas brand because all of the retailers who are our, God bless them, willing to carry our products, we hope that they will then be willing to carry these as well based on the success of their other products.
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Rob Lee
So and I want to come back to that a little bit towards towards the end, but I want to ask this one question about in with in terms of like history, fondest memories, things of that nature. So like speak about, you know, a few things that really stick out during this, this last 27 or even further back in the 34 years of you in this this industry that really has stuck out for you, and that that was a fond memory, I would imagine the legislation that is a piece of it of like, yeah, we got it.
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Hugh Sisson
Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, getting the legislation passed is has been fun. You know, we also formed a Brewers Association of Maryland, which I was a co-founder of, and was very active on the board up until about three years ago when I finally said I'd step down, guys, you know, come on, let's go. And a lot of people stepped up, which was great, you know, I think the one of the fondest memories I have, because when we first opened Clipper City Slash Services, it was a tough go.
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Hugh Sisson
I mean, it was really hard in 90, 96, 97 and 98. And I remember distinctly one day I came into work and my at the time brewmaster production manager came to me and said, Hugh, we have this. It's a piece of equipment. He says, It's about to fail. We're going to have to replace it. And I knew it was we were looking at if we could even source it.
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Hugh Sisson
We were looking at a 25 to $35000 hit. And I looked down and I looked at the finances. And then I realized that wasn't going to kill me. And that was a great day. I lost six months earlier. That might have been a Oh, God. Now, as it turned out, we were able to solve the problem a lot less expensively, but just all of a sudden looking up one day and say, I'm going to live to fight another day.
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Hugh Sisson
If you're an entrepreneur, that's a good damn day. Yes. You know, another good day was, you know, when we first brought out Loose Cannon is and we had these really killer pirate tat markers that were we're using and we're out trying to sell in draft accounts. And we were just getting yes's all over the board. And it was one of those things, where is it?
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Hugh Sisson
Okay, this is at this stage, it's eight years worth of really hard work. And we finally got something that everybody seems to want to get involved with. So those are those are rewarding things. And when you're built something from scratch, I mean, you got a whole lot of kicks in the ass that you take along the way. So when you get your wins, you've got to enjoy them.
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Rob Lee
Yeah, that's, that's, that's great. Yeah. I had this, had this one small one the other day. You touched on being an entrepreneur and just some of those wins you got to take home, like, you know, I'm doing both. I'm doing this. And I'm also I had the day job and I remember I had a few windfalls come from some work ideas and contractual work I did.
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Rob Lee
And the next day happened to be payday from and I was like, Oh, I get paid tomorrow. I wasn't expecting that extra money. This is great.
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Hugh Sisson
Gotta love it. You're gonna love it, you know? I mean, like, there's, there's so much stuff this it's just not easy. And, you know, we, we all see the stories in the media about the folks who, you know, in in in two years, they went from, you know, $1,000 in revenue to $25 million in revenue. Yeah, but those are few and far between.
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Rob Lee
Yeah. That's the exception.
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Hugh Sisson
To its way. The exception. So most people who are doing their own gig are working, their little twitches are. And that's why I think it's important that, you know, small business people are looking out for how they can help support other small business people 100%.
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Rob Lee
So I got this last, last real question. I still got some rapid fire questions for you. But this last real question, I want to tie it back into the crafted can cocktail. So like, how did that come up? How was it pitched in? Let's talk about the flavors. Like how did the team come up with the flavors?
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Hugh Sisson
Well, it came up because as I mentioned earlier, you know, beer has been losing your share to particularly spirits for like the last ten years. Sure. So, you know, just Stan, as a standalone brewery, brewery, brewery, it's getting harder and harder. So, you know, at some point you got to diversify what you're doing because the market is shifting.
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Hugh Sisson
Yeah. So we, we looked at the seltzers and the problem with that was to actually execute that correctly was going to require a pretty significant capital investment on our part. And by the time that looked like that was something we might be interested in doing, that market was just really crowded and understand that. I want to say 75, 80% of the seltzer business is two companies.
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Hugh Sisson
One is truly and the other one is like the other. Yeah, which is Mike's Hard Lemonade and Sam Adams, you know, they're the dominant players. So when the RTD is ready to drink cocktails on the can, things started to emerge. That was something we could do with a significantly smaller capital investment, so that meant that it was feasible.
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Hugh Sisson
Secondly, by my brewmaster and our quality team leader are two really talented guys. Yeah. So I felt that, that I would could with great confidence, get them involved in this project and then let them run with the ball. Now we knew we wanted to make an orange crush because that's the ubiquitous cocktail from this particular area.
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Rob Lee
Yes.
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Hugh Sisson
Other than that, you know, I left them pretty much figure it all out from there. I mean, we got market input. We all went out and bought a bunch of stuff on the shelves and tasted certain things and decided kind of maybe we want to go in this direction. Some of it was predicated on what do we think we can execute in a high level because, you know, I mean, I don't want to make things not good right now.
