Unfiltered Ownership #1

Real stories of what running a brewery is like

It’s 8:20 PM on a Friday. In the civilian world, this is the “relaxing” part of the week. My wife is out for a rare girls’ night, and I’m home with the kid, finally leaning into the couch and watching March Madness. The stakes for my evening were supposed to be limited to Minecraft assistance and bedtime stories.

Then my phone buzzes. It’s Casey, my Friday night bartender and assistant brewer.

In this industry, a text from your staff at 8:20 PM on a Friday is never a “just checking in” message. It’s a flare sent up from the trenches. The text contains a suggestion for a new beer name. At Brewery 4 Two 4, that’s our shorthand for “something incredibly dumb just happened.” Most of our tap list names are essentially monuments to human absurdity. This time, the absurdity had a name which we will call “Mr. Pascal” for the purposes of this story.

Casey informs me that Mr. Pascal is officially 86’d. This guy—a first-timer—had spent the last two hours physically working his way down the bar like a slow-moving social virus. He’d start at the far end, talk way too loud and way too close to a stranger until they finished their pint in record time just to escape, and then he’d slide one stool over to the next victim. He was a one-man churn machine for my customer base.

Casey, being a pro, cut him off politely. No scene. Just the “it’s time to go, man” talk. I’m watching the security feed on my phone from my living room, watching the replay of the guy walking out, thinking, “Okay, crisis averted. Back to the couch.”

Ten minutes later: “He’s back. Looking for a backpack he never had.”

Then: “He’s come back four times. Go ahead and call the cops.”

I’m now 911-dispatching from my house while watching a live-streamed psychodrama on a four-inch screen. Casey tells the guy he texted the boss to check the cameras to see if he had a backpack when he came in and to wait on the patio until we figure it out, a smart move to keep the floor clear, while I’m scrubbing through footage of the last two hours like a low-budget detective. Spoiler: There was no backpack. There was never a backpack.

The police arrive, they trespass him, and they give him the “if you set foot here again, you’re going to jail” speech. From my phone feed of the parking lot camera, I see this going down and when done with the officer, he wanders off into the night. We call it a win. In the alcohol business, this isn’t exactly “common,” but it’s a known line item on the emotional balance sheet. You sell the social lubricant; occasionally, the gears slip.

Twenty minutes pass. My stress level is coming back down.

Then Brooke, another one of our bartenders, heads out to the garage for supplies. She hears a hissing sound. She looks over, and there’s Mr. Pascal, crouched down by Casey’s truck in the dark, manually letting the air out of the tires.

Now, Brooke is a professional, but is not one to be crossed and is capable of a vocabulary that would make Samuel L. Jackson take notes. She unleashes a tirade that probably echoed halfway to Lake Michigan and bolts back inside to call the police for round two. Pascal vanishes into the shadows again.

Now the manhunt is on. We have at least two police cruisers circling the block, shining their spotlights into the dark corners of the neighborhood.

At this point, the “Regulars’ Militia” assembles. We have guys who have been sitting at that bar for years; they see Casey and Brooke as family. They’re out by the truck, checking for damage, playing sentry. Good news is there is nothing missing other than air pressure.

I tell Casey to go change the battery on one of the security cameras just in case this clown comes back for a second round of brain-dead vengeance.

Casey is walking around front to perform the battery swap. And then, like a villain in a movie who forgot the script, Mr. Pascal just... walks by. Right down the sidewalk in front of the brewery. Casey runs back inside and tells Brooke to call the cops back as he is right in front and runs back out with the regulars to keep an eye on where he is headed.

The cops, who were already circling the block, come flying back and find him at the building right next to ours. Manhunt over. Mr. Pascal is given silver bracelets and is hauled off for a restful night on a concrete bed.

Later, the officer calls me for the full rundown from my end and asks for the security camera clips to build the case. The kicker? The guy only had two beers over two hours at our place. This wasn’t a “he had one too many IPAs” situation. No signs of being drunk.He was either just very unstable or more likely, he was as high as giraffe balls on something else entirely before he ever stepped through our door.

After uploading my clips to the Sheriff’s Department portal and discussing all this stupidity with Casey, I finally crack a beer of my own and go back to the couch to resume March Madness while searching the recesses of my brain for how to prevent the next round of stupidity whenever it may pop up.

Just another relaxing Friday night in the alcohol industry.

This is the first installment of Unfiltered Ownership, a new recurring special series here at Illiquid Assets. It’s an occasional departure from our usual Macro Views to focus on the Micro Brews—and the messy, chaotic, often absurd world of alcohol entrepreneurship. Subscribe now and don’t miss future stories from behind the bar.