Title: Senior Analyst, GP Analytics LLC
Favorite Beer Style: Farmhouse Ales
Fun Fact: Once brewed a Belgian Ale that accidentally soured and ended up being delicious
Beer Snob Scale (1 to 10, I’ll drink whatever to Cicerone): 5

HH: What is your title/job?
Matt: I am now a senior analyst, Ross tells me. [Ross is one of the principals/founders of GP Analytics]
HH: What is your favorite beer style?
Matt: Let’s go with the broad category of farmhouse ales.
HH: What is a fun fact about you, beer or non-beer related?
Matt: Okay, I have a Belgian ale that is accidentally soured after spending three months in a barrel and is tasting fantastic. It was a complete accident and it turned out great.

HH: Where would you put yourself on a beer snob scale, one being I’ll drink whatever to 10 being Cicerone level beer snob?
Matt: I like to think of myself as lower on the scale than I probably actually am. I think there’s a time and place for every beer, so I’ll drink the macro lagers and you know, the big beers, but I think I’m harsher when it comes to you know poorly executed craft beer (like you guys should be trying harder than the big guys). So, I’m going to put myself at an even five.

HH: What was your first experience with craft beer?
Matt: When I was 16, I think it was on my dad’s birthday. He’s not a big beer drinker these days, and hasn’t been for most of my life, but every now and then he’ll have a beer. Anyways, it was his birthday and he was drinking an Anchor Steam. He told me about when he was stationed in Germany when he was in the army and how he lived there for a couple years afterward. He’s 72 so this was back in the Vietnam era. He drank a lot of German beer during that time and then when he came back to the United States it was like the prime era of American big beer. I mean there was hardly any American craft breweries if at all and I tend to agree with him that Anchor Steam was the first craft brew. Wanting something more similar to the good German beer he was used to, my dad found Anchor Steam even though he was living in the Midwest at the time. They were starting to distribute out there and that was his first American craft beer. He would drink it whenever he could get his hands on it. His love of that beer continued and on that birthday, he poured me a little cup of his Anchor Steam and told me that story. That was my first real experience with craft beer.

HH: So, after that first experience were you hooked from there or was it more of a process?
Matt: I mean in the first few years of college everyone’s drinking, but it wasn’t really drinking craft beers. Money was an issue, so you know it was just cheap, cheap, beer all the time. However, I had a friend from high school who home-brewed with his dad so I used to go over there and hang out with them while they were brewing. It just was kind of fun, you know. I didn’t learn much, we were just hanging out. Then I went with a friend to the local homebrew shop in San Francisco and we kind of perused around. It looked like a lot of fun, but it wasn’t actually until maybe a year later that I got my first in your kitchen home brew kit and it was kind of just on a whim. I kind of wanted to just like find some new hobby (I think it was I was 22 at the time). I quickly elevated from the kitchen brewing into buying propane burners, going to the all grain from the partial mash, mostly in a way for convenience because the brewing in the kitchen was just becoming like really difficult. I wanted to just get out into the garage and so invested a little bit of money. From there it just snowballed. It started with the home brewing and because that was fun I start reading about the ingredients and beer styles. Then I was buying and trying bottled beers and going to breweries. This was around 2012 and at that time breweries were opening left and right in San Francisco and in the bay area in general. So that was how I got hooked on craft beer.

HH: How did you transition from craft beer as a hobby to working in the industry? Especially with an economics degree?
Matt: I finished my undergraduate degree but had no idea what I wanted to do. I liked economics and I was getting into the math more heavily towards the end of my undergrad program, so I thought ‘I’m going to go to grad school.’ It was pretty cheap at San Francisco State with in the state tuition and, like a lot of people who go to grad school, I figured I’d learn what I wanted to do later. Unsurprisingly it still didn’t happen, so I finished that program.

That was 2014 and after years of studying very theoretical stuff I was kind of craving more practical, some hands-on sort of work. I had lots of my peers from school going into tech and finance and all these things and I was a little intimidated by it all. I just could not picture myself jumping into that world. The job market was hot back then, I mean I’m sure I could have got something, but I just didn’t feel like I was ready, so I spent the summer after graduating not working and home brewing like a madman. I had so much beer I didn’t even know what to do with it. I was inviting friends over all the time just to empty kegs.

