Drinking with the brewer Steve Wagner

The original brewmaster and creator of Stone IPA and Arrogant Bastard, Steve Wagner, president and co-founder of Stone Brewing, is the quiet genius behind one of the top rated breweries in the world; the Wozniak of the craft beer world, if you will.

All great partnerships begin somewhere and, in the parlance of romantic comedies, Steve and Greg’s ‘cute-meet’ couldn’t have been better written.

“We actually were both involved in music in the Los Angeles area,” says Steve. “I was a musician in a band and Greg had started a company which rented rehearsal space to bands. He was my rock and roll landlord.

“As he tells the story, he didn’t know me that well because my band actually paid the rent on time. But we ended up running into each other at a class at the University of California at Davis up in the North of California that’s pretty well known for having a great fermentation sciences program.”

It was over a beer later that day that Steve and Greg broached the idea of starting the brewery. But when they started hanging out and brewing beer together 20 years ago, did Steve ever imagine the adventure that would ensue?

“It is crazy, it still feels crazy. When we started Stone it felt like we just worked too hard for ten years and then we kind of looked up and said ‘wow, we’ve actually created something here’. I think one of the reasons for our success was we just kept our heads down and worked really hard. At first we were just trying to make a go of it and keep doing what we love doing, and then after a few years we felt a little more optimistic about it.”

“My wife of 23 years, Laura, was a pastry chef at a restaurant and she’d bring home leftovers to keep us well fed. Just doing everything on a shoestring, I wouldn’t have been able to do this without her.” 

Steve comes across as such a mellow guy and is sincerely grateful for the journey he’s gone on with Stone. He’s also passionate about giving back to the local community.

“That grew out of a unique situation that we had here in California. As a brewer we are allowed to donate beer to non-profits (in other states we can’t do that) and that basically became a way for us to get our beer out there in the early days. We would rock up at a charity event with a keg of beer and we’d be able to tell people our story, share the beer and grow Stone in a grass roots manner.” 

You only need to spend five minutes with Steve or Greg to understand how important supporting these initiatives is to them. It almost seems to have become part of the Stone DNA.

“Now as the company has grown and we’ve got more folks here, we want to figure out a way to have more people at the company involved with determining what initiatives and causes we support. It shouldn’t just be Greg and myself anymore,” Steve says.

Steve carries a pretty hefty title, the kind you’d only find in the US: President of Stone Brewing. I’m sure that’s a role most people would happily give up their day job for, but what does that actually involve?

“I don’t know, somewhere the time disappears every day – next thing I know it’s five o’clock and it’s time to have a beer,” Steve jokes.

“One of the projects I’m heading up is our company culture initiative, where we’re making sure our culture is positive and continues as we grow to places like Berlin and Richmond, Virginia”.

With an in-house brewery band and a monthly take home beer allowance, it sounds like the guys are on the right track. I wonder what it’s like for the co-founders now, having spent the past 20 years together on this crazy adventure.

“It’s gotten hot and heavy at times, where we both feel strongly about something,” he says candidly. “As Greg says, if you have two people who agree all the time then you have one person too many.”

Of course, one of the biggest stories for Stone right now is its new Berlin brewery coming online. I ask how Steve’s German is coming along.

“You know, it’s starting to come back a little bit. I was pretty fluent once and actually worked a couple summers in Frankfurt,” he says.

I think it’s great that Steve is breaking out the German. It reminds me of my own attempts at speaking the local language, but sadly in my case the people I spoke with all seemed to reply in English. When we visited Berlin I had a great tour with the brewing director there Thomas; he’s got a huge job brewing beers that are consistently as great as the original recipes.

“Myself, Greg and Mitch Steele our brewmaster at the time were all heavily involved in the early process of setting up,” says Steve. “We went in intentionally with the idea that we weren’t going to try to exactly flavour match the beers produced in Berlin to those produced in Escondido. We wanted to use more local ingredients in some cases – European hops for example – but wanted the beers to represent the spirit of Stone and be unmistakeable as a Stone beer. Thomas as done a remarkable job.”

One of the defining characteristics of any brewery is its yeast. I learned that Thomas followed something of a Stone tradition by bringing the Stone yeast in his suitcase into Germany.

“I was working at a craft brewery up in the pacific northwest before we started Stone, to get some hands-on experience brewing. While I was up there, I discovered a particular yeast strain that I really liked from a defunct Canadian microbrewery, so I had a friend bring it down in a beer keg as our first yeast culture. It became our house yeast strain.

“He got to the airport in Portland with his keg and it turned out it was overweight, so he took it into the men’s restroom and, using his car keys, he proceeded to try to reduce the amount of yeast in the keg. Of course, it sprayed all over the bathroom. He felt really bad for the cleaner who was going to come in after him and say... oh my God what happened in here?”

“I’ll never forget picking him up at the airport in San Diego. We’re waiting at the baggage claim and this keg comes rolling down the belt. The crowd burst into applause.”

“A side line of ours is yeast smuggling,” Steve jokes.