The Brewer: Kelissa Hieber of Goldspot Brewing

Intro Clip - Kelissa Hieber: 0:02

Having a larger community connection and actually being authentic about it is just good business. I think more and more and you saw this COVID too, it's like, alright, well, I like their beer, but do they stand for anything?

Intro: 0:18

Welcome to the open exploration Podcast. I'm on a mission to connect with Rule Breakers, Dream Makers and all around inspiring people to explore the possibilities for living a vibrant and honest life on my own terms.

Episode Intro: 0:41

Hey hey everyone, I'm so excited to introduce you to a local gem and the creator of my all time favorite beer, Kelissa Hiever. Kelissa is one of the only queer female brewers in Colorado and is the owner and head brewer at Goldspot brewing. She has made Goldspot into one of those magical places where it just feels good when you walk inside. You can find the resident turtle Tilda Swimson swimming happily in their tank, there's colorful art by queer artists on the brick walls, and murals by my very talented partner Will Krieg and his dad Chris. Goldspot is an LGBTQ community hub where everyone feels welcome, and it's just a ray of sunshine in our neighborhood. I wanted to talk to Kelissa because of the magic that she's created at Goldspot in just a few years since she took over ownership, and how much she's used her talent as a brewer to bring people together and to be a voice for her community. If you've been listening to the podcast, you probably know that I am also trying to follow the twists and turns of my own story to a place where I can both love what I do and feel good about the impact my work has. So, it was a delightful surprise to hear about the twists and turns of Kelissa's story and how her passions came together. It turns out that she started her career as a community organizer in Cincinnati, and only later brought together her love of craft beer with her passion for community and social justice when she moved to Denver. Now, on any given day at Goldspot you can find Drag Bingo, trivia, open mic, a celebration of queer artists or a crafting and beer collaboration with another local business...my favorite on the calendar this fall, for example, was a build your own dinosaur terrarium event with a terrarium shop down the street. You are also certain to find specialty beers on tap whose proceeds contribute to local organizations. As you'll hear in our conversation, Kelissa not only has big plans for Goldspot's future, but is also hell bent on making sure that underrepresented communities feel safe and at home in all areas of the craft brewing world. Before we dive into our conversation, I just want to mention that the audio is a bit quieter than I usually aim for. So sorry if you have to turn this up to full volume, and please don't blast your eardrums when you switch on your music after the podcast. I guess it's never clear that we're learning in big ways than when we kind of goof so I'll just tell you that I set my recording levels too low to try and neutralize some of the brewery noises since we recorded at Goldspot. But this turned out to not be the right strategy. So lesson learned. Anyways, turn up that volume and enjoy this conversation with the one and only Kelissa Hieber.

Lily Werthan: 3:29

All right, comfortable? Ready to go?

Kelissa Hieber: 3:31

Yep.

Lily Werthan: 3:31

Feeling good?

Kelissa Hieber: 3:32

Yep.

Lily Werthan: 3:32

Glad you said yes to this?

Kelissa Hieber: 3:34

Yep.

Lily Werthan: 3:36

Great, alright, Kelissa thank you so much for having me over here. I come to Goldspot all the time and enjoy beer, but it's fun to sit down with you and actually get to hear about your story and what you are doing here. So you have on your business card I just saw for the first time the other day, it says Owner, Brewer, Janitor, which seems like a perfect description of your job. It just seems like you have your hands in so many different things and kind of creating this like baby to be what you want it to be and like raise it up into this amazing community. I've lived here for a little over two years, obviously, that was over COVID. And seeing even with COVID how much this place has grown and changed and just blossomed into this community hub is amazing. Do you feel like your dream for Goldspot has come to fruition?

Kelissa Hieber: 4:25

For sure. I think, you know, I've been here started bartending here six months after they opened and kind of worked myself up. And, you know, I always knew there was like such potential for Goldspot to grow into this. And that the space was just adorable and a nice size that you can kind of control what not only what the vibe is but what your culture is in that brewery. I think that gets harder and harder the bigger that brewery grows. But I knew that we really had that potential to control that you know, I was controlling some of that with really just starting with like getting more, you know, female beer drinkers in here, you know, and like, letting them try splashes of things and, you know, not just telling them they want the fruit beer or something like that. It really just started there. And then COVID was was tough, but we had really focused so much on that community building and that care and quality beer and making a space like people would, you know, make their ride or die. And that really worked out for us for COVID because we actually were only down 3% from the previous year. So it was, it's kind of crazy. And then we're having, by far, our best year ever, you know, since taking over and kind of leaning into some of the things that we were, we were doing well, and just trying to catapult that into a whole new stratosphere. So yeah,

Lily Werthan: 5:47

That's awesome. You're talking just a second ago about this dream to get more female beer drinkers onto the scene. I also think it is huge as a queer female Brewer - like you... just for fun before this interview, I google image search craft brewer. Do you know what came up?

