Geisthaus: A "Little Lager Brewery" Making Big Impressions

During the week of Thanksgiving 2022, I was outside Sacramento, CA visiting my in-laws, as we do twice each year. One tradition with each trip is that I grab beers with my favorite beverage sensei, Mark Gallo. This trip, we chose a great beer bar for curation and freshness called Final Gravity. The conversation included the usual chatter about our shared passions around family, beverage trends, and ticket stub collecting, but we were introduced to a fascinating third wheel on the other side of the bar.

The beertender recognized me, not as “Doug from Revolution” unfortunately, but as my comedic alter ego, Marketing Mitch. Once the redness in my face faded, we struck up a conversation and learned that he was working on opening an all lager brewery in the Sacramento area. I immediately texted my wife that I was going to be running behind schedule.

For the 2.5 years since that night, I’ve been following Ben Allgood (great California last name) and his progress toward opening Geisthaus with his best friend Brady Jones. Unfortunately on my visit this past Thanksgiving, the first batches were in tanks, but the doors hadn’t quite opened yet. Now however, the Taproom is cranking and their posts on Instagram have me drooling on my outdated iPhone. I couldn’t wait until the next visit to catch up with Ben to see how things are going, so I invite you all be a fly on the wall of our recent conversation:

How would you break down the Sacramento craft beer scene for those who haven’t spent time there and how it’s evolved over the last ten years? Does anything stand out as different from other cities in California, or elsewhere?

I think it’s really underrated and diverse. We have some incredible breweries in the area, making World class beer. You’ve mentioned some of these breweries in your spotlight series on your visits to Sacramento. The Sacramento beer scene has grown so much over the last 10 years! I think the brewery count is somewhere in the 80’s in the greater Sacramento area and growing. I would say generally speaking, it’s booming and well supported. I can’t speak too much on how it’s different from other cities' beer scenes. The people of Sacramento are just down to earth, hard working folks, from different industries, and walks of life, who like to support local businesses.

What gave you confidence that the city is ready for an all lager brewery? Can you tell us about Geisthaus, how and when the idea started getting serious, and what you wanted to do to make the brewery unique and stand out (besides the obvious focus on lager yeasts)? Is there any one particular brewery that inspired your mission more than any other over the years?

I think the confidence came from within ourselves, and our experience. Brady and I aren’t making lager to fill some void in the local market. We are making these beers, because that’s what we like to make and drink. This was a shared dream that we were lucky enough to see come to life. Things started getting serious in 2021, when Brian MacKie came along and wanted to invest in us. At that point we began looking for the right building. We knew early on that we wanted the business model to focus on the tasting room experience. I definitely think the needs of the consumer have been changing, and certain breweries may be struggling to fill those changing needs.

Before, you could open your brewery in a difficult to find warehouse in an industrial park, and people would come find you. Now I think people are looking for experiences, and inexpensive little memories to collect with friends. So we bought an interesting building, with lots of parking, and made it a comfortable space to be in. We also focus on the actual beer service to elevate the experience, with a slow pour, nice oversized glassware allowing plenty of room for foam, all poured from our Lukr faucets. It's fun to hear the ooo’s and aah’s when we deliver people their slow pour, with a big foam crown, and awesome seeing plenty of people ordering full liters of lager like we hoped.

We were certainly inspired by these other ‘all lager’ or lager focused breweries (Bierstadt, Jack’s Abby, Goldfinger, Highland Park, Enegren, etc.), as a proof of concept. If they can do it, why not us? So, thanks to all of the lager pioneers out there! We were also massively inspired by our trip to Germany. Their beer culture is incredible. It’s really hard to put into words just how different it is. It’s not really about the beer, it’s about the time spent with friends and family. It’s simply a way of life. We wanted to try and bring a little piece of that home with us.

Me, Torsten (German friend), and Brady Jones in Bamberg, Germany

What role have you and your co-founders played in the scene prior to opening? Can you tell me about your backgrounds and how you divide up responsibilities as owners?

Like most other brewers, Brady and I both started at home. At some point we made a rough 10 year plan for opening our very own brewery, (which we pretty closely stuck to). A part of that plan sent Brady back to school to get all his prerequisites together and then enroll into the UC Davis Master Brewers Program which he completed in 2019 and obtained a Diploma in Brewing from the Institute of Brewing and Distilling in London, England. During this time he continued to work on his skills at home. I decided to dive head first into gaining some industry experience.

My first job in the industry landed me at the Rubicon in 2014, at the time Sacramento’s oldest brewery. It was also the first brewery in GABF history to win gold in the brand new category, IPA. It was said to have inspired Vinnie at Russian River at the time to make the amazing IPA’s he is famous for. Pretty cool! I worked there for a few years, somehow making my way to Director of Brewing Operations, and at some point the ship started to sink for the Rubicon, and I jumped overboard. I won’t go into the gory details, but it got pretty bad for them, financially speaking. IYKYK.