At the time, I had a friend who worked at Anchor Brewing in the packaging department and she invited me to come on a tour with her and her boyfriend. We had this awesome day touring Anchor and checking it all out and drinking in the tap room. Then she was like you’re not working right now, I could get you a job here. It wasn’t the best job, but it was a foot in the door in the industry and it’s a big company, so I thought maybe they’ll have some roles where they could utilize some skills I learned in school. That’s what I told them when I interviewed because they were hiring people in packaging which everyone wanted whose dream was to become a brewer or something. I told them I just wanted to start so I got that job and started working in bottling and canning and sweeping floors and doing all that kind of stuff which I think is typical for the beer industry. The problem is you’re competing with thirty other people on the packaging team that want the same thing, so it was like a kind of a competitive environment. They just did not have the spaces opening for the number of people that they had but I was happy to be in a brewery and I was happy to be in an iconic brewery like Anchor. I mean they’re a cultural icon in San Francisco and I love their story and I loved being more connected to the city that I lived in.

I was originally hired on seasonally but soon I was a regular part time. At some point I was promoted to canning lead. By this time, I had discovered that I didn’t want to be a brewer, so I began wondering about the operations and management administration, the business side of the brewery. They gave me an opportunity to shadow someone in the supply chain, but it didn’t really look like there was going to be any opportunity there for a while and I got impatient. At this point I was broke and had no health care so I needed to find another job.

HH: Where did you end up next?
Matt: That’s whrn I applied to Speakeasy. They had a production assistant position and I applied but I wrote this cover letter where I said I’m looking to utilize my skills from school, I have a strong analytical math background, and I have Excel skills. I also said I’m looking for something with an opportunity for growth and they ended up calling me and saying look we actually have another position we haven’t listed yet we were thinking about hiring for. They didn’t really know what to call it, but their head brewer needs some help. He’s really busy, we just expanded the brewery, brand new brew house, brand new fermenters, brand new canning line, all this new equipment. He was so swamped with all of it that he didn’t have time to keep his spreadsheets, things like raw material management. They had a lot of metrics from the brewhouse that they were tracking but it all had to be done by hand. They were dumping all the metrics by hand into an Excel sheet and it was a mess. He didn’t know what he was doing in Excel, so I walked into the interview and showed him a pivot table and it blew his mind. The interview wasn’t very long, he sat down at the bar and he asked if I wanted a beer and I was like is this some sort of like Jedi mind trick do I say yes or no? And he’s like don’t worry this isn’t a trick, I’m having a beer too, okay? So, we had a beer and I showed him a little bit of stuff in Excel and he showed me the brewery and I was there for maybe 45 minutes.

So, I got that job which was cool, and it was really open-ended when I was hired. Kushal Hall was the head brewer at Speakeasy at the time. He was a really great guy and is now running a brewery down in LA now called Commonspace. He was looking for someone who’s self-managed, like you know I want you to come in and clean up these spreadsheets and do some other things but find projects. Find things that need to be done in this brewery and find ways to help. The first few months was just kind of organizing raw materials, tracking all the production, kind of getting that stuff in line. Even things like reporting finished goods that came off the packaging line, that stuff needed to be cleaned up. They were tracking everything once it got on the truck to leave the brewery to go to the cold storage but they weren’t able to trace things like packaging, what their yield coming off the canning line was, because all they knew was what went out and they weren’t relating that back to how much volume was in the bright tank and things like that. This is a newly expanded brewery and they had a lot of little practices that weren’t in place yet, so I was able to kind of come in and find some neat little projects like that to work.

I don’t know how much detail you want to go into about Speakeasy because that was a long, interesting story.

HH: Let’s hear all of the nitty gritty.
Matt: I think it was about six or seven months into the job and I was pretty happy. I was kind of running out of stuff to do and Kushal started handing me all the raw material management piece which was pretty fun, so I started doing all the ordering for the hops and malt and started working with him on the long-term contracts for the hops. They were extremely bullish coming into the new brewery and after seeing huge increases they’re jumping from 8,000 to 12,000 to 15,000 to 20,000 and then we got up to the 35,000 mark. They were expecting to see 50,000 barrels the following year and I think they projected that within five years they were going to hit a capacity of 90,000 barrels out of that facility. They had three-year contracts sitting out in 2018-2019 to basically be brewing 60 to 70 thousand barrels and this just wasn’t going to happen. There was a lot of things that went into that, they had planned on opening a lot of new markets and we did, but the the supply chain wasn’t there. I learned about supply chain a whole lot later but at the time I didn’t really understand why it didn’t work.

