Recently, one of my fellow beer lovers asked about the phenomenon of bourbon corporations stocking up on whiskey from other manufacturers and it occurred to me that brewing has a similar configuration, called contract processing, that is going unnoticed.
For example, I guess the maximum number of readers have no idea that there is a brewery in the state that not only makes its own beer, which is smart enough and reputable enough, but also brews beer for other craft brewers, adding some of those who have heard of it, adding MobCraft. Eagle Park.
But Octopi Brewing in Waunakee, north of Madison, does more than that: it also brews for 3 supermarket chains (I discovered 3 beers made in Waunakee on the Aldi shelves) and for many other consumers that are named because of confidentiality agreements.
But Octopi, named after the adaptive ocean dweller, does even more than CELA.
“We make wine, cider, soft drinks, sodas, make CBD products, make beer, make sugar sodas, make adaptogens, make teas, make coffee, honestly, whatever you can put in a can, I will, “Says founder and owner Isaac Showaki as we go down to his office.
Moments after I told Showaki that a 2018 source I consulted said that Octopi produced 20,000 barrels of beer a year.
I have the impression, even before I see the brewery, that the number is possibly outdated.
“Oh, my God, yes, ” he said. We’re on the run. In December, we are around 200,000 barrels. With the new expansion, the target for 2021 will be 250,000 barrels. “
Showaki says two new additions are expected to be made, one of 3 acres, in the next 12 months and until 2022, he plans to produce 350,000 barrels in a facility with a capacity of 500,000 barrels consistent with the year.
This places it among the largest breweries in the state, behind Miller, City Brewing, Leinenkugel, Minhas and New Glarus, and is approaching some of them.
First of all, when you tell me that Octopi is about to close the 14-acre acquisition directly across the road in your suburban park, I’m not surprised at all.
Octopi, I add, is just over five years old.
Born in Mexico, Showaki became interested in the brewing industry while working as a control representative on an assignment with Heineken at his Panamanian brewery.
“I wasn’t making beer, ” he said. I was on the commercial side, but we had to be informed of everything because weArray . . . they had to know what to do in the next five to 10 years with the brewery. It was an attractive, amazing project. We were almost as if we lived in the global Heineken . . . 90 to 100 hours a week. And I was thinking, “Wow, that’s unbelievable. I love everything in the world of beer. “
When he moved to New York, Showaki’s pastime with beer evolved as he explored the world of crafting around 2008-2009, which led him to prefer to open a brewery.
“So I went back to Mexico and worked on a business plan,” Showaki recalls. “I said that at that moment being someone else meant something. So I opened the first Latin microbrewery in the United States, in Chicago.
It was his stay at Five Rabbit Brewery that came face-to-face with the world of contract brewing, and he didn’t like what he had found.
“I didn’t know anything about beer, ” said Showaki. ” We thought we’d hire the way forward. We leave it to the experts, to the other people who know him. Before we decided to open, we met many breweries, anyway old suspects In short, the elaboration of contract contracts is a nightmare, we may never get quality, quantity, packaging.
“I looked to make a golden beer, that’s fine. And they say, ‘Yes, but we only have pale yeast and lager yeast. ‘Yes, but I need to use a golden yeast. It’s like we have pale yeast. They were craft brewers, but they were too lazy. They didn’t care about outsourcing, because the industry was developing so much. They’d say, “You know what? I’m going to brew beer on contract just as a favor to you. I care about my logo. ‘”
Although this eventually led to the end of Five Rabbit, when that door closed, Showaki was smart enough to open another.
“Usually in my experience, when you see something like that, it’s like “boy, I want something better,” that’s when there’s a decent opportunity,” he says.
Where he saw frustration and failure, Showaki to create opportunities.
After the complicated road to convince banks to finance a craft brewery under contract: “Craft beer?What is contracting?” – began to detect the place. When a Madison site broke, he landed at Waunakee, which he was eager to create the brewery.
“I’m very lucky I didn’t do it in Madison,” Showaki says, “because Waunakee is amazing. Waunakee likes, ‘Tell us what we can do to get there. ‘I never knew where Waunakee, Wisconsin was on a map. So we moved, we started, we did everything. They brought us here and Array . . . the device ordered and Array . . . I started looking for customers. “
Dear Badgers, although Showaki is from Mexico, passing through New York and Chicago, his business is as Wisconsin as they come. Octopi, which now employs 102 full-time workers in Wisconsin, has as many resources as you can imagine in your state of residence.
“That’s why we’re in Wisconsin,” Showaki says. Briess (malta) is there, Quad Graphics is there, we buy our bottles in Wisconsin, Quality Tank Solutions is in Oconomowoc, Krones (which manufactures packaging lines) is a German company still in Franklin, KHS (also packing machines) is in Waukesha. That’s why we’re here. “
In 2015, Octopi opened with a client: Madison’s One Barrel Brewing.
