For six months, the intellectual property of Metropolitan Brewing has been in a sort of limbo. The brewery itself closed in December as a result of their bankruptcy, and following that their IP was put up for auction in January and quickly purchased … but by who?
Earlier this week, we found out: Schiller Park’s Short Fuse Brewing.
In business since 2017, Short Fuse has won GABF awards for their Tropical Hurt Locker and Vocal Jam beers, which helped them earn a Brewery of the Year award (2001-5000 Barrels) in 2021. Nick Teague is the owner and founder of the brewery, who got into craft beer while working in California. He learned to love beers from Firestone Walker, the Bruery and others, which led Teague to decide to get into the business back home in Chicagoland.
After launching the brewery in an old industrial building near O’Hare Airport, Teague brought on former Goose Island and Ten Ninety brewer Brian LaGro (who just departed recently) along with Craig Kofod, their current head brewer. Today Kofod works with another Goose alum, Rob Anderson, to produce beers like their Bearie White wheat ale, Juice Cannon double IPAs, For Goodness Shakes milkshake IPAs and Hop Cycle IPAs.
With a lineup like that, you might be surprised (and judging by the response we’ve seen, many have been) to learn that they acquired the rights to brew a catalog of lagers from a beloved longtime brewery.
So … how the heck did that happen? Earlier this week I mentioned that I’d never been able to contact anyone at Short Fuse, but shortly after that email went out Nick reached out to me directly. He was interested in having a conversation about their last half-year as owners of the rights, how and why they had acquired them, and why now was the time to let the world know that Metro’s beers had a new home.
Here is our discussion:
GDB: So let’s start from the beginning on the Metropolitan IP acquisition. How does that happen; what made you pursue the IP? Talk to me about the whole process.
Nick Teague: We all know what the craft beer market has been since COVID. I think one of the worst businesses you could probably own during the pandemic was a brewery or restaurant. [During] COVID we pivoted to [all beer packaged in cans] and tried to stay afloat doing home delivery or whatever crazy things we were doing just to get a couple of dollars in. Then we come out of the pandemic and sales are soft, and now, a little bit of retreating - I think all breweries our size felt that pinch. This is four, five years in and I'm still pivoting, you know, and not making a lot of money doing it. So, we're just thinking of what we can do - Obviously we kept doing our thing with Short Fuse, but [also] looking at other options of contract brewing or what it is that we can do to make our business more viable.
We all followed [the Metropolitan situation] on the news. They were closing and we’re always keeping an eye on those auctions, so I saw the IP was for sale, which I was kind of surprised by. And then we started talking about it: is this something that kind of works for us? You know, I understand people think that we make IPAs and fruited sours and kind of outlandish beers and stuff, but … our brewers are brewers. Making a lager and making a fruited sour, I mean, it's a similar process. And if you’re a good brewer, you can make a lager, you can brew a fruited sour, you can brew a hazy IPA. So I was never concerned about our brewers being able to execute lagers, [even though] it was really the opposite of what we did.
Maybe to some people it seems crazy, but as a business, that's perfect, because you're not going to go into a bar and say ‘do you want a hazy IPA or fruited sour,’ and they say ‘no,’ you're not like, ‘Do you want another hazy IPA and fruited sour from another brewery?’ So, you have a lager, you have a pilsner, you have a kolsch, all the things that we don't really have out there, you know, and that just seemed like a really good fit.
And we knew that people weren't going to be overly enthusiastic about us or probably anybody else taking it over. But maybe just being in business for a long time for myself, I understood that it's gonna happen regardless to somebody. Afterwards I found out that Doug and Tracy weren't really looking to reopen. Usually when somebody goes bankrupt, they're fairly done with what it was that they were doing.
GDB: And that was one of my first questions about this when you posted the announcement - did you have a personal relationship or connection with anyone at Metro before this; did you reach out to Doug and Tracy at any point, or is all this just grapevine info getting around?
I had been to their taproom and I just met [Doug] in passing. I never had any relationship with them. The way that bankruptcy auctions work is that they happen really quickly. They go up [online] and usually the auction is in a few weeks. I don't even think the IP was added for a long time; it came on maybe a week before. So there's isn’t a lot of time to think about it, and it's a blind auction. So - just like on eBay - you're throwing up a price and you don't know if you're ever gonna get it or what's gonna happen. I don't know if some giant company is going to come in and offer a million dollars for it or something. You really don't know if you'll ever even get it.