So, they’re opening new markets but if you can’t get the beer there on time and you can’t keep the wholesaler in stock and you know all sorts of problems like that. I’m assuming that’s partially what happened with the sales side and then also the industry started consolidating at that time, so a number of factors came together to really start bringing problems in for the brewery. It was right around that time that unfortunately Kushal’s dad got sick, so Kushal left to go to LA to be with his family his dad. He passed away about six months later which was really sad. It was hard because Kushal had been one of those people who started on the bottling line and moved up to the head brewer. He was a huge piece of the brewery and the designer of this expansion of the brewery, so it was really hard for him to leave. He even told me this is more than a job. So, he left and at that time the financial situation the company was getting dire. He left, and a couple of other key people left, and it ended up just being this team of young people left with no experience trying to run this company. Money was really tight, and we were waiting for checks to clear from wholesalers before we could order raw materials. It became a mess.

They hired a new head brewer, but he didn’t work out very well. He was an extremely talented brewer, but it was a brewery where the head brewer is more of a manager and administrator, an operational manager not really a brewer. He just wanted to brew and didn’t want to deal with the rest of it. I think that he didn’t really have the perspective or the skills necessary the job but on the other hand it was a near impossible task. I don’t think anybody could have survived in that position. I really think the company was already in such dire straits that there was no chance for anyone to come in and rescue the place.

He was let go and they brought in a new head brewer. I was asked to step into a million different roles. I was doing the production scheduling and we also were at the same time onboarding a NetSuite based ERP. It was from a new company and they basically modified an existing NetSuite ERP platform to fit breweries. I was asked to head that and then also step into this production planning role which the owner assumed that this ERP was going to take care of all that. It didn’t. It helped me with raw materials and it helped me track production a little bit better but as far as planning goes, I mean there was no forecasting, there was no demand planning, it’s still like I was still running the same spreadsheet as before. We were maintaining QuickBooks during the transition and we never got to the point where we were running the ERP as the sole accounting platform. The whole thing was a mess but it kind of led to my understanding of the importance of software technology in beer. After things finally came to a head, the bank came in and closed the brewery and laid everyone off.

HH: All told, how long were you at Speakeasy?
Matt: That was all in the space of a year and a half. It went really fast. Kushal and I are still in touch, so we talked in depth when all this stuff was going on. He said he felt kind of bad he hired me at that time when he knew the company was in trouble already. I said don’t feel bad, I mean look at the opportunity that it’s handed to me. I came in to fix spreadsheets and by the end of it I was managing an onboarding of an ERP, doing production planning, and managing all the raw materials and contracts. There were some bad parts but I also happy with the experience it gave me.

HH: So, what came next?
Matt: I took some time off. I wasn’t in a rush to find a job. I was on unemployment and I had some savings. I also ended up getting a settlement from Speakeasy because they didn’t pay us for our last two weeks of work because the bank shut down all the bank accounts. In California if you’re laid off and not paid on your last day you can get up to 30 days of your wage. I had a vacation planned like literally the week after I lost my job for two weeks, so I had two weeks of PTO, so I got those two weeks of PTO, two weeks of pay, and then several months later I got another month a pay. So, I hung out, traveled, kept homebrewing a lot. I also spent some time thinking about the role of technology in beer, did some research into what software systems are out there, and stumbled across GP.

HH: As we all have. [Note: Matt and I are coworkers and both sort of found about of current jobs by accident.]
Matt: Right? Before I applied at GP Analytics, I interviewed at Deschutes Brewery for the raw materials manager job. They flew me up and I got to see Bend, but I didn’t get the job. I started looking for beer jobs in Bend and I kind of stumbled across GP Analytics. I thought this looks awesome, but I couldn’t really figure out what the hell they did based on the website. There wasn’t a lot of information out there, so I was like MRP, I’ve never even heard of that. So, I’m like googling MRP and I’m like trying to figure out what it is that they do but it seemed interesting. I thought I should just blindly drop in a resume, but I didn’t because I was leaving for Europe in like a week or two. I figured I would wait till I got back before I did that and then like two days before I was leaving, I was on Indeed.com and I saw the data analyst position pop up for GP. I applied, and they called me the next day. I did the Excel test the day before I left for Europe and then I got the call from the Megan (recruiter for GP Analytics) while I was in Belgium and did an interview from Brussels.