“The first year like, I’m going through anyone, for anything, of any size, I just need to go through there,” Showaki says. “I need to introduce myself, I need to become the team I’m very lucky for, I hired other smart people at the time. We started with six other people, adding to me; all the staff. And we started making beer and, little by little, other people started to see that we had smart quality. Products. I think the first year we closed with 11,200 barrels of production. “
This team has grown temporarily and more than lucky, Showaki is sensible to perceive what he knows and what he knows. Unlike many craft beer entrepreneurs, he has never been a brewer in the house, perfecting recipes in his basement.
“I’ve come to the business side,” he said. I am not a brewer, I am not a brewmaster. I know enough to be dangerous. We hire other talented people to take care of all this. “
Showaki said he stayed up at night and thought, “If only he could succeed in 50,000 barrels. “
He was convinced that the magic number would help him save his future. When he exceeded 20,000 barrels, he learned that he needed a canning line to make the next leap, so he installed one. When he needed more cash to succeed on some other level, he would go to the bank and support him.
But meanwhile, the craft beer industry has changed, as has Showaki’s approach, even though it still manufactures 3 brands of its own beer and continues to brew beer for many consumers of all sizes.
“Of the 50 most sensible breweries, I would say that 90% of its number was declining. So I thought, ‘Yes, that’s not the way to bet on the future. ‘I said, “I can’t invest in craft beer anymore,” he recalls. “I want to redo my strategy, my business.
“And I said, “you know the drinks market is where it’s going to be. I have to make sure I can do anything I can put in a can or bottle. “So we invested a lot in gadgets in particular to make almost all drinks. So we bought a pasteurizer, a carbonator, a special device that makes any sugar base. “
Today, Octopi’s business is about 50% beer, up from one hundred percent a few years ago.
Although he sees that number fall further and is dedicated to other products, Showaki does not give up beer. In fact, despite what he said about not investing in craft beer, that’s exactly what he’s doing.
“We’re making a strong investment in beer, we just acquired a new brewery,” he says. “He’ll settle down next year. We are tripling our duration for brewing, because deep down we are brewers; most of us are brewers. So we have to keep making because that’s what we do. We did, and that’s what we define in part.
“But we can do what for beer, no other copacker needs to play. What the equipment is smart is capturing stylish niche beers that are made in systems and on a scale of two, five, seven kegs. “
At the same time, Octopi has its own team committed to the creation of Octopi, Untitled Art and Dachs (meaning “badger” in German). These marks are treated like all other consumers of the establishment. Dedicated item orders are scheduled for production and are billed like any other customer, Showaki explains.
Speaking of making plans, it’s the biggest challenge with so many customers. The day before my stopover at Octopi, Showaki spoke with some professors at the University of Wisconsin to look for recommendations on the most productive practices and create a formula for making plans for the brewery.
Showaki first guides me through the tavern (pictured above), which is captivating and features wood recovered from Chicago’s Navy Pier, then walks past the bustling lab (down) in the brewery and my jaw falls.
The position is huge. Apart from Miller, he doesn’t look like any other brewery I’ve ever seen before. It’s huge. And despite a lot of automation, they’re brewing everywhere.
There are rows and rows and rows of mashed potatoes and fermenters, glitter tanks and a centrifuge, and the air smells like hops like any IPA.
Showaki shows me where other tanks are installed in a new addition and where, next door, there is an addition that will be ready until next May. Then we enter the packing domain where there are massive stacks of can pallets.
There is a washing machine and a barrel filler that are in use but you see less action in the COVID era when the bar and restaurants have closed.
There is a canning line, the smell of this hops in the air when the IPA is packed.
A little further away, there is an even larger canning line that winds through and around a likely parade of beer cans.
To the west of this area is the three-acre plot that by the end of next summer will be occupied by a giant expansing, plans for which Showaki showed me at his office table.
I expected Octopi to be An Array, but I had no idea what it was like, and when I get back in a year, as we agreed when I left, it will be exponentially ger.
This despite the pandemic.
“Outside, it’s very unhappy what’s happening, but within the company, we’re doing pretty well,” Showaki says, highlighting the pandemic and also the Jacob Blake shooting a few days before our meeting. “We’re going to do everything we can to be aware and help outdoors as we seek to focus on what’s happening here. “
March was a scary time for the company, he added, noting that 60% of orders were cancelled in a day without getting married.
But then package sales soared and the riddle of how to continue in uncertainty.
“I started telling my boys last March, early April, ‘we have to go through situations. The first situation is like, it’s not happening to replace and it’s getting horrible, and the other, we’re getting big orders soon. So we have to have plans for both
“It’s more in terms of personnel, planning, do we have to buy more fermenters?Shouldn’t we buy more fermenters?We have to plan all this. It was difficult because I had to make two plans for a bad situation and an amazing situation. And then we were very fortunate that suddenly April came and began to arrive orders like crazy. “
However, he says, even when it’s good, there are problems.
“With COVID, each and every day is a challenge. Sometimes we don’t get CO2 . . . then we have to fight. This has caused disorders in can production. Some hops. The most important thing is if something breaks down, in March and April, no unmarried appliance supplier would send staff to fix things.
“So I would say that there have been many demanding situations and that we fulfill them every day, however, you know, I think it’s the same for each and every one. It was a difficult year to plan, however it has been a very smart trading year ever since. “