This is the never-ending, big question for Wicked Weed. How do you take something that has built its entire existence on the idea of scarcity and uniqueness and expand it? Why grow? Why get bigger? We want to get bigger only because it adds to the quality of the product we’re producing. I think we’re making the best beer today that we’ve ever made. And we’re making a lot more beer than we did in the first year. I think that growing is giving us the ability to be better at what we do. It’s also allowing us to put ourselves in front of more people and give them more of that experience and have a larger impact on the momentum of craft beer as a whole. That’s why we do what we do. Now as far as how does scarcity play a role in that, for a beer like Red Angel [Wicked Weed made a single, 30-BBL batch, and pre-sold 400 cases of bottles at the pub.], it’s hard for me to make much more of this beer. It takes so much time, so many tanks, 5,000-plus pounds of fruit. For me, to scale that up starts to get a little bit ridiculous. And there’s also a point that we want it to be savored, we want it to be enjoyed. I think the demand for a lot of beer is out of control right now, and I think it’s helping propel craft beer. But we would like to be a nice mix of easy-to-access beer that’s really good, and then some rare stuff that’s super-rad, that we can really go at and not have to worry about. I don’t even have to think about how much money I’m spending on producing this beer. And I don’t really care if we make money on this beer. Red Angel is just to be this expression of what we really want to do.

That’s our challenge as we go forward as a company: how do we continue to grow as a brand and put ourselves in more people's cabinets and refrigerators while at the same time maintaining this scarcity thing? And you know what, Wicked Weed is not always going to be as cool as it was last year. That’s just the way the market goes. Everybody wants the new hot thing. They want the new guy. Our goal is just to be a really, really high-quality example of these beers, and we hope the drinker goes and buys the new guy’s beer. They deserve it. You should be excited about trying something new. Just don’t forget about good. Good is the point.