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I was a home brewer for about, shoot, 13 years and me and my buddy--I was going to school in Virginia and we--I bought a kit in back of this Rolling Stone magazine and we’re like, "oh we’re going to make beer cheap," you know. And it tasted like cheap beer. But I was amazed you could even make beer just you know--on your stove. And so I kept doing it and he kind of gave up on it. And when I moved up to Nashville there’s a really good local kind of home-brewing community and my beer started to get really good just from all their input and meeting other people doing it and I kind of built this little still down in my basement and it kind of got out of control. You know I had so much beer, I was giving it away to some friends and asking them what they thought and everybody would just say well that’s really good. That’s about as good as anything I can get in the store. So my wife Lila and I were just kind of kicking around the idea and I think she just got so fed up with me talking and talking about it she was like look; either do it or shut up because I’m so tired of hearing about it every time we go for a walk or ride in the car. And so we really did seriously think about doing it and we didn’t have any debt and didn’t have any kids at the time and we were both young and figured we could make a go of it and if it didn’t work you know recoup our losses. But--so we started in 2003 and--and it’s really grown. We’re up to about 6,000 kegs a year last year.

– Linus Hall

Vicksburg native Linus Hall got into the beer business on a lark when he and a college buddy ordered a home brewing kit from Rolling Stone magazine. The small kitchen kit was later upgraded to a larger basement still, and now, years later, Linus and his wife, Lila, own one of Tennessee's best microbreweries. Yazoo Beer is a hit in the Music City. Yazoo loyalists frequently navigate downtown Nashville's street maze to find the taproom that's marked by a water tower and tucked between overpasses and railroad tracks. Guests can buy a growler-to-go, or if arriving early enough, can grab one of the coveted seats in the taproom. There, amidst walls covered with their favorite Delta folk art, Linus and Lila serve their specialty beers with a menu of local breads and cheeses. "Beer and cheese" may not initially have the same ring as "wine and cheese," but it's all a part of the Yazoo plan to elevate the concept of beer as a pairing with good food. "When you have good beer and good food, the flavors marry very well," says Linus.

What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

Edited Transcript

Subject: Linus Hall, Owner Yazoo Beer
Date: March 15, 2006
Location: Yazoo Brewery—Nashville, TN
Interviewer: Mary Beth Lasseter

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Mary Beth Lasseter: This is Mary Beth Lasseter and I’m here with Linus Hall on Wednesday, March 15th at Yazoo Brewery. So tell me a little bit about your beer.

Linus Hall: Our beer--well it’s real fresh, made here locally and we use only the best ingredients. We import a lot of it because we’re trying to make German and English style ale but compared to you know some of the more bland mass-produced beers it’s got a ton of flavor, a lot hop(pier), a little bit more alcohol in it and now I would say it’s just like making bread--it’s freshest when it’s right here and made locally.

How did you get into beer-making?

I was a home brewer for about, shoot, 13 years and me and my buddy--I was going to school in Virginia and we--I bought a kit in back of this Rolling Stone magazine and we’re like, "oh we’re going to make beer cheap," you know. And it tasted like cheap beer. But I was amazed you could even make beer just you know--on your stove. And so I kept doing it and he kind of gave up on it, you know. And when I moved up to Nashville there’s a really good local kind of home-brewing community and my beer started to get really good just from all their input and meeting other people doing it and I kind of built this little still down in my basement and it kind of got out of control. You know I had so much beer, I was giving it away to some friends and asking them what they thought and everybody would just say well that’s really good. That’s about as good as anything I can get in the store. So Lila and I--my wife Lila and I were just kind of kicking around the idea and I think she just got so fed up with me talking and talking about it she was like look; either do it or shut-up because I’m so tired of hearing about it every time we go for a walk or ride in the car. And so we--you know we really did seriously think about doing it and we didn’t have any debt and didn’t have any kids at the time and we were both young and figured we could make a go of it and if it didn’t work you know recoup our losses. [Laughs] But--so we started in 2003 and--and it’s really grown. We’re up to about 6,000 kegs a year last year.

Wow; how did you even begin the process of starting this business?

Well I did a lot of research and did a lot of reading and the thing that I saw was you either had to have really good beer and you had to have a pretty good head on your shoulders as far as managing the business. A lot of the ones that failed either you know the beer was pretty mediocre or they didn’t know what they were doing on the financial side. So I went to Vanderbilt and I got an MBA from them while I was working at Bridgestone/Firestone and then I got a craftbrewing degree from a place out in California near the University of California and then came back and I did an internship at Brooklyn Brewing Company which is--a lot of people have read The Brew Master’s Book--Garrett Oliver has written a book on preparing beer and food that’s really good and that what really was interesting. I love the flavors of food and I realized you know how much better it was with a great beer, and if you can kind of pair that up much in the same way you know people kind of prepare certain wines up with certain meals you just--it just you know--the marriage is perfect and you enjoy both of them much better.

So I went to study under him because he is kind of an expert in that field as far as the craft of brewing side and I--you know had a great time in New York and stayed about eight weeks and actually it was in the middle of September 11th 2001--when that happened, which is exciting but you know a bad time to be in New York.

So I came back to Nashville and we bought some used equipment. They had an auction up in Iowa--a brew pub going out of business there. And kind of just boot-strapped our way into doing it; we did most of the work here and everything we could. It took almost a year to get this place ready and--and get it going but--.

So is the first place ya’ll have ever been in?

Yeah, yeah; this is it.

Tell me a little bit about the Marathon Motor Works Building where ya’ll are located.

