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Family brain photo and video movie making. Turning your events into movies.

Is Illuminated Brew Works co-founder Brian Buckman really as chill as he seems on first blush? We spoke with him for an hour and still aren’t sure.


Buckman and his founding partners Matt Shirley and Jason Monk never wanted to get stuck in a typical job, so they started Illuminated Brew Works (IBW) to create a place where they could do what they wanted to do and make what they wanted to make on their own terms.

IBW’s webpage mischievously declares they make “urban farmhouse ales,” which sounds pretty exciting — what even is that, anyway, right?

If you’re local to the Chicago area, you may be able to find their Orange Sunshine Saison, the closest thing they have to a flagship and the clearest example of the urban farmhouse concept. Much of their recent production has been in the double dry-hopped, hazy-juicy, double IPA category. “We’d be stupid not to make them,” Buckman says.

Recently, IBW showed up on a list of the 50 fastest growing breweries in the country, which is great press for what’s still a pretty small operation.

Mike knows these guys because his band has played at their summer bonfire event, a big party they throw in the gravel lot outside their Near West Side brewery. Brad knows them from their playful, conspiracy-theory, secret-society aesthetic — which, it turns out, they owe to their designer, Mark Ludemann.

Some of our interviews range pretty widely. This one may strike you as more narrow in focus as Brad tries to pin down Brian and Mark about their approach to their brand and business. Here’s the thing, Brian is almost pathologically averse to being confused for a businessman. How, then, does he hope to run a successful business?

You’ll hear in the interview how Brad tries to call out Brian about being more serious about their brand, and in each case Brian evades or shrugs it off. “There’s very little conscious consideration [of brand],” he says. “It’s always been what cracks us up.”

We hope Illuminated can grow their brand with that kind of casual attitude, though it goes against, well, most of what we know about growing brands. You’ll have to listen to decide for yourself, but we suspect Brian works harder than he lets on.

For instance, we saw him just a week or two later at Church Street Brewing in Itasca, Ill., working on a collaboration beer. We also know he and his partners have been actively pursuing opening a tap room. In fact, as he describes in our talk, they hope to have three retail locations before they’re done.

Meanwhile, they’re counting a lot on word of mouth, visual appeal, and . . . I don’t know, dumb luck?

To be fair, they have some local love. They have an ongoing relationship with local restaurant Parachute, and they’ve had enough interest that they’ve been contracting with other breweries to meet demand.

Beers
Fruit Slave — DDH DIPA featuring Motueka, Citra, and Mandarina Bavaria hops
Brony — DDH DIPA featuring Rakau and Huell Melon hops
https://www.2beersandapodcast.com/2019/10/03/014-what-cracks-us-up-illuminated-brew-works/

Chris Quinn created The Beer Temple to present beer with the same care and expertise as wine traditionally gets. “This is a romantic product,” he says. “I wanted to give it what it deserves.”


We had a great time talking to Chris about finding his way into the beer industry, getting his Cicerone, and creating a customer experience that was authentic and that connected with customers.

A Craft Attitude(?)
So much of the conversation in the beer industry these days is about finding customers and producing what customers want. How many times have you heard a brewer say, “I’d love to make more pilsners, but customers want hazy IPAs”?

In craft terms, that’s the tail wagging the dog. It used to be you started a craft brewery because you wanted to create something people couldn’t get anywhere else. Make your great beer and share it with the world.

As we surpass 7,000 breweries, the conversation is changing towards what customers want. But the way Chris Quinn tells it, most things he has done with the Beer Temple have been on the old-school model of doing what he wanted to do and hoping he could find an audience.

Granted, he admits that there’s a fair bit of path-of-least-resistance happening here, too. A lot of his choices had to do with what he was or wasn’t willing to do—they just happened to work.

He also acknowledges that he listens to his audience, too. “I’m not doing anyone any favors by going out of business,” he says.

Authenticity
“Authenticity” is an easy word to throw around, but Chris Quinn has found a way to make it meaningful. Everything in the Beer Temple feels both familiar and distinctive, and on his Beer Temple Insider’s Roundtable radio show and podcast he gives listeners an unedited, unscripted seat at a table of industry experts talking about recent events.

Beers
Allagash Strictivus Fruited Tart Wheat

Andechser The Andeche Maibock

Resources
BrewTalks diversity panel

Insiders Roundtable on Lumpen Radio

“Are You a Dust Brother?” – Short Twitter video about Zombie Dust

Have a story to tell that could use some shaping and decent video camera? Contact us to learn about our marketing services.
https://www.2beersandapodcast.com/2019/07/23/013-a-romantic-product-chris-quinn-the-beer-temple/

How to setup a facebook page for business is a fairly in-depth tutorial from Mike walking through the different steps on how to just that.

They cover such basics as having a consistent email for all of your social media (VASTLY different passwords, however), setting up the about, page info, story, photo, header, creating a post, tagging a location, explaining a feeling,

Michael Rataj, head Brain of Bulb Brain Creative invites you to join in the interactive webinar 'how to effectively humanize your brand with video'.

Sign up at Friendly-Lawyers.com

Mike reads the BLS March Employment report on M,ay 6th, 2020.

A lot has changed since then, new reports coming soon.

Brad and Mike from 2 beers and a podcast (the show) sit down with Todd Ahsmann and Mike Seigel from Goose Island to talk bout Jebediah Poundage, discontinuing Honker's Ale, How important local is and, yes, the sale.

Filmed in April of 2019 at Goose Island, Clybourn.

produced by Bulb Brain Creative

Kelli Shevlin created Craft Beverage Expo to educate craft beverage makers. She took a break during the event to tell us about how she's creating the industry's "second show"—and why Louisville is the place to do it.

Filmed on Located at the Craft Beverage Expo in Louisville, KY Dec 5 2019.
Written by Brad Fruhauff
Filmed and Edited by Michael Rataj of Bulb Brain Creative