After Short's Brewing Co. announced this week plans to sell 19.99% of the company to California-based Lagunitas Brewing Co., we spoke with Short's co-owners Joe Short and Scott Newman-Bale.

Bellaire-based Short's is one of the largest brewers in Michigan, and the deal comes as a number of large, international conglomerates have purchased successful craft breweries. Heineken recently bought out Lagunitas, so the major, Netherlands-based company is actually holding the stake in Short's.

Short and Newman-Bale said they said they haven't spoken with anyone from Heineken. Short also said that Heineken remains majority family-owned, like Short's — of which he still controls 60%.

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The following has been edited for clarity and length:

How are people taking the news that you released yesterday about the partnership?

Short: The staff has been excited since we told them well before the announcement, and I think everyone's just relieved that there's closure and it's officially official. There's a lot of energy, a lot of excitement at both the Bellaire and Elk Rapids facilities, and out in the fields with our sales team.

Newman-Bale: On the consumer side — on the kind of customer side, our accounts have been a massive outpouring of support, we've heard a lot of virtually all positive comments from retailers. And then obviously on the consumer end, there's definitely, as expected, a mixed reaction, and I think a lot of that's driven by fear of the unknown, but we've also had — there's been a mix of positive comments as well.

What impact will fans of Short's beer notice from this sale?

Newman-Bale: Nothing.

Short: Pretty much, nothing. Maybe a more consistent supply of product this time next year.

Newman-Bale: Right now, we're out of beer, pretty much. So, we'll be able to do a few small expansions. But, we don't have any territory expansions planned, not that they won't happen, but we don't have any planned, right now we can't even supply the markets we can. And other than that, there really isn't anything.

The Elk Rapids facility when we were up there in May was very active — like I'm pretty sure they said they were ramping up to 24/7 operations. How equipped are your existing facilities to handle the brewing demands and how might this partnership affect that situation?

Newman-Bale: It is at 100% capacity now. So we're running 24 hours, seven days a week. And we don't really have any way of making more beer, but we do have — we've already got about half a million dollars' worth of capital improvements this year alone in Elk Rapids. And a lot of that coming online right now and helping, hopefully get through summer. But as I said, we're within a one-day supply right now, a one- or two-day supply. With the partnership, this allows us to do a couple of things. We're looking into doing a brew-house and some additional fermentation. That was on the cards regardless, but that's kind of where we're going.

Does the partnership help with those projects?

Newman-Bale: Yeah, I think so. It allows us the confidence to do them. The market is obviously erratic at this point, so just having that kind of smoothing and safety net allows us to kind of move forward with them.

Why Lagunitas and, in the larger picture, Heineke? Were there any other options you looked into?

Newman-Bale: We had a lot of people coming through. We had a lot of offers and a lot of interest, but we ultimately had every single one of them was something quite dramatic: It was a loss of control. A loss of identity. A loss of integrity. And I think we really only came down to one offer that was meant to be a — the intent is to be a minority deal — it's set up to be a minority deal for the long-term, not just the short-term. And they didn't want any control, and they didn't get any control.

So Joe, you mentioned in the news release that through the deal you're experiencing "what true independence feels like." Could you maybe expand on that, say what you meant by it?

Short: What I mean by that is when you're growing as fast as a brewery like ours has done, you don't have time to do a lot of planning and proper cash management. So we could have done things a lot better and/or differently to kind of tee us up for success. But we were just so deep in the trenches, trying to keep up with the growth, that we didn't have time to do things like we would have done. It would have been like, "Well, we'll just get to that later," and in that process, you know, we paid premiums for loans, to suppliers. I guess on the sourcing and the supply team management side, we could have done things a lot differently. And then after the wave of that intense growth was over, we were left with this less-than-ideal sort of situation with our suppliers and our debts. And with that less-than-ideal situation, you are restricted in many ways to continue moving forward a little looser and freer to be nimble to do fun and cool projects. And so, what I mean by being more independent is, like, partnering with somebody like Lagunitas, who's buying into a brewer like us, helps us liquidate really horrible notes and refinance more properly. Helps us guide our supply-chain management side to free us up in a way that we've never been free before, to really focus on what we need to do for the front side, which is push amazing, very thoughtful and creative products out the door. We're not restricted or bound by really horrible credit-card fees or things like that. To be truly free is to have your business and your production side under control.

Was this a very difficult decision, and if so, how?

Short: At first, we were always of the super-independent mindset. And then, once we realized that we could be doing things better — and we took a look at the state of the craft industry around us — things really started to make a lot more sense to just talk about it. And that's really how it kind of started, "Well, how would it look like if we did this? How would things change or not for us if we pursued a strategic partnership? And what is the industry gonna do, and how does that look for us 10 or 20 years down the road for us and our employees?" So really, it was just more of a thoughtful, "let's talk about it" approach — not like, "Oh, we have to do this because this is what we gotta do." It wasn't that at all. In fact, we'd be completely fine without a partnership right now. But we just felt like it was the best move, considering that we don't know what the future holds for the state of our industry right now.

How likely is Short's to sell any more stakes in the company?

Newman-Bale: It's set up so that it's neither party's intent to change the stake. If certain things go wrong or well, then they could theoretically go up and down. But it's designed quite restrictively as a long-term minority stake.

What we saw happen with Lagunitas where Heineken bough the rest of them a couple months ago — is that something that is possible here?

Newman-Bale: I think we've learned to never say anything about what is and is not possible, based on the previous statement. But it's definitely not the intent. The difference here is that when Heineken wanted to get into the craft market, they looked for a partner to kind of guide that entire future, which was Lagunitas. Now they have that partner, the minority-majority is less important to the big scheme of things. And their, kind of, intent is more making sure that they have a regional presence across the world — not just in the U.S., but across the world. And that doesn't necessarily bode to having large stakes in small amounts of breweries. It kind of bodes to having smaller stakes in more breweries. So I don't know, that would be my guess at their intent — although, we don't talk to them about that.

Joe, obviously you're very close to this product. Your name is on it. Could you say why not just sell the whole thing while business is good?

Short: I don't necessarily want to. I don't want to walk away. I never imagined I would even sell any of it, to be honest with you. But then, of course, before I even started, I met Scott. And I can't imagine doing what I do without Scott. This has been my dream, and I'm a worker — I work seven days a week, and I enjoy what I do. And I want to make a difference, and I feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg for what we can do with not only beer, but in our community. And I've become really interested in community development and philanthropy. And I think that at this point in my career and as a person, as an individual, I'm just getting started at what I can achieve in this lifetime. And I can't imagine not being here and being part of it and guiding it.

Spirits of Detroit columnist Robert Allen covers craft alcohol for the Free Press. Contact him: rallen@freepress.com or on Untappd, raDetroit; Twitter @rallenMI, and Facebook robertallen.news. Free Press arts & entertainment editor Steve Byrne contributed to this report.