Kelissa Hieber: 6:05

Oh, it's a bearded guy in a flannel.

Lily Werthan: 6:06

Yep. Bearded guy in a flannel. They were like to in a grey t shirt. And I was like, Whoa,

Kelissa Hieber: 6:10

Yea. So diverse, so diverse.

Lily Werthan: 6:12

So I would love to hear kind of about your story how you chose beer. And I guess more specifically, was that desire to sort of like flip the script part of your decision to go into craft beer?

Kelissa Hieber: 6:25

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, my partner taught me how to homebrew almost 11 years ago, in Cincinnati, Ohio. And I kind of immediately fell in love with the creativity with this, like I'm severely add, and beer had kind of this nice mix of all these different genres and backgrounds. And at the time, I was doing professional organizing around racial rights and workers rights. And, you know, that's really always been a passion. Both my parents are retired professors and really instilled those sorts of values into me. But that was proving to kind of be an unsustainable...it just, it was kind of bleeding me dry, emotionally. And I didn't feel like I was kind of making the difference that I wanted to do. So I wanted to kind of get into an industry that I thought that I could change and adapt and like, bring some of that community organizing, community building into a more everyday situation. Because that's a lot easier to sort of change some minds and hearts. So as soon as I kind of got into homebrew, and I was like, this is this is gonna be my shit. It was very difficult to break into the industry in Cincinnati, Ohio, and I was ready for, for a change in general. So my partner and I moved out about eight years ago, mainly for beer and snowboarding, we knew there was just going to be more of an opportunity to get into the industry. At this point, there was only the Siebel Institute and UC Davis for beer programs. And I knew that, at least there would be a better chance to get an internship out here. My first job here was working at the Starbucks at Regis. And I heard that they were starting craft beer program. And I took a break from Starbucks and went to the library, got my resume, and I was the first person turn in my application for that project or for that program, which was about about seven years ago now.

Lily Werthan: 8:23

Wild. And the rest is history.

Kelissa Hieber: 8:25

Yep. The rest is history.

Lily Werthan: 8:26

I want to back up a little bit, because I know I know a little bit about your story once you got to Denver, but I have tons of questions there too. But I'd love to hear more about your life in Cincinnati and what drew you to be in that sort of community organizing and social justice space. And I think this is such a big theme that I'm exploring is like, that huge desire to do good in the world and to change the things that we know are wrong. And the realization that we have to do that in a way that like, works for us in the long term and allows us to be healthy, happy people.

Kelissa Hieber: 9:05

I mean, I think it was definitely the way that I was, you know, I was I was bred into this. I always joke that my parents raised two very passionate people that work in very low paying jobs. My sister is a Victorian ghostwriter, pretty much like she has all these amazing books and all these like cool Victorian feminist themes. Went to theater, Miami, my degree was a self designed degree in issues of race, politics, gender and sexual orientation with a subset in Latin American Studies and philosophy. So there was really only a few jobs...

Lily Werthan: 9:45

Right into the money...

Kelissa Hieber: 9:47

Yeah, I'm rich. So I really don't remember a time in my life where that wasn't what I wanted to do and really just didn't feel like called to do but I'm an incredibly sensitive person and one of my main job is right out of college was leading a team to just get, you know, Cincinnati is 50%, white and black has a large history of only really caring about the white people. And having just some really, really bad, like gentrification issues that are happening at that time and over the Rhine, and historically had done a lot of gerrymandering and had tried to make sure that, you know, people of color were not registered to vote or not updated. So really, whatever our main job was just to get, you know, every single person registered vote and then motivate them to get to the polls. So it was the largest one of the largest democratic turnouts for Hamilton County, which is where Cincinnati is of all time. So that was a huge reason why Ohio flipped for Obama in that year. Yeah, there's just so much that has happened in really the Midwest, in general, where a lot of jobs have gone away, gentrification is huge, you know, a lot of union busting that was going on. So we were trying to fight against that. There's a lot of bad, really anti worker's rights bills that were trying to get passed that we fought against. You know, I went to Miami University, they were trying to privatize that, we really worked against that. Because, you know, when VCU privatized, the tuition went up 23%.

Lily Werthan: 11:18

What's VCU?