I guess in hindsight, could you have reached out to them and asked them? But they might have been like, you might not get it so we don't really care what you have to say. In my estimate there had been five [to] ten people bidding on it, because it was moving pretty quickly in the beginning. So I think a lot of people had the same idea that we had, which was that it's a great brand that makes great beer, they've been around since 2009 and I could see why a lot of people were interested, like us.
GDB: I think you also had to be aware that whoever decided to take this on was going to be met with … let’s say, at the very least, a fair amount of skepticism. How do you react to that, and to a local beer market that still connects the brand to the people who were behind it for so long?
NT: In any front-facing business like a brewery and a restaurant, you’re met with criticism. We have a kitchen in our tap room and if you have 100 guests come in and have great food, maybe the 99th person won't. So [there’s] always criticism in this business. Online criticism is a whole other thing. We didn't think that we were going to [announce] this and everybody was gonna cheer from the mountaintops. We do make different styles [than Metropolitan did] and maybe some people aren't big fans of ours, which is always going to be the case for every brewery.
So, we won the auction back in January, and like I said, it happened pretty quickly. And [we’re] like, “Okay, I guess we won this ... Do we want to own this? Can we get out of it?” It’s such a rapid process that, even for a seasoned business owner, it's kind of like, wow, this is happening really quickly. Was this a bad decision? Should we do this? What do we do next? I didn't even know. The first thing we did was - I didn't have Doug's number so I'd reached out to some friends and got his number and texted him.
I just told him we'd won it and I’d like to talk to him about it. A couple days later, we talked and then right away I just told him, “Look, I don't know if you are bidding on this, I have no idea of knowing that and I know we don't know each other, but I'm not trying to steal it from you, or anything like that. So if you have interest in it, tell me and we can figure out how to flip it over to you. We haven't taken ownership yet.”
Somebody online said that we tried to profit off of it and that wasn't the case. Doug knew how much it was sold for, because it was his bankruptcy. We never really discussed money or anything like that. He'd said that he did try to buy it, or a family member maybe tried to buy it, but they didn't really want to get too deep into it and he dropped out pretty quickly as the price rose. I told him I don't want any bad feelings, and I’m a brewery owner myself, so I don't want to, like, steal something from him, if that's how he feels.
So [I said] you know, if he wants to think about it, take some time or work out a plan on how it can be his, I'm happy to do that. And he thought about it for a little while and then said he had real no use for it, [other than] maybe sentimental value. And I don't think it was worth the price of what it was to him. That's just my guess, he didn't tell me that. So ultimately, he said that he wasn't interested in it for whatever reason that was … so that kind of settled that. And then we moved forward with purchasing it and taking ownership of it from there because legally we had to at some point.
GDB: You alluded to some of the plans in the announcement but do you have any initial projections for production? Are there test batches underway? And when can people expect to see Metro beers back on store shelves? What’s the timeline look like?
NT: We took most of January to figure out all that, and then talk to Doug about potentially coming on and being a part of it. Ultimately he decided that it wasn't for him and he wanted to move on to other things. Tracy had already made plans to do other things and had no interest in really even discussing being part of it, so she'd already moved on. Doug vacillated for a little bit but ultimately decided it wasn't for him, which, I respect that. So then we talked with him, our head brewer talked with them and met with them and went over how they made the beers. They've given us the recipes [but] you know, with beer, if you give somebody a recipe, it's how you make it - but putting it onto a different system, you’ve got to spend some time tweaking and finding different efficiencies, right?
So we started right away making trial batches. Their kolsch seemed to be their number one seller so we started making that, or trying to make the pilsner. We put them out just under our name in our taproom; just little batches just to get feedback from customers. We found some cans in market that were a little bit older but at least we had something to compare them to and went through some trials for a while. It was just Krankshaft and Flywheel that we really worked on.
But the second part was that their distributor owns the distribution. How Illinois law works is that, maybe we own the brand rights, but we have no right to distribute that beer under state law. Tracy had told me that CBS [Chicago Beverage Systems] had canceled their distribution agreement, but when I reached out to them, they told me that wasn't the case. They still owned the rights and they planned to continue to own the rights. They told us they want to continue distributing it, so we went along with that plan. But eventually, a few weeks ago, they'd actually released it [the rights]. So now we're able to self-distribute it or work with a new distributor, whatever it may be.
