Today we’d like to introduce you to Kyle Matthias.
Hi Kyle, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
My brewing journey began when I ordered a homebrewing kit with some of my friends in high school. It was the holiday season, and I remember purchasing the equipment online and including a note as if it was a gift for someone else as if the vendor would somehow find out a few underage kids were planning on homebrewing and try to shut it down. That initial brew got me hooked. I loved the process and how you could blend seemingly unrelated ingredients to create something tangible. As an undergrad, I could never quite shake the thought of becoming a brewer as my career. However, it didn’t seem feasible to me as I was still under age and I figured there was no way to break into the industry. So, I bounced around from major to major. I started in Environmental Sciences, then to Civil Engineering with an Environmental focus, and finally landed on Nutritional Sciences/Biochemistry. Upon graduation, I immediately enrolled in the Nutritional Biology doctorate program at UC Davis. It became clear to me fairly quickly that the academic research world wasn’t for me. There were way too many politics involved, and I felt like my wheels were spinning reading journal article after journal article. As luck may have it, UC Davis is home to one of the best Fermentation Science programs in the country. So, as I had already decided that I would drop out of the graduate program, I enrolled in a brewing course while I still had the opportunity. Upon completing the course, I informed the program that I’d be dropping out after the year’s end. I remember calling my wife (fiancé at the time) to tell her – I’m sure she was wondering what she had gotten herself into. I spent the rest of the term reaching out to breweries back home in St. Louis, offering to volunteer in exchange for experience in the industry.
After moving back home, I volunteered at 3 breweries simultaneously in hopes of landing a paying job. My sister was teaching the daughter of the Head Brewer at Morgan Street at the time, and thanks to that connection, I started volunteering there first. I then volunteered at Charleville and Modern as I continued my employment search. The folks at Morgan Street were kind enough to offer me a seasonal job as an Assistant Brewer, and I jumped at the opportunity. From there, I went on to work as a Brewer at Modern. While attending UC Davis, I noticed they had a continuing education program called the Master Brewer’s Program. While working at Modern, I applied for the program, but the waitlist was years long. Lucky for me, the owners of Modern had recently attended the same program and were able to pull some strings that allowed me to skip the waitlist and get into the program the following term.
During the Master Brewer’s Program, some folks from Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon, came out to interview for an internship opportunity. I had family in Oregon and had always wanted to live there, so I decided to sit for the interview. As the program wound down, I was informed that I didn’t get the internship but that they would like to offer me a job instead. I had fully intended on returning to Modern after the program, but this was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.
My wife and I then picked up and moved to Bend, where I worked at Deschutes as a Production Brewer for about 1.5 years. After that, I was promoted to the Head Brewer of the Pilot Plant where I led operational R+D for the company for about 3 years. In this role, I caught the creativity bug and started forming a more concrete idea of what I wanted beer to be and how to get it there.
While at Deschutes, our leadership group did a vulnerability exercise where I shared that my adopted brother was a victim of gun violence. My boss and I were good friends, and a few months later, he told me he was pursuing an opportunity at another brewery called TRU Colors with a mission centered around ending gun violence. I followed him there, where I worked briefly as Director of Brewing Operations. My wife and I discovered we were having twins while there and decided to move back to St. Louis to be closer to family. I didn’t have a job lined up, but I hoped I would figure something out.
I stumbled upon Sandy Valley’s website and immediately knew it was the type of brewery I wanted to be a part of. It was small-scale, destination-based, and focused on unique beers with an emphasis on local ingredients. I reached out to the brewer at the time but didn’t hear back, so I emailed him a second-time months later. As a relief to me, he responded and offered to meet up. We started conversations about me coming on in a consulting role, but over time, he had obligations that required him to step away from the brewery, and the owner offered me the Head Brewer role.
Looking back on this, it’s amazing how much luck, timing, and coincidence got me to where I am. I’m super grateful to all the folks that played a role in this journey. There’s no way I could have done it without their help.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I’d say it’s been a pretty smooth road. However, there have certainly been a lot of learning experiences along the way. I loved my time at Deschutes, but I never quite jived with its corporate aspect and scale. I felt distanced from the product as I was churning out thousands and thousands of barrels of beer. This improved with my role in the pilot plant as I was able to make smaller batches, take risks, and experiment. However, R+D for a national brewery is way different than it is for a small local brewery simply due to the scale in which you plan to brew and the operational and sales logistics involved. My heart is in small-scale production, where I have complete creative freedom and can pick the day’s ingredients from the forest/garden or collaborate with farmers on what to brew and when. My time at Deschutes helped solidify this idea I already had about myself.