It’s a neat old building. It’s--it’s--it was built in like the early 1900s. I think 1881 was--the first section was built. It was an old car factory you know--old wooden spoke wheels, all hand-made, you know hand-stitched leathers and it--it only lasted until about 1915 and then it kind of--it went out of business. The building still remained. The Werthan Bag Plant started here and then moved over to 8th Avenue North, but it was kind of vacant for a long, long time and then the guy--Barry Walker owned the building and bought it in 1986 and started fixing it up as kind of a haven for creative types, you know like artists, photographers, brewers, I guess. [Laughs]

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So did it start off then with just you and Lila working here? Like how many people were on your team?

It was me and Lila; we hired a brewer probably the first month that we opened up because I realized I couldn’t both make the beer and get out and sell it, but it was just us three for about probably the first four or five months and then I started hiring some people to help us with the taproom, which has gotten more and more popular and then hired another brewer about a year later. So right now we’ve got four full-time employees; we’ve got me, Lila is not working full-time anymore since we had the two girls--she’s home most of the time; we’ve got two full-time brewers and a full-time salesperson.

Who is coming up with the recipes for the beer?

Well we’ve got six that we--I developed most of the recipes on my little homebrew system down--down in my basement years ago. Then we come up with specials every once in a while. We’re doing a Brew Master’s Series now where I’ve kind of turned Jordan and Quinn our two brewers loose, give them the reins you know and let them have one batch of beer that they totally come up with their own recipes and we make one batch of it and try to sell it here--sell it around town, which is fun you know. It’s great making beer; you kind of get to where you’re making the same beers over and over again because you’re just trying to keep up with the demand but that--that appeals to their creative side. They get to come up with a recipe and make one batch.

So what brands do ya’ll have now?

Our--our two biggest sellers--we’ve got a pale ale which is really kind of a hop(py), an American style, real citrus(y), bitter(y); our Dos Perros is a Mexican amber ale and it’s darker and it’s got a nice malt(y) beginning but it has a real clean finish to it. So you know pale ale is a good contrast to most foods--the bitterness you know kind of clears your palate where the Dos Perros, you know the malt(y) flavors are great with maybe like you know real meat--burger, steaks, barbecue, you know anything with that kind of carmelized surface on it. Then our Hefeweizen is our German style wheat; it’s real cloudy. It’s got this--this unreal like banana clove kind of aroma to it--real tart. I haven’t found anything that it doesn’t go well with yet--maybe chocolate cake; I’m not sure about chocolate cake. The Irish stout is a good dry Irish stout, you know a lot like Guinness maybe was a long time ago. So [ESB] is--Extra Special Bitter--it’s an English style. It’s real malt(y) with a nice clean hop(py) finish to it. Then the--the Sly Rye Porter--rye is kind of an unusual grain as far as beer is concerned. You know you use it in whiskey a lot--the Porter is a really nice rich chocolate(y), but the rye gives it a kind of dry spicy finish to it.

You describe them and they all sound really great. [Laughs]

Yeah. [Laughs]

So how did you go about learning to develop your recipes and how does food figure into making them fit?

Well our original concept was to kind of elevate the concept of beer as a pairing with good food and so we knew that starting out in a market where nobody has ever heard of you before, it’s going to be hard to get people to try your beer. So our original idea was to go to some nice restaurants and like make them a special beer just for their restaurant and sit down with them and their chef and kind of create a recipe that would serve really well with--with either their main menu items or something they want to feature. And so we did that with--like South Street Restaurant, a couple different places around town, and we used that to kind of get people aware of our beers and helped to try to sell our own beers.

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The craftbrewing movement altogether has been about enjoying your beer more--maybe not drinking quite as much as--as people you know grew up in college and get--get used to doing but you know enjoying the flavors responsibly and--and part of that is just having it with a good meal you know. It’s always good to have anything to drink you know as far as alcohol with--with food because it helps to slow down the absorption of alcohol. But--but you know just the flavors are just such a great pairing and once you start sitting down and having it with you know locally made bread or cheeses or--or anything you know that’s fresh and good--just all the flavors start really marrying well together.

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Tell me about the names of the beers.

Oh well Yazoo--well people ask me how we got--it just seemed like such a natural name to us because we grew up in Vicksburg, Mississippi, you know right near where--near Yazoo City near where the Yazoo River comes into the Mississippi River. We got married overlooking the Yazoo River there and you know in the Military Park in Vicksburg and I had a dog named Yazoo growing up--[Laughs] just when I was coming up with a name it just seemed like a great name. it seemed like it had--it was fun to say and I knew that people would either think that it was a nice--they’d--they’d get the association with you know the Deep South or else they’d think it’s some kind of Japanese imported beer. [Laughs] But really it just was--it just seemed like a really fun name for us--Yazoo brewed and people enjoy saying it. We go into bars sometimes and people will recognize me and see me coming and they’ll say YAZOO [High Pitched Voice] and you know a takeoff of the Yahoo commercial.

I like that; yeah.

People enjoy saying it and I think it’s--I think it’s helped with our name recognition--having a name that people enjoy saying.

Do you think of your beer as being southern?

Yeah; I mean the--it’s hard--I think the flavors that we have are southern. You know they’re really strong, the great pairing of food; the bad thing about the South is you know it--it kind of--it’s lagged behind I guess the rest of the country in kind of embracing these kinds of beers and I don’t know why. You know Abita does a great job down in New Orleans but besides that they’re--good brews are kind of few and far between. But it’s such a shame; you know you have these great--you know these great Creole dishes, these great barbecue and you--you know you just wash it down with something that’s so cold you can't taste it and you don’t want to taste it when it’s warm; so I think the people in the South are ready to kind of embrace it. I think maybe it’s kind of--it just hasn’t had the chance in a long time.

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

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