Kelissa Hieber: 11:19

VCU is a Virginia Commonwealth University. So they were one of the ones that really did, like, turn it into this private is basically a charter school for universities. And that was, you know, higher education was already really difficult to be accessible for really anybody. So we really didn't need to make that less accessible. Yeah, so I was always just called to that sort of stuff, I just have found the world to be very unequal. And, you know, I was, I've definitely grown up in a place of privilege and wanted to use some of the education that I was lucky enough to get and to be raised into caring about these things, and knowing about these things, my dad's a very intense person, and would be pointing out racist things with Mickey Mouse at age five. So there's really not a way for me to not be, you know, kind of living and breathing this sort of stuff. And, you know, at 22, just like doing this stuff, you know, getting paid nothing, you know, working 80 hours, especially in Ohio, everything on a community organizing perspective was usually based around an election. So if you wanted to actually have like, an actual job that was in any sort of sustainable way to, you know, have any sort of living wage, it just would disappear for two years sometimes. And then it especially has, as you know, certain other political campaigns just assume that Ohio was a lost cause. So a lot of those jobs wouldn't have even been there. So I had been ready, you know, grew up in a very small part of Ohio, dealt with a lot of homophobia my whole life, I was ready for a new experience. Anyways, Karen my partner and I had been coming out to Colorado a lot super into craft beer. So it's like, right, there was it at least like a lot of established breweries here that like you could work your way up from a bartender or on some small breweries, there was very clearly a beer boom, about to happen. And I did think that if one of the places would start, you know, a beer program, it was like a one year approachable program, it'd be Colorado and that was true.

Lily Werthan: 13:22

Yeah, well, we will definitely come back to how you have looped in social justice and activism into this brewery, because I think that's such an important part of your story. But I'd love to hear kind of about the next step in your story. I know, you went to that Regis University Applied craft brewing program. I, not being in this world, I had no idea that people went to college for brewing. Like I didn't know that that was a step in the journey. I know, you have to learn a ton. I mean, obviously, you guys moved out here with the hope that that would be sort of the next possibility.

Kelissa Hieber: 13:56

Yeah, you know, I was, I really, I thought that the, the program was a possibility. But if it was going to be a four year program, kind of like a UC Davis type thing, I was not willing to do that. So I was more thinking I could really just show my passion, find the right person. And there was at the time that I lived Cincinnati, there was only about, like, 12 breweries. So now there's, like, 200. So, you know, had I stayed long enough, there could have been more possibilities for that. But I also wanted to learn under people who actually had been in the industry for a while I didn't want to, it became very apparent to me that I did not want to start a brewery and like, learn it on the job, that was not at all what I wanted. And especially as a young female, you know, I was 24 when I moved out here 25 when I got in the industry. There's just not going to be any, you know, leeway for a young queer woman to start a brewery and not know what the hell they're doing. But I knew that right away and I latched on to some of the industry professionals that came and really helped me to get to that place which was awesome. And just even having that sort of potential I knew would be here. And then the Regis program was perfect because one year guaranteed internship, you know, you pay for your internship and you're also under the insurance at Regis because the insurance perspective was a huge thing that no one wanted because brewing's very dangerous and they didn't want you to be a liability and like if you get hurt, and you're not covered in their insurance, you know, like bring the brewery down. So...

Lily Werthan: 15:23

As a non-Brewer, can you describe some of the really dangerous parts of brewing

Kelissa Hieber: 15:28

All of it. So I mean, we... so caustic, which is the strongest chemical that we use, we'll just... Bess who's the one of the brewers at Ratio, good friend of mine, one of my mentors, just dropped like a drop of it on her steel toed boots, and it went like all the way down. Yeah, so incredibly corrosive. Because brewing's also dirty, so you got to clean that shit up. So there's that I mean, you know, our boil kettle is 209 degrees, you know, I burned myself on the kettle, just touching it. Boil overs are huge, you know, some people have had some really terrible burns in the industry. And co2 is incredibly dangerous, you know, if you're not purging properly, if you're transferring stuff, if you're not safe about the way you're doing it, you could pass out if there's like not actually like a way to venture co2. You know, you can implode a tank if you don't de-gas it properly with temperature changes and pressure changes. There is lots of things. It's really, it's really easy to burn yourself in a variety of ways, whether it's chemical or not. I mean, again, Bess had just, she had her safety goggles on, and just got just a dash of one of our no-rinse sanitizers, but it was undiluted. And like, she was just telling me this story, and it took like days for her to get her vision back, had to go to the doctor, and this is one of our safer chemicals. So that's just one of the many things that's dangerous about it.

Lily Werthan: 16:56

Well that is horrifying. Cool. Good to know.

Kelissa Hieber: 16:57

Yeah. And, you know, it's costly. And it's like, it's not that hard to emplode a tank. And you know, those tanks can be minimum$10,000. So you don't want to take I mean, I always pretty much have an intern because I now teach at Regis in that program. And I want to I'll have a lot of people to help me I want to help people. There's, it's it's very stressful because they can, you know, just mess up a lot of stuff real easily. And the margins on craft beer are already pretty tight. And they just get tighter every year. So a lot of people just don't want to take on the hassle of an intern.

