In the 1980s, Geoff and Marcy Larson were working in different industries. Geoff was a chemical engineer and worked in a gold mine. Marcy was an accountant and had her sights on becoming a bush pilot. But they had a common love of beer.
The Larsons visited KTOO to share the story of how the Alaskan Brewing Company was born 40 years ago and how it’s grown since.
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The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Why move from chemical engineering and auditing to beer?
Geoff: As a chemical engineer, there’s a lot of similarities in making beer because you’ve got fermentation, you also have heat, fluid flow. You’ve got to worry about pressure, carbon dioxide, all those things. And then brewing beer as a home brewer was real fun. We had a number of times when, at our little apartment in on Douglas, I would make the beer and then put it in the yard and bury it to keep it cool, so that it would ferment at cool temperatures. It was actually kind of an interesting transition from thinking about chemical engineering because I worked in a gold mine here in Juneau back in the 80s. During that period, we were looking at maybe possibly working together.
Marcy: Geoff and I wanted to work together. That was the big thing. His chemical engineer background and my paperwork background actually went well together to kind of push the brewery idea.
Geoff: We both worked long, hard hours because we’re pretty dedicated. I think we came from a family that had parents that did the same, so we loved working. But also we really enjoyed each other’s company, and we had shared bits of enjoyment out there, whether it be camping, hiking, and having a beer.
Marcy: We both loved beer, so that helped.
What was the state of breweries in Alaska and around the country at the time that you were thinking of starting one?
Marcy: The state of breweries — actually in Alaska, there were none at the time. There had been a very large one called Prinz Brau that had started up north in Anchorage in the 70s, but had gone under fairly quickly, and they had spent millions to make that work. And it didn’t work, and so that was our first kind of like, “Hmm, I guess we better check this out and see if this is going to work for us.” But in the 80s, the craft brewing group was starting to go. It was just starting to take off. It was very early in its in its day, and we met a number of craft brewers in the lower 48 that were very encouraging, and the big brewers were really encouraging. So we loved the industry because it wasn’t cutthroat. It was very honorable, and their big thing was just make good beer. So, they were very helpful. And Alaska didn’t have a brewery and we were drinking a lot of old beer up here. Because when things went out of code and they shipped it up north to Alaska, nobody shipped it back. So there was quite a bit of old beer up here. We thought, we need to have some fresh beer in Alaska.
Financially, how did you make starting a brewery work?
Geoff: Initially we approached banks and banks were actually not very forthcoming as far as financing. We ended up discovering that we really had to start looking at raising money. Our family was not interested in investing. We were on our own, so we started talking to people, and whether it be Chamber of Commerce or Rotary Club, we would start talking to people about this idea.
Marcy: We put together a prospectus and an actual business plan and everything, and then set about selling shares and raising money to start it.
Geoff: What started out as maybe being hopeful that we’d see one or two or three banks help, or one or two or three large investors turned out to be lots of investors.
Marcy: Eighty-eight small investors, all the way from Ketchikan to Kotzebue. So this was a full statewide adventure. It was amazing. Took us a year to raise that, and all small investors, but everybody was just super wonderful, supportive, wanted to see something good happen. Not all of them drank beer even, but they just wanted to see economic good things happen in Alaska.
Geoff: This was the 80s, so the interest rates were 12, 13, 14 percent at the bank. It was a different era. Also, there was a real flux within the state of Alaska. Things have been winding down. There was a quite a bit of economic dread. I think here in Juneau there was a capital move potential, and people were looking at maybe spending a whole bunch of money that the state didn’t have, so it was a very unsettling time. And I think people really wanted wanted the joy and the excitement of “oh my god, this this sounds like a great idea. Yes, I want part of it.”
What was the original name of the brewery, and what was the inspiration of that name?
Marcy: The original name of the brewery was Chinook Alaskan Brewing and Bottling Company, so it was Chinook, Alaskan. There was Chinook on top of the Alaskan logo as it is today, and that was because of the king salmon. It was native language. There was it was just a lot of different connections to Alaska, and kind of what we wanted to see in the in the name.
Why transition to Alaskan Brewery?
Marcy: There was a winery in Washington called Chinook, and they did not like us using that name, and so they sued us and actually served us papers on Christmas Eve of all things, because then you had 10 days to respond, and it was like it was the worst Christmas ever. It was a hard one. But in the end, we just took Chinook off and left it at Alaskan Brewing and Bottling Company, and it was probably the best thing we ever did, because it’s turned out to be such a positive, powerful name that really does encompass the whole state, which is what we were after all along. In the end, it worked out really well, but it was quite painful.
