CEO/Owner Travis Stewart talks to Travel Track about art, chemistry, philosophy, instinct and literature in regards to TrimTab Brewing Company in Birmingham, Alabama.
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00:50 You got into this--
00:52 it's a combination of all things--
00:54 music, business, art, creativity, and chemistry,
00:58 all together in one thing.
01:00 And yet, this place is all about that gallery,
01:02 that sort of esoteric, sometimes abstract painting
01:07 that comes with this kind of business.
01:11 Sometimes it's very precise.
01:12 Sometimes it's sort of like, let's see what we can paint.
01:15 I don't think I've ever heard a third party
01:18 say as accurately what is inside my brain,
01:23 in terms of the ethos of this company.
01:24 The path of creativity is one of following a singular voice
01:36 and being open to a multitude of voices at the same time,
01:42 in my opinion.
01:44 And so for TrimTab, it's been about identifying
01:50 very specific flavor profiles, very specific rotational
01:56 things that we're going to look at,
01:58 very experimental ingredients, very rare and highly cultivated
02:08 products that we do.
02:10 But at the end of the day, it's all
02:12 about what is it all contributing,
02:15 at the end of the day, to craft beer?
02:18 And what does it mean for Birmingham?
02:22 And what does it mean for humanity?
02:24 What does it mean for just life itself?
02:29 I ask myself that almost every day.
02:32 And it boils down to there being an element,
02:38 or a couple of key elements, of fun, innovation,
02:46 and differentiation.
02:47 And when you combine those things together,
02:55 magic happens.
02:58 We as a company are founded on not a product or a commodity.
03:04 We're founded on an idea.
03:07 TrimTab is a literal small source of change
03:13 that is the true representation of what it means to be human.
03:23 The big changes that we want to see in the world
03:25 seem so incomprehensible from anything
03:32 from Mars to petty wars.
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03:38 But there's an adjustment.
04:03 Like the thing on the wall, your guy's philosophy
04:07 about the artist, the laborer, and the crafter.
04:10 It's about balance of technique and instinct.
04:12 Finding sort of that ether, right?
04:14 And I think that's the challenge.
04:19 And I'll define what an artist is.
04:21 And you mentioned it just now.
04:25 There's a quote that he who works with his hands
04:29 is a laborer.
04:31 He works with his hands, and his hands is a craftsman.
04:37 He works with his hands, his head, and his heart
04:42 is an artist.
04:45 All of us in this building are artists.
04:48 You are an artist.
04:50 Much in the same way that we think
04:51 of the universal concept of what a TrimTab is,
04:57 being a universal idea, craft beer has always
05:07 had a manner of bringing people together.
05:11 And when I first started out, when I was 27 years old,
05:18 didn't have two pennies to rub together in college--
05:23 or in law school, excuse me.
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05:28 I needed this brand to represent more than beer.
05:36 And I feel like what has been responsible for the longevity
05:45 of this brand and the ability for this brand
05:49 to be so agile is that it has been so innovative,
05:54 and it has had subtext to what the name means.
05:59 What does the logo mean?
06:01 What does the name of this beer, like Language of Thunder,
06:06 it relates to The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot.
06:09 It's classic American literature that
06:14 can connect both your mind, your soul, your body.
06:18 It connects it all.
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06:48 But we also-- we don't hear many brewers and owners talking
06:51 about Tennyson or T.S. Eliot or these kind of people.
06:54 Can you talk about how that sort of artistic sort of maelstrom
06:59 or that cauldron of ideas informs something
07:02 like the innovation you do in the gallery and the beers?
07:05 Because that's what you're talking about.
07:07 You're talking about sort of painting outside the lines,
07:10 but with an essence of sort of taste and creativity.
07:14 Absolutely.
07:15 So the gallery in a physical form or a more obvious form
07:22 is--
07:23 we rotate beer, and we rotate art.
07:32 And the walls are constantly changing.
07:37 The landscape visually is always changing.
07:44 The bigger manifestation, as I see it, is within our people.
07:48 And I really, really see that on a daily basis.
07:53 And we are going on 10 years of being in business.
07:58 And it is incredible to see how this ethos, this idea
08:04 of a small source of big change can affect people's lives.
08:13 And it's created an incredible community,
08:16 not only around the beer, but around each other.
08:20 And that's been a remarkable thing to witness.
08:23 And I'm honored to be a part of it.
08:26 And I'm indebted to Buckminster Fuller
08:29 for having that insight of where the trim tab metaphor came from.
08:35 He was literally contemplating suicide
08:39 when he thought about the trim tab concept.
08:44 He was standing on--
08:45 So it's become an essence of hope.
08:46 It is an indelible icon of hope.
08:52 He was standing on the edge of a ship.
08:54 And as a trained engineer is looking at the back,
08:58 seeing the rudder complex, as he's
09:02 thinking about pouring himself over
09:04 into the abyss and the beyond, he sees the rudder.
09:10 And he sees the small rudder.
09:12 And just at that very, very, very critical moment,
09:16 the course shifted path.
09:20 And he saw that little trim tab move.
09:25 And that changed his life forever.
09:27 So a conversation with somebody can
09:31 change someone's life forever.
09:34 A song you listen to can change your life forever.
09:38 A beer that you have can change your life forever.
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10:38 But the brand and what we represent
10:44 is so much bigger than craft beer.
10:47 We have all gone through, globally,
10:52 an extremely traumatic experience.
10:56 And beer is not the answer.
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11:05 The connection that beer creates is--
11:08 That hope and general connectivity, I guess,
11:19 is that be it with antiquity to your neighbor down the street.
11:28 It could be literally your next door neighbor.
11:31 Or it could be Marcus Aurelius.
11:34 There is fundamental truths that make this life worth living
11:42 and inform why this life is worth living.
11:45 And we just stand behind the idea
11:52 that a small source can be the origin of big change.
11:59 And beer is our mechanism to say that.
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