I then landed with Loomis Basin Brewing, where Brady and I got an opportunity to see if we could stand to work together. I feel like I should mention, Brady and I are best friends. We grew up together, and have been best buds for over 20 years. So this was a big deal. We could work together on someone else’s payroll to see if we could go into business together, and not hurt the friendship. There is some occasional spiciness, and heated discussion between us, but we always recover quickly, like brothers do.

Brady and Ben at Loomis Basin Brewing

There is an understanding that ultimately whatever is best for the beer, always wins out. We then got a serious offer from our third partner Brian to fund this little lager dream of ours, and the rest is history. Business responsibilities have pretty much been divided in a natural, organic way. There’s no chore list, or fighting over who gets to do what. It all just falls into place. This probably has a lot to do with our many years of knowing each other, and knowing our own strengths and weaknesses.

When we met, you were bartending at Final Gravity. How important was that and other experiences to shaping and influencing what you wanted to do with Geisthaus? Any good examples from your time interfacing with customers that led to a light bulb moment that got worked into your plans?

That was so random meeting you like that. I worked the closing shift at Final Gravity only a handful of times. Pretty cool that you happened to come by on one of them. That was a lot of fun chatting with you, and introducing you to the other people at the bar, like “Do you know who this is? You know… Marketing Mitch?” My time at Final was awesome! I definitely miss the simplicity of just being a beertender.

When we announced that we would be opening a brewery, our days at Loomis Basin were numbered. We were quickly training our replacements and I knew that I needed another job asap, while we were going through the planning, permitting and buildout process. This was a really good opportunity to learn the hospitality side of the industry. I learned so much and made a lot of great connections and friends. Final Gravity is going to be celebrating its 13th anniversary this year.

They’re doing a lot right, and I soaked up all that I could in my time there. Being a bartender was surprisingly a lot of fun for me. It has its ups and downs of course, but generally it was something I enjoyed. It was also a great opportunity to spread the word to other craft beer fans about Geisthaus. The owner of Final Gravity, Amy, is a huge supporter of us, and I’m thankful for my time there.

Final Gravity crew for their 10th anniversary party

What were some of the most challenging parts to getting open and sources of the most pain?

Well, firstly getting funded. Turns out it’s really expensive to open a brewery. We would’ve never been able to do this if not for a solid investor. Ultimately, Brian MacKie made our dream a reality. Next, is all the red tape. It’s really complicated to go through that process. Our building was left vacant for 7 years before we signed our agreement. Within that 7 year period, new codes had been written, and it was on us to bring the building back up to code.

We were in the planning and permitting process for about two years because our plans were lost by the County twice, if you can believe it. We were ghosted (no pun intended) by our first general contractor, so we needed to scramble to find another one, get a new bid, and send that off to the bank. Once we broke ground, the buildout process took a full year. The whole thing was a grind, and a lot of it was out of our control.

Hausman Architecture working on some plans and floor demo in the brewing space

What have the first few months been like since opening the doors? Any pleasant surprises that you weren’t expecting? Any struggles that you hadn’t considered or weren’t as prepared for?

When you’re planning a brewery and you’re making projections, it’s really hard to know exactly how it will all play out. We spent three long years preparing to be open and hit our mark, but ultimately it's a total leap of faith. I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the support. We are doing as well as projected and are already looking to possibly expand our production by adding some new tanks. I hear from so many people who have been following along since we announced, and are so excited to see us finally open.

The local community is coming together and enjoying the space. It’s been humbling to see. I’ve been struggling with finding the time to do all the things. There’s so much to do, and I only have so much time and energy. Anything digital is a huge time suck. Social media, updating the website, working on merch designs, label design and lore, orders, reporting to the various government agencies. The list goes on and on. It’s a lot.

Two liters of Märzen

In addition to many classic lager styles, I noticed that four of the beers you have available currently have some degree of crossover terminology with IPAs: a Cold IPA, a New Zealand Pils, and two different Hazy Pale Lagers. Did you feel that these are important to serve as a bridge for Sacramento beer fans used to IPAs, or are these more modern takes on lagers simply exciting to you and in your wheelhouse personally?

It’s a little bit of both. We like hops too! I don’t really look at it as a thing that we’re just tacking on to our beer menu to fill a need. We like to make and drink these beers too. In many ways they can be just as challenging, if not more challenging to make as the traditional stuff. It’s important to us that we show the full range of what lager can do.