Lily Werthan: 17:32

Right and risk that income.

Kelissa Hieber: 17:34

But coming from a program, you at least know that they're serious about it. Because I mean, I'll have like four people a week be like, I wouldn't be your intern. Like, I'll help you clean.

Lily Werthan: 17:42

I like beer!

Kelissa Hieber: 17:43

Exactly. I'm like, Bro, are you ready to squeegee for 10 hours? Because if you're not like get out of my space. But yeah, so we will only take people from that program.

Lily Werthan: 17:53

Cool. So you got an internship as a cellar person. I wish you were there when I first I'd never heard the word cellar -erson. And I was picturing like Quasimodo. But like down in the cellar. What is the cellar person do? What was that internship like?

Kelissa Hieber: 18:04

So? Yeah, so I interned at True Brewing... heavy metal brewery, which is pretty hilarious, because I'm not very metal. And this is right before they were starting the Acid Temple, I think True make some of the best beer in the world and were doing such a nice mix of like sour beer, clean bear and just really, really good brewers. So I was kind of bouncing between both spaces and on a cellar job...I mean, the majority of what I did, so it's 160 hours they have to do for the program. For the first probably 40 hours, I mainly just cleaned kegs, you know? And then basically, a cellar person does everything besides anything on the hot side. So you're going to do all that back and cleaning, which honestly, like cellar people do not get nearly enough credit that is the most important... you can make great beer, but if you don't, if you're not good on all those other things, whether it's cleaning or carbonation or kegging, like your product just went to die. And so the cellar is that is that's the most important player. So you'd be cleaning the tanks, he'd be transferring beer. You know, once it's cold and carbonate and ready to go, you'd be kegging beer and carbonation is huge. That makes or breaks beer. I think a lot of people haven't spent the time to get to know what carbonation is for that product. And there's there's no right or wrong way to do it. There's just there's a there's a right way to do it for the type of beer that you're trying to create.

Lily Werthan: 19:33

Gottcha. It's kind of an art.

Kelissa Hieber: 19:34

Yeah. And the carbonation that I have compared to Hogshead, we're doing two very different styles of beer. You know, they're in cask beer, which is already a totally different carbonation profile, and they're doing English beer. That tends to be a lower carbonation, our carb's pretty high. I like dry spritzy stuff, but you got to know what you want to be as a brewer and then you have to just dial that stuff in and then when it comes to packaging you need to make sure that that package product is as good as the draft product. Yeah, so it's, you'd be dry hopping, you know, taking gravities, making sure your use is fermenting really well. So I did all that for 160 hours. And then they hired me the day after my internship ended. And they did...yeah, they were they were expanding massively. So I also just happened to be there, which was, yeah, getting into craft beer is terrifying. But I wasn't as confident then as I am now, that's for sure.

Lily Werthan: 20:24

And then at some point, I mean, when I think of Goldspot, I think of you. I actually didn't know until I was doing like my background research that you started as a bartender here. I thought like, it was always, you were always a part owner. Can you tell me about that trajectory?

Kelissa Hieber: 20:38

Yeah. So at the same time that I was hired to trim, it was a part time cellar job. And because especially at the time they were, they were paying some, they were paying really competitive wages for that position. And they hadn't gotten the one location up and running. So working part time, so that wasn't a living wage for for Denver, though, because it was just 20 hours. So I was bartending here, part time. So I started - they opened in February. I started bartending here in August, and then especially once the expansion started going with True, it was very clear that there was just they were never going to have the time to like, teach me how to be a brewer, you know, and I didn't want to stay Celler forever. And I could just tell they're about to pop off. So it just didn't seem like even if I waited like a year in that position, that there would be the time to like, get that training. So Matt, who was the original original owner?

Lily Werthan: 21:35

At Goldspot?

Kelissa Hieber: 21:35

At Goldspot. Yes. He was the brewer at the time didn't have an assistant. Running it with with Alex, the co owner, seemed a little overworked. So I just harassed him until he took me as his assistant brewer. So I started part time assistant Brewer that January, so a little under a year from the total business. So yeah, I took over assistant Brewer there. And then I got the head brewer job August 1. So yeah, then I was still bartending but full time, full time on that side. And, you know, that's not that much time in a craft beer learning space. And I was very aware of that, like I, I didn't actually I didn't want to turn down the position. But I didn't actually think that I was ready to take on that position in some ways. So luckily, I had, as soon as I got in the industry, I just tried to latch my people to good people that could teach me and make me better and Bess and then Mitch, who's the head brewer at Barrels and Bottles, they would come in and pretty much try my beer in every form. And they could just, they were sassy with me and be like, "this is not good, You need to fix this"... but they would then tell me why and how I could make it better. So this first like six months, I like leaned on them a lot, and other people in the industry and they really helped me to get my beer to where I needed to be. And it's just very overwhelming to like, take over that position and just not fully know what you're doing. And, and really have I have, I have very high standards for for my beer and myself as a person for what I want. Whether I was the owner or not. So I wasn't technically owner for a couple of those years. But I cared as much as an owner. And then about about three years ago, me and two other people bought out Matt and Alex and then we ran it for a couple years and then I bought them out in February. Full owner. Full owner.

