More innovation
With most production handled at the Wilson Street brewery, the original location at Eighth Street, with its iconic patio, is used mostly for innovative beers.
Those 1,200-gallon “small batch” brews are not packaged in bottles or cans and are available primarily in Four Peaks’ own locations.
“I think we’re putting out the best beer we ever have,” co-founder Andy Ingram said one recent morning while sitting on the patio.
The current tap lineup includes a stout with chai, a black French saison, Raj India Pale Ale with tandoori spices (it gets mixed reviews from the crew) and Odelay, a brown ale with Mexican chocolate.
“On the innovation side, there are no red lights,” Ingram said.
The company is recognizing its 20th anniversary this year, and is brewing four of its historic beers in celebration. They include Leroy Brown, McCarthy’s Red, and ML209, a malt liquor named for rapid 209 on the Colorado River, where the crew once got dumped from a raft. The beer has more than 8 percent alcohol and pint glasses are served inside small paper bags.
“It’s light but will kick your ass,” Scussel said of the rapid and the beer.
Also coming back is Blind Date Ale, an award-winning beer the crew never replicated after its 1998 debut because of the difficulty securing enough Medjool dates.
Upgrades throughout
Since the acquisition, the company has also been able to reinvest in the restaurant on Eighth Street, where about a dozen workers busily wiped tables and popped up umbrellas on a recent morning in anticipation of big lunch crowds.
Four Peaks expanded its patio, added a merchandise shop and a growler-fill station in an adjacent building previously used by the Tempe band Gin Blossoms as a sound room.
Other changes include hiring a pastry chef and adding Saturday brunches with peach beer mimosas.
If long-time patrons dislike the changes since the AB InBev acquisition, it doesn’t show in the crowds or the public reviews on sites such as Yelp. Four Peaks has a 4.5 out of 5 rating on the review site, which has held consistently in that range both before and after the buyout.
The individual beers remain highly rated as well. The website BeerAdvocate, where consumers rate beers, gives Kilt Lifter an 83 (good) on a 100point scale with more than 200 reviews. Four Peaks’ Hop Knot scores an 89 (very good).
Schultz said the more than 300 workers have benefited because the healthcare plan and 401(K) retirement plans are better under AB InBev, especially because the bigger company offers a better matching contribution for workers than the company could before.
The more successful the company, the more good it can do with its charitable efforts, Schultz said. That includes the Four Peaks Foundation and other community efforts, like an annual event where the brewery purchases supplies for teachers.
Going out of state
One of the primary goals of the AB InBev deal was to help Four Peaks ramp up production and distribute its beer beyond Arizona’s borders, and that effort is well underway.
“We’ve added jobs, including 10 more people in sales and marketing,” Scussel said.
They also hired full-time maintenance workers and purchased backup equipment to keep the brewery running, as mechanical issues used to take the operation offline.
The company has introduced Kilt Lifter, Hop Knot IPA and Peach Ale in Las Vegas, portions of New Mexico, San Diego and recently Los Angeles. Up next is Texas and eventually Colorado.
Southern California and Colorado are highly competitive markets for craft beer, but Four Peaks’ founders said they can break in.
“Our Kilt Lifter fits a niche,” Scussel said. “San Diego is heavy IPAs. Some people are getting burned out on IPAs. It’s selling off the shelves.”
Before the acquisition, Four Peaks could never meet the local demand for its beers, let alone expand very quickly. But AB InBev purchased eight new fermenting vessels and two new “bright tanks” used to prepare beer, vastly expanding the Wilson Street capacity.
Previously, the brewery had to work with banks to get loans for such expansions, taking on substantial debt and risk. Now, they write up a justification for the new equipment, send it to AB InBev, and the company takes care of the rest, Ingram said.
Ingram also just spent weeks training AB InBev brewers at the company’s Fairfield, Calif., brewery how to make Kilt Lifter, so that when demand warrants, that large facility can handle some of the production.
He said the experience showed him AB InBev’s commitment to quality. They dumped three 500-gallon batches of beer that didn’t turn out before working things out and getting an exact replication of the beer.
The deal also has enabled the company to release its first new packaged beer in eight years, Pitchfork Pale Ale. The beer is brewed with two strains of German hops, Huell Melon and Mandarina Bavaria, that would have been difficult to access in significant quantities without AB InBev’s purchasing power, the co-owners said.
Competitive market
While Four Peaks has found success selling beer far beyond its own pubs, the market has gotten much more difficult for other upstarts.
Arizona now boasts 108 Class 3 microbrewery licenses and nine larger licenses for in-state producers, which includes Four Peaks and SanTan Brewing Co.
While not all of those license holders are producing beer, the figure has approximately doubled in the past two years. Nationally, approximately two breweries open each day, said Rob Fullmer, executive director of the Arizona Craft Brewers Guild.
He said Arizona brewers, Four Peaks aside, are losing market share to out-ofstate breweries with better distribution deals with more access to store shelves.
“We are losing space,” Fullmer said. “If people want to get into package brewing, it is a little bit tougher now.”
Brewery startups still are finding success running their own pubs, but without the backing of a major company to ensure a steady supply to grocery stores, it’s difficult to sell bottles and cans to support a larger operation, he said.
“It is a more crowded field with fewer distributors,” he said.
For example, the Lagunitas Brewing Co. of California in 2015 sold a 50 percent stake to Heineken, a global company based in Amsterdam, helping the smaller brewer get its beer on more shelves. Similar deals with other brewers effectively are shutting Arizona brewers out, he said.
“On one hand, it is good for price points for consumers,” Fullmer said. “But it is going to limit access to Arizona brands when there is limited shelf space. It’s all based upon decisions made by out-of-state companies and not consumers. It’s going to create downward pressure on Arizona breweries. You’re trading a small savings at the grocery store at the expense of losing neighborhood businesses in Arizona.”
Being a part of the world’s largest brewing company has allowed the coowners to travel and meet with other brewers and experts, letting them tap into the extensive experience of people around the globe.
One of those trips included visiting AB InBev’s Global Innovation and Technology Center in Leuven where the yeast is stored. Ingram said it was special getting to see the brewery’s key ingredient treated so well.