
When I was a teenager in the mid-2000s, I bought a bunch of cans of Budweiser to fill up on beer when I was in high school.
That was it.
I had never been to a beer bar.
But a few years later, I had a friend and fellow student at the time who said that she had heard about a new beer company in Colorado called Ballast Point.
It was about two and a half times the size of Ballast.
And I just kept going back to the cans and asking, Where’s the beer?
The next thing I knew, I was sitting in the back of a bar with friends, drinking my own Budweis.
I remember getting a phone call from a Budweist in my bar saying, “Can you tell me how much Budweisers are?”
I said, “What are you talking about?”
And the Budwei said, I don’t know how many Budweissers are in the U.S. You’ll have to ask BallastPoint.
Ballast pointed me to a company called BeerSmith, which sells a line of premium draft beers with a lot of different styles, including some that aren’t on the Ballast brand.
I started calling Ballast and asking for more information, and it’s been almost a year since I bought the beer and I still get a lot questions about it.
Ballasts head brewer, Matt Koppel, told me that he’s never been in a better spot than he is right now.
He’s been able to sell more Budweisse than he can of Coors Light, and he’s been expanding into craft beer and beer cocktails.
I’ve been drinking my Budweizen on the beach with friends and watching the sunset with the kids.
And that’s been great.
It was a really, really fun year.
We were able to tap into our audience, and our beer was in demand.
We had a lot more demand than we expected.
We have a loyal following, which I think helps us out in other ways, like how the brewery handles customer service.
So I can’t think of a better way to use that than to make a beer that we think is going to resonate with our fans and the community.
I think Ballast is a great company to work for.