Lily Werthan: 23:23

Love it. God what a cool story. I think just you coming out of the gates and like a total badass saying, Yeah, I'm gonna take this head brewer position, because it's a huge opportunity. Also, I'm going to be humble enough about it to recognize, like, I need some support, and I want to get way better than I am right now. What a great approach to that opportunity.

Kelissa Hieber: 23:43

You're just so in the weeds all the time. And I think it's really, really difficult. And that's exactly why I never wanted to just jump from a homebrewer to a professional, and there are some people who have done it fantastically. I mean, that's how True started. There's many others I could mention, I knew I have severe anxiety, I knew that that would be too much and it still almost kind of felt that's what I was doing because even transferring, you know 'cause I had the cellar stuff down. But you know, I hadn't even done really anything on the brew side at all at True. So I didn't really have that coming through. So just having a couple months of, you know, 20 hours a week assistant Brewer that's not enough time for you to be like a successful Head Brewer. It's just not. All of this happened because I thought this was an opportunity I, I could see that you know Matt seemed a little burned out and like there was an opportunity to kind of grow into this position. So I was like, but you never know how fast is gonna happen. And you just don't want to come complacent because it's so stressful and you can get so in the weeds that you're you're putting out a product that's not ultimately to your standards, but honestly, you're too stressed to even notice, you know, I mean, sometimes I would have Mitch and Bess like tasty beer that I had that I was convinced was dope and it wasn't because I'm so fuckin' stressed or didn't have the palette that I have now. I mean this was you know, six years ago, I didn't have the skills yet to know the quality of the products that I was even making. And, you know, the main reason why we're doing really cool loggers now is because I'm friends with Ashley and Bill at Bierdstatd and they've helped me and they can come in and just be really sassy and be like, This is what you need to change. And, and I'm like, okay, like you make the best loggers in the world.

Lily Werthan: 25:26

But I gotta say, your logger is freakin killer. It seems like in some industries, there's this competitive vibe of there's not a lot of like collaboration or communication. And you know, you're trying to sort of beat out the competition. But you talk about like, from the very beginning, you were working with tons of other breweries, you've like shouted out other breweries for being amazing. I know you do collaborations all the time on beers. Was that true in the industry before you got into it? Like people are just collaborative and helpful? Or is that been sort of part of YOUR process?

Kelissa Hieber: 26:00

I think Denver's a really special place. Now you go to a lot of other competitive big beer cities, and you would never see the collaboration that you see here. So it's definitely not just me. Some of it was I mean, we built that into my model right away. Because pretty much as soon as I took over, I was like, Well, I don't really care about having a lot of core beers. And as soon as I took over too, Matt was very supportive on like, kind of letting me fly with like, recipe development and kind of changing the beer menu, even though I wasn't an owner, which I really appreciated. So collaboration is just I could I had more flexibility in my kind of beer lineup. But also a lot of it was very self serving, I was completely by myself from the brew house didn't have a cellarman. It's very physical. So it was always great to have someone to help me mash out. And also, I just wanted to keep learning from other people and, and making those connections. And throughout the history of this, probably the least actually, I've worked per hour after taking full ownership which is kind of funny. And but you know, I was working some pretty crazy hours. And that was the only time to kind of bond with some of these people and get to know them better and learn from them and build connections too, because we were always very much on a shoestring budget here. So it's just nice to, to build community that could then help you out. And like we're really trying to pay that back now. So it wasn't just because I wanted to create cool things together. But the Denver scene is just amazing. And collaboration is something that you see across it. And it's definitely like, one of my favorite things. And I could feel that anytime I came to visit from Ohio that like, there was that kind of community and compassion and like, wanting to do cool things together. And that's only grown. And, you know, when I fully took over, I did my Kelissa's Collaborative World Tour. And I think I did 11 collaborations in a row. And it's just that that's the stuff that I just love doing and, it's how you get to see your friends. And I mean, that community is great. I mean, the community could be a lot better. And like we're gonna, we're gonna make it better collectively. But there's always some really, really good people here that just wanted to hang out and make cool beer together. Yeah, you just don't, you don't see that - from what I've heard - you just really don't see that in a lot of other like incredibly competitive markets because Denver's incredibly competitive. But, you know, a lot of people who started breweries here, too, they're not from here, you know, like they came here because they love the scene, and they want to get into it and like a lot of Midwesterners, and they're just like, they're looking for this community and like trying to create something that this is a lot of work. It's really stressful. It's a lot of money. And that, you know, makes it worth it at the end of the day.