I interviewed again the day I got back still jet-lagged. Two weeks later I was in Bend. I think what GP is doing is really interesting and I think we’re going to continue to see an expanded role of technology and data in the beer industry. Beer is a particularly interesting industry in that it’s kind of lagged behind a lot of others in its use of data specifically. It will also be interesting to see what it will mean for craft beer culture. Craft beer has always been a fun industry because it’s been very neighborly, people help each other out, and practices as far as actual brewing and production have always been shared. There are very few secrets when it comes to production methods of brewing and if technological knowledge is shared the same way that would be great. I just hope that we aren’t entering an era of increased competitiveness and I hope that that doesn’t start to drive a culture apart.

HH: What has been the biggest learning curve with your current job?
Matt: I think for me the biggest learning curve was having a client-facing job. I’ve never been in that kind of position. That was a big learning experience for me, being on weekly calls, answering questions and, having to be on point.

HH: Do you have any beer-related goals, career or otherwise?
Matt: Oh yeah, sure. Let’s start with the easiest which is home brewing. There are a number of styles I’d like to continue mastering. I’d also like to learn a lot more about the chemistry behind the beer. I know very basic stuff, just enough to get me through home brewing, so I’d like to learn more about the water chemistry, the mash chemistry, etc.

For travel goals there are a million places I want to visit to drink beer. I would really like to go back to Belgium and northern France. I went to Fantome when I was in Europe, but I want to explore the origin of those farm house beers plus I didn’t get to any of the Trappist breweries when I was there, so I definitely have to take a trip someday back to Brussels.
And just kind of like we were talking about, I want to continue to explore the role of data and technology at breweries. I think there’s room to help them run better businesses which would allow breweries to focus on their beer. As the industry begins to consolidate and you see things slowing down the businesses that operationally are running efficient can put more effort into making better beer.

HH: Here’s a big question: favorite beers/breweries?
Matt: This is a hard question. I know there’s so many. Oh geez, well since we talked a lot about farmhouse, I’m a big fan of those. I guess we could start locally. I like a lot of Logsdon beers. I’m also really like Boulevard and Stillwater Artisanal.

I’m a big fan of Fantome mostly because I like the guy who runs it. I was lucky enough to spend some time with him when I was in Belgium. He only speaks French and like broken English, so we had a very interesting conversation. He spoke enough English that we were able to you know spend an hour together, which was really cool. He’s only open on the weekends and I could only come see him on a Friday, so I emailed him and he said yeah, just come by. They’re about an hour and a half outside of Brussels so I just spent the night nearby, hung out with them, and got to see the brewery. He’s very independent and just kind of does his own thing, experiments and sometimes it doesn’t work out and it’s like who cares because it doesn’t matter. They cultured their own yeast strain which is proprietary. I think he said it was his brother or brother-in-law who helped him do that and now it’s stored at White Labs so if his batch ever gets old or messed up, he could call them and have them send a new one over. I just love his independent streak and he stands by what he does, and he has no shame about it. When I was there, he said people have approached him with money to expand but he’s like you know a very French man and thinks this is fine, this enough. The taproom is just like two little taps. It’s tiny but a really cool spot. Really cool guy, I love that he stands by what he does and doesn’t care what other people think.

HH: What about one here in Bend?
Matt: It’s hard because I like different breweries for different reasons. Sunriver Brewing for their hoppy beers. For anything hop forward its Sunriver and in my opinion they are pretty decently ahead of everyone else and I think by a pretty wide margin. I like Crux Fermentation Project for lagers and various styles. I think they do lagers really well and you can go there get out of the box things no one else in Bend is brewing. I really like Ale Apothecary although I’d hardly ever drink it, unless I’m ready to spend a bunch of money. I don’t blame them for their price point, I understand that their process is expensive and what they do is extremely difficult and time-consuming you know. It’s the same as Cascade in Portland. It takes time to make the beers that they’re making, and I love that they’re super connected to their region.

HH: Got to love some quality terroir.
Matt: Yep. They’re some of my favorites because of the really interesting stuff that you’re doing. Someday when I make much more money I’ll buy more of their beer and again not dissing them. I can understand their price point. I always bring it back to wine it’s like 30 bucks a bottle online, which is along the same line. Beer is just as good as your expensive wine.
HH: Thanks for your time, Matt!

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