During my last job at TRU Colors, I spent too much time at work. Something like 60-80 hours a week as we tried to get the brewery launched. Life was a grind. My wife and I knew we had twins on the way and there was no way working like that was sustainable. We took a weekend trip to the mountains, and I remember her saying, “If this were all over, I’d be so much happier right now.” At that moment, I knew I was failing as a husband and would also fail as a father. I knew I had to quit. I had spent so much time at work that I couldn’t even see how unhappy my wife was with our situation. The work culture in America is beyond toxic, and I committed then and there that I wouldn’t allow it to affect my family any longer. My family will always come first, and work will fall somewhere beneath that.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m the Head Brewer at Sandy Valley in Hillsboro, MO. We’re still a very young brewery, so I’m not sure we’re known for much of anything yet, but I hope to be known for broadening people’s perspectives on fermented beverages like beer, wine, cider, mead, etc. I hope to do this by incorporating hyperlocal ingredients (that may be unfamiliar to some) into familiar, approachable beer styles. For example, we recently brewed a Pilsner with lemon basil from Black Rat Farms near the brewery. Inversely, I like to use familiar ingredients in an unfamiliar way. For example, we recently co-fermented Cayuga grape juice from grapes grown on the property with a hazy IPA wort to create a beverage that falls between beer and wine. And while I think it’s important to utilize what’s available locally, I think it’s equally important to explore ingredients the rest of the world has to offer. This is important to me because a beverage made with local and international ingredients is symbolic of the beauty that can be created when you reach across borders, whether literal or figurative. We brewed a blonde ale with Chilean Ulmo honey, and I’m already thinking about how delicious that would be with Missouri-grown chamomile.
Another way I hope to broaden people’s perspectives is through the names and points of inspiration of our beers. I often find inspiration for beers from the traditions and languages of other cultures and natural phenomena. For example, we brewed an amber lager called Fika, inspired by the Swedish tradition of the same name. This tradition involves slowing down and having coffee and pastries midday with friends. We chose a lower ABV amber lager as the base style to be drinkable midday and incorporate some caramel-like flavors from malt to lend some slightly sweet, biscuity pastry-like character. We then added a touch of cardamom to add another dimension to the pastry character. We partnered with a local coffee shop called Coffeestamp to create a unique blend of coffee specifically for the beer.
I’m most proud of showcasing the amazing work of local makers in our beer and the relationships built along the way. I love collaborating with those makers to marry the products uniquely and deliciously. I hope to do justice to their ingredients and all the hard work they’ve put into creating them. As mentioned, we’ve recently worked with Coffeestamp and have a brew with apples from Centennial Farms in Augusta. There are also plans to work with a local maple syrup farm.
I also feel proud when someone learns something from one of our beers. We were recently at a festival serving our West Coast IPA with Spruce Tips. A handful of folks came up to me asking what spruce tips were. After a quick explanation and taste of beer, they’d go from not knowing what spruce tips were to enjoying them in a beer. Back at Deschutes, I brewed a Winter Warmer with Spruce Tips called Jolabokaflod, which was inspired by the Icelandic tradition of exchanging books with family on Christmas Eve and reading them in front of the fire. After releasing the beer, a bartender told me she planned on trying out this tradition with her family this holiday season. I about melted. Sharing these connections with people is super special to me. It’s proof that beer can transcend what’s in the glass.
As far as what sets us apart, I think it’s essentially the lessons of the excellent cast of mentors, teachers, family, and friends I’ve been fortunate enough to know. The path to get where I’m at has been filled with many brilliant people who have taught me lessons related to brewing and beyond. I’ve relied on their expertise (and continue to do so) in areas that are not my forte, as I know that is the best way to achieve the most desirable outcome. Special shout out to my mom, who instilled in me the importance of soft skills and a fierce resiliency to achieve. I also have a lot of folks at Deschutes to thank for encouraging me to tap into my weird creative side in beer design.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
Empathy. Understanding and sharing the feelings of others has helped me in more ways than even I think I know. It has helped me connect deeply with many of the folks I’ve met along my journey in brewing. It has allowed me to understand what motivates them, how they think, identify their needs, and thus understand how to best work with them. As a result, it also ignited some weighty introspection on what makes me tick and has better allowed me to tap into my creativity. Empathy has also instilled in me a strong “people first” mentality. That will make any business more successful if they are willing to shift focus from spreadsheets, deadlines, and quotas to ensure its people are taken care of above all else. Along with this, empathy has come with vulnerability. That has allowed me to connect with people more humanly and be more honest about my hang-ups and tendencies.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sandyvalleybrewingco.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sandyvalleybrewing/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sandyvalleybrewing