Lily Werthan: 28:30

Do you have any favorite collaborations you've gotten to do so far?

Kelissa Hieber: 28:33

Oooh....

Lily Werthan: 28:34

Tough question?

Kelissa Hieber: 28:35

One of the ones I maybe want to bring back for anniversary was amazing Italian Pilsner that I did with Baere. They're some of my, some of my faves. My Mezcal Paloma beer that I just released with Rhinegeist. That's a huge one. They were out for GABF. And they came for that..

Lily Werthan: 28:50

...Great American Beer Fest for those that don't know.

Kelissa Hieber: 28:54

Yeah. Rhinegeist is a massive brewery in Cincinnati and one of my favorite breweries in the country. They started right before I moved. But I've been trying to get this collaboration gonin fpr, like seven years. So yeah, I mean, I love them all for different reasons. Like I have, like, I loved the Liberati Inno beer collabs that we would do because that was just such a different....didn't know you could make a beer that tastes like that. We like to do some weird shit because I love to learn while doing it. And then sometimes you just want to make like a nice crispy boy. So we have a dry hop Kulsch with Four Noses that we're about to kick and yeah, so it's all they're all just very, very different. You can't really I don't I don't think there's any collaboration that I've just totally hated. Which is good, because sometimes we do some weird stuff.

Lily Werthan: 29:39

Well, something I noticed every time I walk in here is you look at the menu and you have like your West Coast IPA, the Cutter which is incredible and always a go to for our group of friends. You have your American lager and then you have these crazy things like the Rice Rice Baby Mochi Sour, and that Mezcal Paloma beer and you had that Big Gay IPA, which is, I quote "Fruity A F" for a while,

Kelissa Hieber: 30:04

I will bring it back. Great. Yeah, well, so you know, there was like four stops with Lady Justice alone in that collaborative tour, because we're some of the only solo female queer Brewer-Owners in the country, we joke that we're the Lady J of the north, and they're the Goldspot of the South. We, we share a canning line together, we're best friends and, and they also have a very similar community driven mission. And they're just amazing people.

Lily Werthan: 30:35

I also was noticing, it just seems like you have the best people working here. And it also seems like it's like the best place to work, you have created such a cool community here, you did that whole line where your bartenders got to come up with ideas, and then you'd like help them brew it. Who does that? Like? What an awesome thing for people to really be part of the process and take some ownership of what happens here.

Kelissa Hieber: 30:59

I think, you know, we just we just did the safe bar screening, which is trying to combat like sexual harassment amongst employees and amongst like, patrons against people. And something that I brought up there is like, you know, at a lot of breweries, you know, you have these owners that have never worked behind the bar, they have never worked as a brewer, they have never actually like done this sort of stuff. I've done all those things. I know how hard work it is, I know how toxic this industry can be. And that we kind of take advantage of your enthusiasm to get into it, and how fun it can be, and then kind of use alcohol as a tool to control that. And, you know, I just wanted to flip all that. I want...for one, It's also better for me, if I don't have to replace employees very often, you know, like, if I have people that are, that are into the cause and into the beer that I'm trying to do and into the community that I'm trying to build, then it works out for everybody. I've been in the service industry since I was 15. And it's really unsustainable. But it can be really great. But it's I haven't witnessed that a lot of times. So I'm just now I have full control over those things. And if I, you know, I want to provide health care for everybody. I want people to stay here forever and make cool beers and learn more and make more money and everybody wins.

Lily Werthan: 32:21

Yeah, it's awesome. It also feels so different when you walk into a bar or a brewery where people love being there and are thrilled to be there. Oftentimes to when we walk in here, like right now there's this amazing queer art up on the walls. The other day we came in and it was Drag Queen Bingo. There's like trivia nights and these queer fam Fridays, once a month...

Kelissa Hieber: 32:43

Yeah. Once a month.

Lily Werthan: 32:45

All of these like community events where this does not just feel like a brewery. Like I said at the beginning, it really does feel like a community hub. Do you have a favorite event you've gotten to do?

