More News

Dousing thirst with a home-brewed beer

Brothers hope Hook and Ladder company catches fire

Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2005

Click here to enlarge this photo David S. Spence⁄The Gazette Wheaton resident Matt Fleischer, president and chief executive officer of the Silver Spring-based Hook & Ladder Brewing Company, pours a pint of the company’s flagship wheat beer Monday at Mayorga Coffee Factory in Silver Spring. Fleischer, who owns the company with his brother, Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad Lt. Rich Fleischer, wants his company to be a ‘‘major player in the D.C.⁄Maryland market.” Thirsty for local beer?

But, owning your own brewing company? That’s just crazy talk, right?

Not for Wheaton residents Rich and Matt Fleischer. They’re living the dream, right here in Montgomery County.

‘‘It’s a tremendous amount of fun. The beer industry is a blast,” said Rich Fleischer, 34, who owns the Silver Spring-based Hook & Ladder Brewing Company with his brother, Matt, 30. ‘‘Brewers eat, sleep and — pardon the pun — drink ... beer.”

And that’s how it’s been since the brothers Fleischer relaunched the brewing company over the summer, after an earlier venture in California.

‘‘It’s a lot of ‘feet on the street,’” said Matt Fleischer, president and chief executive officer of the company. ‘‘The goal now is building the brand and getting it out there ... because when they try it, they like it.”

The concept for the Hook & Ladder Brewing Company developed in the late 1990s when Matt joined Rich, a firefighter, in California to start a beer company. But the beer itself was conceived more than 10 years ago.

In the early to mid-1990s — at the height of the microbrew craze — do-it-yourselfers across the country were whipping up batches of homemade brew with $100 kits and some basic ingredients.

Rich Fleischer, who majored in biology at New York’s University of Rochester, was one of them.

After college, he moved to Oakland, Calif., where he was introduced to Sierra Nevada, a beer made at a microbrewery in Chico, Calif.

Where you can get Hook & Ladder Beer: Bethesda BD’s Mongolian Barbeque, 7201 Wisconsin Ave. The Barking Dog, 4723 Elm St. Hard Times Café, 4920 Del Ray Ave. Gaithersburg Old Towne Firehouse Cue, 317 East Diamond Ave. Silver Spring Quarry House Tavern, 8401 Georgia Ave. Mayorga Coffee Factory, 8040 Georgia Ave.

The discovery soon led to a significant purchase: a home-brewing kit.

‘‘I got into the hobby of making my own vice and it developed from there,” said Rich Fleischer. ‘‘It took a lot of time to develop the recipes. There were very early batches that, obviously, we won’t discuss,” he joked. ‘‘It was a lot of trial and error.”

Eventually, he discovered a recipe for a wheat beer he was ‘‘willing to serve to other people.” People liked it and encouraged him to do something with his newfound talent.

‘‘They really enjoyed it,” he said. ‘‘And I thought the idea of owning a brewery was kind of cool.”

His brother Matt said, ‘‘Brewing made sense to [Rich].” But business made sense to Matt.

A University of Mary Washington graduate with an entrepreneur’s brain, Matt had talked with his brother about ‘‘how cool it would be” to tap into the microbrew trend.

Drawing from Rich’s experience as a firefighter with the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad, the Fleischers developed Hook & Ladder Brewing Company with its flagship wheat Hook & Ladder Beer.

While there was a fair amount of microbrew competition on the West Coast, Matt said Hook & Ladder, with its signature firefighter’s ax tap handle, had 180 retail accounts in the San Francisco Bay area.

Notoriety in the beer-drinking world also helped. In 2001, Hook & Ladder Beer won a gold medal in the American-style Wheat Category at the Great American Beer Festival, beating 53 brewers from across the country.

With the gold medal and a successful business concept, the brothers, who grew up in Bethesda, moved back east. Rich went back to the firehouse where he serves as a lieutenant. Matt went to the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. There, he became involved in the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship, which offers resources for new businesses. Matt graduated in May with a master’s degree and $10,000 startup money from the center, and adapted the business model he had out West for the East Coast beer drinker.

‘‘The goal is to be a major player in the D.C.⁄Maryland market,” Matt said.

Entering the microbrew industry can be lucrative, but challenging.

The Brewers Association, a Colorado-based organization that tracks the craft beer industry, lists craft brewing as a $3.5 million industry which has grown each year for the past 35 years — 7.2 in 2004.

Underscoring the challenges are some sobering statistics: 46 brewpubs and 26 microbreweries opened in 2004, but 77 brewpubs and 12 microbreweries closed, according to the Brewers Association Web site, beertown.org.

‘‘Beer is definitely a tough business to break into,” said Asher Epstein, managing director of the Dingman Center. ‘‘Think about how many tap handles there are at a local bar.”

To be successful, Epstein said a beer company would have to demonstrate that it has a stronger product than the weakest product at the bar with a large number of taps. Once it gets a spot on the tap line, the company has to prove it can sell at a brisk pace, he said. Then the company can go to a bar with fewer taps and expand from there by demonstrating that its product can be profitable.

It also helps to have a good name and a good product, Epstein said. Hook & Ladder also has ties to the community.

Part of the connection comes from the company’s work with the D.C. Firefighters Burn Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to assisting in the recovery and rehabilitation of injured firefighters and burn patients in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. The company donates $2 from each barrel sold to the foundation. At an October fund-raiser, Hook & Ladder raised $1,500.

‘‘It’s a brand that resonates with people and with firefighters,” Matt said. ‘‘We’re hoping to keep going strong with [the fund-raising].”

He’s also hoping to keep going strong with retail sales. Already distributed at pubs and bars in Washington, D.C., Florida and Maryland, Matt plans to keep getting the Hook & Ladder name out.

‘‘We get such a great reaction from this beer, which is so exciting,” Matt said. ‘‘It’s great for me to walk in to a bar and see someone drinking our beer.”