It began as an inside joke...
Forward Staff
San Francisco
It began as an inside joke a decade ago when Jeremy Cowan and the only two other Jews in his high school were wondering why - when there was Jewish wine and Jewish food - there was no Jewish beer. Today, Mr. Cowan, 28, has turned the joke into a business and is struggling to keep pace with the unexpectedly large demand for his product: HE'BREW - The Chosen Beer.
His initial investment was a mere $2,000, barely enough for a small first batch. But based on the strength of a name, which he admits is pure gimmickry, his company, the San Francisco-based Shmaltz Brewing Company, has penetrated a competitive micro-brewery market that others spend millions just to enter.
The initial results have been encouraging, but marketing Mr. Cowan's product is tricky business. With its decidedly Jewish appeal, he is faced with selling a perishable product that is difficult to ship to small niche markets in Jewish communities across the country. While there are a few Israeli beers that make their way across the ocean to some select locations, Mr. Cowan is essentially pioneering a product that has never before been marketed to Jews.
"It is a total grass-roots product," said Mr. Cowan, speaking from his San Francisco apartment where a kitchen table that doubles as his office. "I had no marketing budget, no staff, no nothing. Just a neat little product to get the word out." So far, novelty has been more than enough. Newsweek featured the beer last month in a short piece and the San Francisco Examiner did a lengthy profile. Word of mouth has done the rest. After being on the shelf in Bay Area stores for just a month, he has moved 800 cases so far, and another 100 through his mail order distributor (a case costs only about $30 but shipping costs can run another $30).
The early success surprised even the experts. "When I first talked to him I thought his idea was neat, but I'd heard so many people talk about contract brews [where a large brewery uses its equipment to brew a specialty beer] that never happened," said Loren Allen, the manager of Anderson Valley Brewing Co. in Booneville, Calif. "But he came up and was serious about it and he wanted a real high quality product. We really liked it also because we're Jewish," he said. "I knew there would be a market. He's doing a much better job than I ever anticipated."
But even a beer named HE'BREW - "Don't pass out... Passover" - needed an extra push, a sign that it is, in fact, the real thing if it was going to call itself the chosen beer. In short, it needed the type of legitimacy that can only come from a kosher hechsure. So, in a scene out of the "Frisco Kid," Gerschon Horowitz, an inspector for the Los Angeles-based Kosher Supervisors of America, rose early one morning from his San Rafael home and headed several hours north into the wilds of Mendocino County, where a rabbi seldom treads.
"I've done wineries, apple processing plants and others, but I'd never done a brewery before," said Mr. Horowitz.
Nor had the brewery ever seen the likes of Mr. Horowitz. "He wanted to learn a little bit about the brewing process. So we gave him a tour," said Mr. Allen. Beer is inherently kosher - except during Passover - and Mr. Horowitz was essentially making sure that the plant was clean and contained no non-kosher elements. "It was a clean, nice brewery, he said, though he laments that he did not actually get to try the beer, itself. "I would have liked that."
There are a few large breweries that have a kosher certification. Coors, for example, has recently begun to display the hechsure of the Orthodox Union. "Coors has told us that they are extremely satisfied with the results of being kosher for marketing reasons," said Rabbi Moshe Elefant of the Orthodox Union. But to date, HE'BREW is the only effort to bring the burgeoning American micro-brew market to Jews.
The beer recipe is something that Mr. Cowan designed himself with the help of Anderson Valley brewers. "It was designed to go well with food, because obviously you can't have anything for Jews that does not go well with food." Anderson Valley is considered one of the top ten breweries in the country and the early reviews of HE'BREW have been enthusiastic.
But in addition to taste, Mr. Cowan admits that shtick is just as important. The label, created by his girlfriend, San Francisco artist Tracy Ginsberg, features a grinning Chasid clutching two beer bottles with the Golden Gate and the Old City of Jerusalem in the foreground. "It's not just Jews. I'm getting all kinds of people from religious Jews to absolute gentiles who work with a Jewish person," said Mr. Cowan. "People want to know, 'Is this for real? Then they see the kosher seal, the bar code, etc."
Mr. Cowan is also adamant that his product, shtick and all, play a role in the Jewish community. He has donated beer to events for Jewish Community Centers, local synagogues and educational groups. "The Chabad house in San Francisco got a pony keg for Purim and they got a total kick out of it," he said. Currently, he is working with a number of local distributors in the Bay Area and recently expanded to Southern California. But it is a product that is difficult to ship cross-country, and he has yet to hit the biggest Jewish market in the nation, New York.
"The next step is to take this initial product and expand its distribution to about 20 major markets in the U.S. where there is an active Jewish population." According to others who have tried to market a new product to a mercurial Jewish population, producers must search for a novel approach. "It's a tight community. But the problem is he can't mass market," said Mary Anne Jackson, founder of My Own Meals, Inc., which makes a non-perishable kosher meal that can be shipped anywhere, and whose clients include the Department of Defense. "He's unique in that he has a unique product that's kosher. You really have to be creative. It's a slow process. Unless you are doing something normal like corn flakes it's not easy."
Indeed, nothing about HE'BREW has come easy. When Mr. Cowan ordered his first batch from a local brewery last year, just before Chanukah, he and his mother trekked around the Bay Area looking for retailers. But his brewer spoiled the next four batches before going out of business. It was only then that Mr. Cowan hooked up with Anderson Valley. Now, he is also selling pint glasses, t-shirts, posters and postcards through (415) 648-HEBREW and through his Web site (www.shmaltz.com). HE'BREW, however, is only the beginning. Mr. Cowan already has his next product in the works - Messiah Stout, "It's the beer you've been waiting for." HE'BREW can be purchased through the Wine Club, (800) 966-7835.