Kelissa Hieber: 32:57

Yeah. We just want to build that because when I first got into this, like I loved that there was that community, but it was like a community for who? It wasn't really a community for me. And it wasn't really a community even for straight women, let alone any other form of diversity we're talking about. And I was like, but this really can be that and that's what breweries should be, like should be these like, community spaces. And I think the the best thing, one of one of the best days of my life was Big Queer Beer fest. So it was actually originally Laney's idea who's my bar manager. And when I was trying to get her to work here, we were like, I was telling her about stuff I want to do and like lean into some of those things. And, you know, take our one donation bear to six donation bears and do this sort of stuff. So we combined with Lady J on that and just bought a bunch of different breweries' pride beers, so it had to be a pride donation beer. Didn't have to be a queer owned space, because that would have been three people

Lily Werthan: 33:58

Narrows it down a lot.

Kelissa Hieber: 34:00

Yeah. Narrows it down a lot. So you know, we I think we had like 11 different breweries for it. And then they so these were all donation based beers already. So every dollar sold, which was a ticket, purchasing thing, $1 went to whatever the charity they'd already chosen, then we match $1 for every dollar raised, I thought I read poppin I didn't think it would be like, line out the door for like seven hours. I mean, it was our best day as a brewery times like four. And then I think we raised at least$5,500 that day for like, I think 11 different charities at least, which was super cool. And I was like, wow, this is people care about this stuff. And it's just like, I'm not in this business to make money at all, I want to change stuff, you know, and as a small business, you really have that control to make the communities that you're directly in a better place and I just want to create a place that I want to hang out all the time and it's awesome that a lot of my employees want to just like chill here on their own times because they're into it. And that's so satisfying because you're like, oh, wow, this is like a sustainable project. Yeah, so that was just that was dope and it ran like five times and it didn't stop anybody. We ran out of beer within like two hours the project it was supposed to go from like 12 to six. And I was like damn...

Lily Werthan: 35:19

...Should've made more beer!

Kelissa Hieber: 35:19

Yeah, we definitely outgrew the space and we didn't have porta potties. That was a massive mistake on my part. But, yeah, it was just really cool to see that. And, obviously, it's great to make money, which to raise that amount of money in such a small amount of time and like, and it's the community things was like, so many of our friends were here, you know, pouring beer with us. And it was just like, super fun. Yeah, I think we've outgrown this spot for that next year. I think Lady J and I are going to take that to some sort of more like actual like festival a ground for it. And triple it. Because we were having to like, turned down breweries, right who were like, we want a part of it. And we literally couldn't fit anybody more, you know, because this is a small space, and we took over everything, but we can grow it even more. Just like I want to raise 20k next year.

Lily Werthan: 36:11

Amazing. Can you talk a little bit about how you find the organizations that you donate to.

Kelissa Hieber: 36:16

So again, pretty much as soon as I took over Head Brewer, I was like, I want there to be a donation based beer. And then I had started a project called The Making Noise Project with best order. And this was a pro-people project that we started, right when Trump was elected...

Lily Werthan: 36:32

Just by coincidence, I'm sure.

Kelissa Hieber: 36:34

Totally coincidence. Yeah, you know, we we just knew that there would be some attacks on a lot of things that we cared about. We didn't want to make it political. But we also thought that the craft beer community should be supporting people of color, women, queers, the environment. So we, and we've done this project in multiple iterations, we've that project alone has raised like 50k. Now, which is really cool. And it was all different breweries that participate choose an organization kind of of their choice. And so a lot of the orgs, because that's probably been like 30 Plus orgs. And we tried to keep it to only local organizations, unless they have a really, really active local chapter, because they're easier to vet. And let's be honest, a lot of these larger organizations, that money doesn't go to where it's supposed to. And they get a lot more funding, it's really, you know, the local ones just like in it to win it where you're like, you go to the website, and you're like, oh, my gosh, you have like two people who work here. They're the ones you to support.

Lily Werthan: 37:32

Yeah. Their fighting for every penny.

Kelissa Hieber: 37:33

Yes, exactly. And they were the ones that really needed support during that time. And still do. So we got a really good list of groups from that. So we have like quite the large like database, so we always would at least have one donation based beer. And that was first, you know, like on Inauguration night. So I really got to see how invested people were in doing like donation based beers, and how easy it was to get to make a little bit of difference by just having them drink beer, because it's a lot easier to have them donate $1 by purchasing a beer price than doing some of the other organzing work I've done. Every single beer that we released in June, was for some sort of LGBTQ or POC organization. So I think we had up to 10 at one point. And we're really trying to diversify what that looks like, we're trying to do a lot of different trans things, because they often do not get the same support.

Lily Werthan: 38:26

That's awesome, too. Because not only are you raising money, but you're also getting their name out to so many people that are coming in here.