So that's why we announced that now, is because we kind of were at the point where we could potentially distribute it. We had a couple of small batches in our tanks and that's why we're just going to do a small release party here. And then, you know, the following weeks maybe [we] get a little bit out to some good supporters of Metro in the past and just let people try it and judge it for themselves, how we’re doing. Get feedback on it, good or bad.
And then we'll be able to ramp up production and get out to some accounts, but it would be a slow process because we're not working with the previous distributor. We don't know where it used to be sold at; there's no chain placements or anything like that. So it'll probably take us into next year to really get any type of wide distribution. We'll have it available in our tap room for people to try and some limited cans.
GDB: So you’ve acquired all the recipes. Are you going to use the same names, the same labels, the same packaging? Have you figured that part out yet?
NT: Yeah, legally, we have to change things [like] addresses … but our plan was to not change anything. Honestly. We thought that Metro was just a great brand on its own. Their beer was great. Their branding was great. We didn't see anything that needed to be changed. The only thing we had to do is make their beer; try to make it as good as they made it. That was really the only thing we were concerned with. I think their kolsch is one of the best out there. The pilsner is excellent. Their helles is one of my favorite helles, import or domestic, that I’ve had. I didn't really have any plans to change anything. Because I think it's a credit to Doug and Tracy and what they've done.
GDB: Production-wise, did you have to make any changes to the brew house or anything like internally to adjust to making these beers? Or have you kicked the tires on working with someone like Great Central to contract it, because they're pretty lager focused? I mean, I have to imagine you considered a few of those things.
NT: Our brewers felt confident that with enough time they'd be able to dial it in. We did find some different efficiencies in our brewhouse. The first couple [batches] had come out a higher gravity than the recipe yet called for so we had to pull back on some of the grain; the kolsch was coming out too bitter in the beginning so we had to lighten up some of the bittering hops. Their yeast strain, we’d never used before, so a couple of them fermented a little quicker than we thought. They did a different filter. We never filter, actually, so it was kind of a new process for us.
The first couple didn't go great. We dumped beer, obviously. At the beginning we had issues where our chiller crashed one weekend, so we had to dump some of those batches that were in there. You know, the typical trials and tribulations that you have making new beer. But we really had no time schedule, so it didn't really stress us out or anything like that.
The only goal was to make the beer as good as it possibly could be. And we all knew that we were going to be judged pretty highly, whatever we ran, so we'd waited as long as possible to make sure that we, in our opinion, got it as close to what we thought it should be, and not rush it and not push it out just to push it out. And if it wasn't exactly the way we want it, then wait another month and try again. So that was our plan, but there was only two beers we thought we needed to get going, and [Metro made] a number of other great beers [which] will obviously take time to perfect as well on our system.
GDB: From everything I’ve heard you say, it sounds like you recognize that Metropolitan has a pretty big legacy in terms of Chicago brewing and you’ve taken all of that into account here.
NT: Yeah, I mean, we're a brewery as well, so we understand all that. And, I guess, people judge it however they choose, but we do understand the magnitude of what they've done, and how big of a part of Chicago beer and Illinois beer that they've played. They'd always stayed really focused on Chicago. Their tap room was amazing. It’s sad that we can't reopen that but you know, that was probably one of the nicest taprooms in the best locations you could probably get.
So we do understand all that and I guess we thought that that was a good reason for it to continue. Like you said, maybe there's people out there who would choose, ‘it should be this brewery’ or ‘it should be that brewery.’ But I think a brewery with that kind of lager focus probably wouldn't have a need for a Metro brand, you know? I'm not sure, but I suppose somebody was going to continue it on, just because of what they've meant.
And we understand the weight that that puts on us. And it does stress us. It does make us concerned about screwing up something that was around for so long and meant so much to people. And that's why we waited so long to bring it out there and be sure that it was something that we could do before we kind of just jumped into it. And that’s why we didn't come right out and say [we bought the rights] because we wanted to make sure we can make the beer and do it justice as much as we think we can. We'll never be Doug and Tracy. We don't have a taproom on the river and we haven’t been doing this since 2009. But we do understand what they meant to people, so we're gonna try our best to uphold what they had done and what they meant to people as best we can.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.