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Hugh Sisson
Granted, good is subjective. But so, you know, one of the things that's important to do if you're going to be successful as an entrepreneur is and this is not an easy lesson for many of us, you've got to surround yourself with good people and then let them do what they do. And I'm not always the easiest person to do that, but in this particular instance, yeah, I let these guys do what they were supposed to do and they did a great job.
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Hugh Sisson
I mean, the flavors are Watermelon Crush, Orange Crush, Cherry Limeade and Strawberry Lemonade. And and we may we may add some more stuff in the future. Although this is so early on in our thing, we haven't really gotten gotten the market penetration yet that way, and we've probably won't until spring time with those four flavors. I don't think we need to be in a hurry to add anything new just yet, but we'll have to probably by the end of next year.
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Rob Lee
That's that's a strong group of four, though. And like each one, like I can't think of one that I wouldn't want to drink if I'm being honest.
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Hugh Sisson
Well, it's really interesting. I did I did a sampling at a at a big beer festival thing down in eastern Maryland a couple of weeks back. And and I was pouring my beer, but I was also pouring in these things. And, I mean, people were coming up. They wanted to try these things. So it was pretty gratifying. I mean, I was and and and interestingly enough, they wanted to taste them all.
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Hugh Sisson
So that's fine.
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Rob Lee
That's that's wonderful.
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Hugh Sisson
Yeah. Well, it's very gratifying when you sit there and, you know, you're oh.
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Rob Lee
You, you get it directly. Oh, great. Come on over.
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Hugh Sisson
That's right. That's right.
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Rob Lee
So I got I got a couple rapid fire questions for you. Sure. They're fun questions. They're ridiculous questions of attitudes as we've been talking, because I was like, these are going to be okay. So the first one, I have a place that you would most want to travel to.
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Hugh Sisson
Right now, probably New Zealand. I just got back from France like like a week or so ago, so. Oh, nice. Yeah.
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Rob Lee
Do you have a lucky number? If so, what is it?
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Hugh Sisson
I, I, I really don't care.
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Rob Lee
That's fair. That's fair. I've had some people say, yeah, number three, every time I see a three, I'm taking a picture of it or you know, I, me it's probably like 20 for some reason a born in a 20.
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Hugh Sisson
Three years ago I chose number seven, but I haven't really paid attention to that for so long, so I don't know that it's still valid.
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Rob Lee
Okay, this is a very ridiculous one. But because of the nature of the branding and all you touched on earlier, name a pirate.
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Hugh Sisson
Oh, well, Edward, teach for one. That's Blackbeard.
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Rob Lee
Cheers.
00;26;37;16 - 00;26;53;21
Hugh Sisson
So here's a quick one for you. Completely tangential. So everybody needs a 32nd pirate ship. So the pirate walks into the bar. When he walks into the bar, the bartender looks down and notices he has a steering wheel sticking out of his posterior. He goes, Oh, that's going to hurt ya. It's driving me nuts.
00;26;55;05 - 00;27;21;28
Rob Lee
That's, that's great. I like it. I like it as a go. That's good. So this is the last one I have where you I got. I got to maintain composure. Oh, I always, always like to get an idea of, like, what people because I'm a foodie, right? Where people eat. What is your favorite food pairing with loose cannon like, you know, most popular beer, you know, most, you know, oldest beer and all that good stuff.
00;27;22;10 - 00;27;33;23
Hugh Sisson
Right? My favorite food. Well, I'm I'm really big on cooking ribs, slow cooked on my big green egg. So I'd say a rack of ribs and a bottle of loose cannon is pretty perfect.
00;27;33;23 - 00;27;36;09
Rob Lee
That sounds great. You know, you given out suggestions that I like it.
00;27;37;06 - 00;27;37;16
Hugh Sisson
Okay.
00;27;37;28 - 00;27;52;13
Rob Lee
So with that, I want to thank you for coming on to this podcast. That's pretty much it. And I want to invite and encourage you to tell listeners where they can check out Heavy CS, all of that good stuff, website, location, all of that good stuff and where they can find it.
00;27;52;29 - 00;28;23;24
Hugh Sisson
Yeah, well the website is w w w h s beer or heavy x beer icon. We do have a taproom at the facility which is in Hale Thorpe, Maryland, just outside of Baltimore City. On the southwest corner. There's a beer finder on the website which will tell you where you can find our products at retail. We've got pretty good distribution all throughout the state of Maryland, DC, pretty decent in Virginia and Delaware.
00;28;23;24 - 00;28;44;08
Hugh Sisson
So I mean, we really consider ourselves more of a mid-Atlantic brand than anything else. But we should be. We should be pretty easy to find. And if not, just go to the Web site and even more we're getting ready to renovate our taproom, so come by our taproom in about four and a half months and come and have a good fresh beer right there.
00;28;44;21 - 00;28;55;27
Rob Lee
That sounds great. So I want to again, thank you and I'll do my wrap up here. So for you, season of heavy seas beer. I'm Rob Lee saying that there's beer history.
00;28;55;27 - 00;28;58;00
Hugh Sisson
And even a bit of those canned.
00;28;58;00 - 00;29;07;21
Rob Lee
Traffic cocktails you just got to look for.
