Transmitter Brewing

And how did you make the leap to start a legitimate brewery?

Rob: We saw these other guys open with a smaller system than what we had for homebrewing; they only had a 15 gallon setup so they would finish with 10 gallons at a time. And we thought, “Well if they can do it with that setup, then why don’t we give it a shot.” We looked at a bunch of spaces all over Brooklyn, but we didn’t want to add an extra hour commute to our day to go to South Brooklyn, so we kept hunting. Greenpoint was expensive as all hell so we didn’t even bother looking there. One day, Anthony’s wife saw a rental sign for this space in Long Island City when she was walking over the Pulaski Bridge. It was perfect since Anthony lives basically 100 yards away and I’m about 1000 yards away. We could just walk here on nights and weekends, so coming here for two hours after our workdays wouldn’t be a big deal.

Anthony: It all came together relatively quickly. Plenty of breweries get stymied in the planning stage by New York real estate; we just happened to luck out. We both kept our day jobs for the first year. I would work all day, go home and eat a sandwich over the sink and then come over to Transmitter. We did most of the buildout here ourselves – everything you see here is DIY. This allowed us to get up and running in a way that felt organic. We didn’t take salary, so any money we were making was going directly back into the business, which helped us to grow quickly. About 5 months after we opened, we were able to order our first expansion of equipment and within the week we ordered another expansion on top of that.

And you, Anthony?

Anthony: I ran a very specialized photo lab; there were a couple hundred people in the world who care about what I can do in terms of historical processes. I was making my own emulsion and light sensitive paper as well. There are corollaries between the two businesses since they are both process oriented. Both are a mix of science and art, which I find interesting, but a print studio is a different kind of business because you start something at the beginning of the day and when you end, you have a complete product. You see how film yields a finished print in that eight hour period. With beer that’s not possible, as it takes weeks or months to receive your end product. Print making and brewing are very different processes, but you are still shaping the materials and making choices to reach an end goal. There was also some chemistry and science in the dark room, just like there is here to some extent.

Who were some of your clients?

Anthony: I’ve printed for all sorts of people. I’ve done portfolios for William Eggleston and Matthew Barney. I printed for Annie Liebowitz for a few years. I’ve done maybe 20 Vanity Fair covers; the list goes on. Because of the cost of some of the processes I used, a very select few photographers would come to me, and even fewer would have a project that aesthetically fit. I had one process that would take me upwards of 5 days to make a single print – like one photo – that’s thousands of dollars of work. Over 25 years the business changed so much to the point where I was finally ready to let it go. Much of my commercial work disappeared because of the nature of digital; I became an intermediate process so I was just skipped over. I still do work for a few of those clients from time to time on the side, though.

Are regulations any worse here than anywhere else?

 Rob: No, there are other factors at play. We know brewers who almost went bankrupt because of a gas inspection issue; they got held up for months because they were waiting on an inspection. Outside the city, like in upstate New York, you probably wouldn’t run into the same problem; you could probably get a gas inspection pretty quickly. Building a brewery in New York is also tough because you also have to deal with contractors doing work at city prices. Everything here is at city prices.

Anthony: At its heart, making beer is a manufacturing process as well so the zoning has to be right. You know, as good as it smells in here, if you’re a neighbor of a brewery maybe you don’t like the scent lingering around all day long.

So would you say that cashflow and funding are what prevent most homebrewers from turning their hobby into a business?

Rob: Oh, it’s definitely money. There are a lot of upfront funds that go into both goods and production equipment.

Anthony: Homebrewers do make and sell beer but it’s a hard business to run on a small scale. Making 10 gallons of beer takes the same amount of time as making 1000 gallons of beer, more or less. Doing it in a small way is definitely not efficient. The second part of it is that because of the legality of making alcohol, you can’t do it just anywhere. Legally, you can make 200 gallons a year as a homebrewer. That’s hard to police, but there is a limit to the allowable homebrew you can make and give away.

Many small breweries almost exclusively keg, but you have a strong focus on bottling. Why is that?

Rob: 90% of small breweries keg everything because the process of filling carbonated beer is much harder than the process of filling still beer like you would in a keg. You can either re-ferment the beer or force carb it to carbonate it for bottles. Carbonated beer foams when you try and fill it so packaging can be problematic. It’s definitely easier to shove shit into kegs.

Anthony: The margins on bottles, even though the work is harder, are significantly higher which is great for a small brewery like ours. Traditionally, the beers we make would have been bottled and re-fermented within the bottles like we do, so we are touching on that history. Bottles also travel well and shelf well. We are distributing into 4 states, which is logistically easier with bottles. Our distributors can buy a mixed palette of bottles and there they go – we don’t have to worry about chasing the kegs. The longer shelf life is also really helpful. The beer will continue to evolve: it’s a living beast that gets better with age. That evolution is interesting for us from a maker’s standpoint. It’s a fascinating process and it’s not something we can control; we can only direct it and hope for the best.

Do brewers avoid them because they’re too much of a wild card?

Rob: They’re a huge wild card. You can’t control it, but you can shape it.  For some people, the funkier it is, the better – just like how some people like their cheese. If you smell some of them you might think, “What am I getting myself into…”

Beer really is alive.

Anthony: Our beer certainly is.

Rob: And that’s what drives us. It’s the ability to experiment with shit that other brewers can’t – or won’t.

Anthony: To be clear, though, we didn’t invent any of the beer we are making. There are plenty of people making similar styles. There certainly is a wave of brewers right now making the same style of beer as we are.

You don’t have a flagship beer but most breweries do; why is that?

 Rob: 95% of breweries have their flagship IPA, Stout etc. and they may rotate in specialties. We do re-brew beers but not on any set schedule. We have 65 beers we’ve done and we will keep making new ones. In our tanks now, 4 out of our 7 tanks are filled with new beers…

Anthony: We are sort of catering to the fact that most craft brew fans are out to try something new. If you go into a bar you want to try something you haven’t seen or heard of, so we play into the ADD nature of enthusiasts. Despite the challenges, it really keeps it fun for us to explore different styles and nuances in the various styles.

You’re here six to seven days a week. What do you do in your spare time?

Rob: Well not much. We certainly don’t homebrew any more.

Anthony: One day off every 14 doesn’t leave you with very much time. Mostly I just try to relax and spend time with my family, albeit unsuccessfully. I had this Sunday off and I fried chicken and went to the supermarket. I stared at a computer and thought about answering emails for work. I mean, it’s never ending.

Rob: I’m usually catching up on freelance work. We both enjoy cooking too.

Transmitter is 2.5 years old and has experienced some great success so far, but are there any things you wish you did differently? Any lessons learned?

Rob: We started too small. We spent a lot of time in the first 6 months making nowhere near enough beer. It was taking us the same time to make 85 gallons of beer a day and now on a single day we can make 350 gallons of beer. Everything is incremental: you need bigger vats and tanks, and you have to pay for all of that. So it really was a cash flow thing. It was what we could afford, since we are 100% self-funded with no bank loan. In hindsight, I don’t know what else we could have done.

Anthony: The whole first year was a great learning experience but it could have been accelerated both in terms of the size and production. The first year of nights and weekends was really hard. Looking back, I realized that you should start a business and fucking hit it – you don’t do it nights and weekends, you do it days, nights, and weekends. We were only treading water at that point but we couldn’t do it another way.