Alaskan Brewing is 40 years old this year, and it’s grown a lot. How would you describe the evolution of Alaska Brewing Company?
Marcy: We started out with just five employees. It started small and we had a 10-barrel brew house. We’re in the same exact footprint that we were. The original brewery is still in the brewery that’s at Lemon Creek now, and we’ve just basically added on as we’ve gone. The brewing staff and the people that we’ve worked with, our coworkers have been awesome. They’re all so energetic and they’re all so enthusiastic, and that’s what grew the brewery really, was the people that worked there. It was fun. We loved to do new things. We loved to to try something out. It was popular, and the craft brewing movement took off at the same time. So it was a combination of a number of things that happened. I think one milestone along the way was, we had started selling our beer in Washington, and it was crazy because we couldn’t keep up, and in the summer times we would run out of beer, and that’s not a good thing. So we were cutting off folks in Washington.
At that time, we were just finally turning a profit. We finally made it over the hump, and we were moving forward. And we went to our investors and said, “Hey, if we’re going to keep going, we have to put in a larger brew house, which means an investment. What should we do here? We’d like to have our all of our staff, our employees, make the decision on whether we’re going to go forward or not.” And all the investors said, “We’ll do whichever. We’ll either sit tight and be just a brewery in Alaska, or we will go outside and build a bigger brew house and try to supply more, and let the employees decide.”
So 17 employees made that decision, and they all voted to go forward, and so that was the way it went. And we went from a 10-barrel brew house to a 100-barrel brew house, and from then on, it was just keeping up with everything, and trying to match the movement that was going on with craft brewing.
Geoff: I think there was a lot of passion that was being exhibited by not only our investors but also our staff and then our retail partners. There’s no question that community is everything about what we do. We try to put a little bit of Alaska in the bottle, and then on the bottle. So the images that we have are many times of people in the environment. So a fisherman on a fishing boat in Idaho Inlet is all about what Alaskan Amber epitomizes. It’s the place, and the people in the place.
Where did the original recipe for Alaskan Amber come from?
Marcy: That actually was quite by accident, but it was from the Douglas City Brewing Company. We were researching pictures and things that we could put in our tasting room when we were first starting up. And I was in the state historical library and doing a lot of research in there and came across a whole bunch of advertisements and this and that and the other. But one thing I stumbled across was an article that had been written about a new brewer that had come to brew at Douglas City Brewing Company, and it described the process that he used and what he was going to do, and he was pretty excited about all of that. And the thing that caught our eye was he was doing a cold fermentation of an ale yeast, which was a little unique, but it made total sense when you thought about it because it’s cold up here.
Geoff: Yeah, at that time, there’s historical photos of those icebergs downtown. I mean, it was cold. Taku Glacier was definitely a lot closer, and the ice field was a lot larger than it is today. So they had some issues and challenges of keeping things warm. So there were some real elements of the environment that affected that beer, much like many styles of beer. And then Marcy got contacted by a local collector, and he had a whole bunch of memorabilia.
Marcy: He had all of the memorabilia and all of the canceled checks and the documentation from the Douglas City Brewing Company, and I was like, “Oh really? Could we come see that?” And Nick Nichols was his name, and he was just great. He opened it all up to us and let us go through it.
Geoff: But they had invoices of all the raw materials they were buying, so you could reverse engineer to get the recipe. So obviously we don’t have the yeast that they had back 100 years ago, but we were able to kind of reconstruct essentially what probably was being consumed from the Douglas City Brewing Company.
How are you celebrating the 40th anniversary?
Marcy: There’s lots going on this year. It’s been fun. Lots of little milestones along the way. One was this six-pack package that’s out right now, commemorating the original label. We’re having a big alumni weekend coming up the beginning of August, and that’s all the people that have ever worked at Alaskan Brewing Company come down for a big barbecue. And then a lot of different things that are happening coming out as we get closer to our actual startup date. Because we spent this year 40 years ago putting the brewery together and getting it all to go, but we actually didn’t bottle and release anything until the very end of the year. So this will be in November/December when we actually have our true anniversary, and there’ll be some special things coming out.
Geoff: But a lot of it too is a real thank you because there’s no way we could not have done what we’ve done without staff, investors, but also retailers, consumers. So it’s a real big thank you. This is a pretty amazing thing. 40 years, wow! I don’t know where it all went.
Marcy: But the support we’ve gotten; it hasn’t been us. It’s been the entire state.
