On the back of all that success, most brewers would be happy to catch their breath. But like so many amateurs-gone-pro, it’s the thrill of the next recipe that drives King. Producing Hommelbier, or any other the widely-applauded Perennial Ales, can only bring so much satisfaction — they’re only new once for King. "I have the attention span of a child. But when it comes to brewing, you grow your skill by brewing more and more batches of the same thing. That’s just not my forte. I need the stimulation and the challenge of new beers all the time.” Perennial has been prolific by any standards, introducing ambitious beers like Heart of Gold, Abraxas, and Peach Berliner Weiss in the past year. So when King says he needs stimulation, he’s talking about an extreme need to go further, into an area of brewing where business viability is challenging, to say the least.

King’s owned his own business before. He even has a master's degree in business. So he’s not naive to the constraints and goals of commerce. And before he ever set his eye on Perennial, he’d put together a business plan for a brewpub in St. Louis himself. But having to rely on chefs and a staff, start-up costs, and not having the operational experience kept it on the back burner. So he surprised himself when he was suddenly thinking of pursuing his own brewery less than a year into his time at Perennial. “It’s part of my personality to have my own thing. It’s always been an end-all goal. But I didn’t think Perennial was going to be a stepping stone. I thought I’d be here for a long, long time before I made the jump,” King said.

It was a trip to the Craft Brewers Conference that planted the seed in King’s mind — even if he didn’t realize it at the time.