Many people think lager is just one thing, but it can be nearly anything a beer made with ale yeast can be. That being said, there are a good amount of people that just want an IPA or something hazy, and we can easily hand over one of our hoppy lagers with little resistance. It’s fun to see their faces light up with joyous confusion when we tell them everything we make is a lager after enjoying their hazy beer.

In addition to that, it fits in nicely to the rotation of our traditional lager fermentation schedule. All of our traditional lagers are sent into horizontal lagering tanks to hang out for as long as we can stand, and then filtered from there. These dry-hopped lagers are all kept in the unitank, and are ready to enjoy in half the time.

Awakening Chaos (2nd Hazy Pale Lager) and Boundless Vision Cold IPA

I noticed that your labels break the mold that I normally see from lager breweries, going with detailed illustrations. What was the genesis of that decision?

Rather than going with the currently popular route of having a very classic/nostalgic look for lager beer cans, we decided to go in a different direction. We're telling a whole story, in a disjointed way through small pieces of lore told on each beer can. Every beer label reveals a new part of the story. I do really like the look of the classic, clean lager beer label, but we just wanted to do something a little different. It poses some challenges for Brady to come up with the verbiage for the new lore pretty regularly, but it scratches another creative itch for us.

I came up with this idea while I was fully immersed in Elden Ring. The way these FromSoftware games tell a story is pretty vague at best. You’re really left to scavenge the world looking for clues about what the hell is even going on. I thought this could be a pretty cool idea, if applied to beer labels. It’s just a tiny bit of added value, if you care to engage with it. It’s also totally fine if you just like the look of the label art, or don’t care about that at all and just want the beer inside.

Are there any aspects of the business that you’re not able to introduce quite yet as you’re just getting up and running that you hope to layer on down the road?

Events. It’s been something that we’re just dipping our toes into now. We initially just wanted to figure out what normal business looked like before we started hosting events, or having live music, or that sort of thing. It is something we need to work on for sure. Breweries these days have become little flexible event spaces, and we need to be sure to accommodate that sort of thing here. Do you have any advice or ideas? I’m all ears!

Once the brewery is past the stage of *new* (year 2?), beyond making great beer, where do you hope to invest the most effort to continue creating awareness for Geisthaus, building the brand and attracting in new visitors?

In my mind we need to continue to invest in the space, and the customer experience. I know I touched on this earlier, but I think it’s becoming really important to have a great place to be. We really want you to feel welcome and comfortable here. We want to continue to build our community, and hopefully with it the word continues to spread. We need to invest more time into our social media. We knew early on that this should be a focus of ours. We want to tell our story and engage with people like an old friend, rather than a brand. Brady and I are also pretty competitive people, and will be entering our beer into the bigger competitions, with the hopes to bring home some medals, and with them the accolades and respect of our peers.

Landbier slow pours

What’s the most important thing you’ve learned so far in your first couple months of opening that you wish you could go back in time and tell younger Ben 1 year ago?

Oh man, I've learned so much and made so many mistakes along the way. Where do I even start? I think I would tell myself it’s okay to ask for help, and lean on other people. I tend to just want to do it all myself, and it’s mostly totally unnecessary. I’m still trying to learn this lesson. In going through this process, I’ve also gained so much respect for any business owner, especially in this industry. This is hard. Even if you did it, and it didn’t work out, I still have so much respect for you.

You’re a dad right? Any recommendations to other parents who are about to venture down the path of starting a business for the first time given the demands and stress of doing so?

I am! Being a dad is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. I love being a dad! My 2 year old daughter is already very interested in beer, and can distinguish the Geisthaus logo from others. It’s super cute hearing her say “Daddy’s brewery” when I’m wearing some of our merch. But yeah, be prepared to not be home much, and set yourself up with a lot of support from family. I’m still trying to figure this one out, honestly. My current work/life balance is pretty out of whack. Hopefully I’ll be able to slow down a little bit and enjoy what we’ve accomplished and spend more quality time with my family in the near future.

Little Naomi

Thank you Doug for your time and interest in our little lager brewery in Sacramento! Your insights into the world of marketing has been incredibly educational and you make learning more about that side of the business fun. Keep up the good work! Looking forward to pouring you all the foamy lager beer on your next visit to Sacramento! ❤️ Geisthaus

If there’s one skill I’m more proud of than any other, it’s my instincts. After 12 years as an auditor, I’ve learned to sense when something doesn’t quite add up. It’s the same instinct that tells me when someone is destined for success — the way they speak, the thoroughness in their plans. I felt that confidence and patience in Ben long before I knew about the ten-year blueprint he and Brady had crafted, forcing themselves to work side-by-side before even thinking about making their dream business a reality. This 'little lager brewery' might start small, but it’s clear to me (despite the two hazy lagers) — it’s got a big future ahead (of head)🍦.