Old Nation Brewery was struggling. Then it made a beer called M-43.

WILLIAMSTON — It's 10 a.m. on a Monday, and the phone is ringing in the brewpub attached to Old Nation Brewery.

Travis Fritts answers. The person on the other end wants to know where she can buy Old Nation's M-43 beer near Grand Rapids.

Those calls come in all the time. Even on Monday morning.

Old Nation's M-43, a New England-style India pale ale, has become one of the most sought-after beers in the state. It's currently one of the 10 best-rated Michigan beers, according to Beer Advocate.

In the last year, the success of the hazy, citrusy beer helped take the Williamston brewery from a struggling operation to a business that's consistently topped out its production.

“Because this beer is still really scarce in some parts of the state, people have this perception that we’re this really small brewpub, and we’re not,” co-owner Fritts said. “We’re making an immense amount of beer, and, really, that’s all M-43,”

Old Nation now sends out about 4,000 cases of beer each week. Almost all of it is M-43. At the rate they're going, Fritts said, Old Nation is on track to make a little more than 20,000 barrels total this year, placing them well within the top 10 breweries in terms of production.

In 2016, Old Nation sold around 1,200 barrels of beer.

For now, M-43 is still a Michigan-only product, but Fritts said they're not counting on staying exclusively in the state. They just haven't even hit demand locally.

“We just have no idea what the demand is in Michigan," he said. "We’ve gotten nowhere near it."

Entering new territory

Fritts and Old Nation aren't new in the craft beer world. Fritts, a trained German brewmaster, has been brewing in Michigan for 15 years with stints at Detroit Beer Co. and Arcadia Brewing. Head brewer Nate Rykse studied fermentation technology at the University of California-Davis and is the former head brewer at Detroit Beer.

When Old Nation opened in 2015, Fritts and his partners felt they had the ideal equipment and team. And Fritts, a Dimondale native, said he was excited to open "a brewery without gimmicks" near where he grew up.

They'd focus on production. As it turned out, the brewpub was far busier than expected in the first few weeks, leaving customers with long wait times and a bad experience. It was hard to shake the negative reviews, Fritts said.

And their beers — traditional German and Belgian-style brews — weren't making a splash. On top of that, the industry as a whole had grown, making the brewing business more competitive.

And in an industry where social media and marketing has become almost as important as the beer itself, folks at Old Nation hadn't quite pinned down how to reach their audience and tell their story, Fritts said.

“We weren’t communicating at all, so people were just left to wonder 'Why is this so mediocre?'" Fritts said.

A 'genius' move

Fritts had been researching New England IPAs when he ran across a conversation about the style in a Detroit craft beer enthusiast Facebook group in late 2016. There was contention within the group about whether the style was over-hyped. Some of the comments Fritts saw were rife with misinformation.

He broke a brewer taboo and commented. He later invited people from the group to visit the brewery and brew a New England IPA. The feedback from that experiment helped create M-43.

Inviting beer lovers to be a part of the creation of the brew was a "genius" move, said Liz Crowe, a brewery consultant and the president of Fermenta, a craft beverage networking group for women.

Crowe said Old Nation's success is rooted in the fact that they heard what their consumers had to say. In a saturated market, listening to people is more important than ever, she said.

“When they realized that no one was drinking the beer they were making, they listened," Crowe said.

Old Nation initially struggled to stay afloat. M-43's popularity became the turning point.

Founders Brewing Co. in Grand Rapids had a terrible time when it opened in 1997 before it introduced its first hit, Dirty Bastard, a Scotch ale, said Dave Engbers, one of the brewer's co-founders.

That success shifted Founder's into a "product-driven company," Engber's said. They put a greater focus on creating quality and innovative beers. That shift helped them to feed their creativity while becoming financially stable, he said.

Engbers said the success of any Michigan beer helps the industry overall.

"It's really nice when we see a great story like M-43," he said. "It makes beer relevant."

Scott Newman-Bale, a partner and the chief financial officer at Short's Brewing said knowing how much to produce and how much to expand after creating hit beers can be tricky. The brewery, which opened in 2002, has been in a state of constant expansion in recent years, he said.

Short's, which is based in Bellaire, Michigan, brews dozens of specialty and seasonal beers alongside a handful of flagship beers like its fruit rye ale Soft Parade and American pale ale Space Rock.

“If you don’t make enough people get over it quickly, and it becomes irrelevant," Newman-Bale said. "But if you go too risky and if it’s too available then people might not like it either.”

He said it's also sometimes hard to peg what beers will take off. Great effort doesn't always lead to success. One of Short's biggest hits last year — Soft Parade Shandy — was an afterthought. They had lemonade leftover from another brew, and it became one of their best sellers.

Newman-Bale described M-43 as an "exemplary beer."

The beer is hazy and less bitter than most IPAs. In a glass, it looks more like orange juice than a typical beer. M-43 has hints of pineapple and orange. It's also not too bitter, making an approachable choice for folks who typically shy away from IPAs.

M-43 can be found at most craft beer stores for around $14.99 for a four pack. The steep price is in part because of the quantity of hops it takes to make the beer. But Fritts cautions against shelling out more than $15 for a four-pack. If the beer isn't refrigerated, he also recommends giving it a pass. M-43 is best when it's fresh.

Curt Kosal, owner of Vine and Brew in Okemos, said his customers have been keen to buy M-43. The store sells as much of the beer as Kosal can get.

“It’s one of the easiest things in the store to sell," he said. "It's very little work on our part to sell that beer.”

M-43 is also currently at Meijer stores across the state. In August, the beer became available at Ford Field and has since cropped up at Little Caesar's Arena in Detroit.

Rex Halfpenny, who publishes the Michigan Beer Guide, said time will tell if the New England IPAs like M-43 have staying power in the craft beer market. If it does, M-43 could be to Old Nation what Two Hearted Ale is to Bell's Brewery or Fat Tire is for New Belgium, he said.

"These breweries need that product that resonates with the craft beer community so that it gets to such a point that it pays the bills to allow the brewery to be creative and do other things," he said.

Fritts said M-43's success has helped the brewery become financially healthy. They're now able to pay off old debts after initially investing around $5 million in facilities.

He said the strong reaction to M-43 has also changed the way he thinks about how people approach beer. He said it forced the people at Old Nation to "pull our heads out of our books."

People aren't buying on packaging or style, he said. But they are buying on what story they want to back.

“They’re buying a brewery that represents them as people, and you can’t force or fake that " he said. "You just kind of have to wait for your tribe and serve them."

Contact reporter Haley Hansen at (517) 267-1344 or hhansen@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @halehansen.