Interview with HE’BREW’s Jeremy Cowan
Ever since I heard of HE’BREW beer, I became fascinated by it and its Jewish shtick, so I was really excited to meet Jeremy Cowan, the founder of Shmaltz and creator of HE’BREW beer, at the last Extreme Beer Fest. I managed to con him into a phone interview, so here follows the transcript of our half-hour conversation that covered everything from the origins of HE’BREW to smuggling beer across borders. With Shmaltz’s slogans like “perfect for bar mitzvahs, weddings, and circumcisions”, this couldn’t possibly be a boring conversation.
I’d turn it into a Podcast, but I lack decent audio editing equipment and a catchy jingle. Plus, I can’t get over the monotony of my own voice. I still might in the future, though, as I do feel that a written transcript does lack a certain liveliness to it.
Jeremy Cowan Poses with His Baby
Credit: Shmaltz
DTEIY: An introduction for people who don’t know anything about HE’BREW or Shmaltz: can you tell me a little about the brewery and your involvement behind it?
Jeremy: Well, I started the company ten years ago in San Francisco, and my idea was to make the country’s first and only and best and largest and smallest Jewish celebration beer. It really just started as an experiment for Hanukkah of 1996. We made a hundred cases for Hanukkah of ‘96. They were all hand-bottled and hand-labeled at a tiny little brewery in northern California. I basically drove around in my grandmother’s Volvo and delivered cases of beer to a couple different retail stores and to some friends and to some parties and bars. And just started really organically and over the last ten years have been able to grow from those first 100 cases of beer. I’ve gone through two more breweries now that I’m contracting all the production with to where I am today in Saratoga Springs, NY with Mendocino brewing company. We’ve got distribution in about 25 states or so around the country, and this year we’ll have six beer styles. It’s really been a wonderful opportunity to retain that original idea that I started the company with which was to remain the only Jewish celebration beer in the country, so it’s been a great decade.
DTEIY: Yeah, it sounds like you’ve been marvelously successful over the last decade or so.
Jeremy: Well, it’s been a massive rollercoaster. It’s actually been the last year that things have really kind of taken off.
DTEIY: Really, I see. So you started out with just a hundred cases, so I’m guessing you didn’t quit your day job at the time.
Jeremy: Well, unfortunately, I did. Three months after I started, I did quit my day job and I’ve basically been working on HE’BREW way more than full-time ever since. What happened, though, pretty quickly after that was that I had lots of nights and weekends in side jobs for about seven years. So yeah 3
February 22nd, 2007 at 12:51 pm
That’s a great interview! Nice job, DTEIY.
So, are the HE’BREW beers Kosher?
February 22nd, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Yup, they’re all Kosher. They have a rabbi come by for quality control and everything. He apparently really enjoys it. IIRC, there’s an audio clip of it somewhere in Shmaltz’s media section (http://shmaltz.com/hype.html).
February 26th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Hey Mike,
Great interview. I put a link to it from my blog - http://beer.about.com/b/a/000172.htm
Keep up the good work!
Best,
Bryce