Kelissa Hieber: 38:33

And you're connecting with people that don't, I mean we'd we had so many times where like, like the immigrants right coalition, like we...they, this was a making noise thing. And like their entire like, group came out. And it was just like, group of people that didn't know about this, you know, group of craft beer drinkers like, totally, people we wouldn't have probably connected to and they were so invested. They were like chugging the Making Noise beers and like posting about it, you know, it's a way to, it helps your business, like having a larger community connection, and actually being authentic about it is just good business. I mean, yeah, we donate a ton of money, but you still make money off those. If you structure it, right, you still make money off of it.

Lily Werthan: 39:20

And people care a lot more if they're like oh, these are real people trying to do a great thing and making amazing beer.

Kelissa Hieber: 39:25

Yeah. And there's 9 million breweries in Denver, so it's like I think more and more and you saw this COVID too. It's like, alright, well, I like their beer, but do they stand for anything? Does your dollar actually tried to like, change anything? Or where does that dollar go? You know, do they actually treat you with respect when you come in? Like, do your part I mean and that's something that we always really strived for throughout all the years. We'd been a queer hub long before we like really leaned into that because I was the bartender, you know, and I just made them feel welcome and like It's not... And that's just good business.

Lily Werthan: 40:02

Yeah, making people feel welcome in your business is good business.

Kelissa Hieber: 40:06

Yeah. And if anyone feels not welcomed by those things, then they're probably not someone you want your business either, you know.

Lily Werthan: 40:11

Yea. Good Call. Good call. Well, it feels like you have so created the vision that you set out with of this amazing community space and this amazing beer that is raising money for foundations and causes that you really care about. Where do you go from here? What are your big dreams for the future?

Kelissa Hieber: 40:31

Many, many big dreams. So I mean, the first thing I did when I want to take over was just hire everyone I could, because I really, I want this place, I want to just be able to kind of enjoy this place a little bit more, and have it not be so stressful, and just like hire people in sustainable jobs where they can feel part of this and like build this with people because it's not as fun if there isn't other people to share this with you as well. But also, there's a lot of other projects that I wanted to spend some more time on, recently co chair for the DEI committee, diversity equity inclusion committee that was formed with the Colorado Brewers Guild. We're really trying to create sexual harassment and diversity training across all members, some kind of code of conduct for hiring, code of conduct for how do we deal with issues within a tap room? How do we create spaces that other places feel welcome, like, you know, there's a lot of breweries that aren't the most inclusive spaces. And that's not necessary, because the owners aren't trying to do that. There's a lot of toxicity. So combating some of that, providing more educational opportunities for diversity. You know, I've, I've been teaching the Regis Craft Brewing program for last five years, I believe, which is about 10 cohorts, I've never had more than 20% of the classmates be females, I've only had several people of color out of the entire time, we need to be seeing a lot more diverse, we've lost a lot of really amazing women because of the rampant sexual harassment and sexism in the industry, we've lost a lot of awesome people of color because they're tired of the racism. You know, we could go down that rabbit hole forever. So that's a big project of mine, you know, I would love to have a second location where bring some of these ideas to to other places because Gold Spot's adorable, but it's a little small. So sometimes, you know, when we do you know, we're, we're maxed out on some things. I'm I'm completely maxed out on tank space here. You know, we're trying to double our can presence. I would like to be in 30 different liquor stores by this time next year, if not more. So those are some of my expansion plans, for sure.

Lily Werthan: 42:37

Cool. So a whole lot more of making people feel welcome and safe in this industry and some massive expansion in your business.

Kelissa Hieber: 42:44

Yep.

Lily Werthan: 42:45

Sounds good. Sounds good. What's something that you're looking forward to most this year?

Kelissa Hieber: 42:50

I am looking forward to our dapper little Christmas party, because I'm excited to see all my staff looking fly. And then our seven year anniversary is going to be the first week of February and it's space themed which I'm very excited for. We're gonna do a ton of collaboration, Stryker ton of new cool beers. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, January is always a tough month for every member, but it's really nice to have that anniversary right after it so that because dry January, just grows every year and it's cold, and it's gross, and no one wants to come out. But then you have anniversary. You're like alright, everything's good again.

Lily Werthan: 43:28

That's great. All right, good things coming. Well, thank you so much. It was awesome to hear more about what you're doing here and your background and excited to see what happens next. Thanks for having me.

Sign Off: 43:49

Thank you for listening to this episode of the open exploration podcast. If you're looking for some great beer or want to follow along with new brews and fun events, go to Goldspotbrewing.com. Or find Goldspot Brewing on Instagram and Facebook. While you're there, if you haven't done so already, you can follow Open Exploration Podcast. You can also email me at Lily@openexploration.org. A big thank you to Poddington Bear, John Sib, and the other unlisted artists for the music that brings this podcast to life. And of course, a huge thank you to my nieces and nephew for the delightful voices at the very end of this recording. Thank you love to you all. And until next time, happy exploring. THANKS FOR LISTENING!!