(upbeat music) - Welcome to "A Shot of Ag".

I'm your host, Rob Sharkey.

When you have a farm, it has to be profitable.

And that's hard to do when the acres are smaller.

So you diversify.

And there's nothing better to diversify into than beer.

Today, we're gonna be talking with Matt Riggs and Darin Riggs.

They're from Urbana, Illinois, the owners of Riggs Beer Company.

- Welcome, gentlemen.

- Thanks, glad to be here.

- Okay.

The thing about owning a brewery, you get to name it after yourself.

- That's true.

- Yeah, you know, we're not very creative.

We're technically skilled; but marketing-wise, not so much.

- We tried to come up with an initial name and nobody got it.

So we just said, "Well, let's go back "to what the old school brewers did."

- Oh, really?

Well, what was that initial name?

- Oh, man.

- It was called Dual Citizen Brewing Company.

Kind of riffed off of the fact that I'd spent several years in the brewing industry in Germany.

My wife's German.

So we were kind of marrying the German brewing tradition with modern American brewing.

And by the seventh time I had to explain that to the first seven people I told it to, we started thinking, "Let's just name it Riggs Beer Company."

- Yeah, that was a dumb idea.

A good idea to change it.

- On paper, it looked really good.

- No.

(laughs) Okay, let's start from the beginning.

You guys grew up on a fifth-generation farm.

What were you raising there?

- Corn and soybeans.

Just taking it to the elevator.

Typical, traditional commodity crop operation.

- Yeah, we'd played around with a few specialty stuff things growing up.

We did some Frito corn and some like kind of food-grade soybeans for a Japanese market that Dad found out online or probably from a magazine once or twice.

So we'd experimented with a few things but pretty conventional.

- You know, just that tells me that growing up, you know, watching your parents probably is a good way that you learned to diversify and not afraid to try new things.

- Absolutely, yeah.

Dad got into all sorts of interesting ventures, from an ice cream shop in town to selling cars to wireless internet.

- Well, and the farm data satellite systems.

- Oh, the DTNs.

- DTN stuff.

He did installs on that for years and years.

He worked for the Farm Bureau, the County Barm Bureau as Information Director for a lot of years.

So we definitely saw that on a small operation, you gotta get creative and try a bunch of stuff to keep it going.

- You know, my mom still has a DTN satellite.

- Holy cow.

- I said, "Do you want me to take that down?"

"No, it's nice to have it there."

- Oh, I used to help him with those.

There's a lot of concrete under there keeping that thing steady probably.

- Yeah, if that fence post is nice and straight, that's one that we put in.

- It is straight, I will say that.

It's got a pine tree that has pretty much engulfed it, so it's not gonna be my worry much longer.

Did you go both go to U of I?

- Yeah.

- I'm surprised you haven't mentioned it yet.

(Rob, Matt and Darin laugh) - Yeah.

- What did you study?

- Well, I did Computer Science.

- Okay.

- Which didn't have a lot to do with farming or beer, but... - [Matt] It's turned out handy.

- Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

- Oh, I bet.

- I studied in the AG College Technical Systems Management.

They've changed the name three times since I've left.

Essentially Production Ag.

- Gotcha.

And then both entered the service, correct?

- Yeah, I mean, that's how Mom and Dad financed our college is by saying, "Hey, we're not gonna finance your college," so.

- "You can go to any college you can pay for."

- Yep, so Uncle Sam was the next call.

And Darin did the ROTC program first.

And I got three years of watching him go through that.

And I thought, "You know, that's pretty cool."

- So I followed in Darin's footsteps into the ROTC.

And then, we went different ways after college branch-wise, but, yeah, that's how we paid for school.

- [Rob] So who went where, what branches?

- I went to the Navy and got into the submarine program.

So I was nuclear trained and did all that sort of thing.

- You're not a short person.

Can't you be like too tall to be on a submarine?

- Turns out 5'10" is about the perfect height for the periscope, so.

- Oh, really?

- It worked out, yeah.

- Okay, I had a neighbor and he was six foot six.

But they put him on a submarine 'cause he was the only one qualified to weld on a nuclear reactor.

What were you doing?

- I went the officer route.

So started out learning the nuclear side of things and then move up forward and you kind of learn how to drive and tactically use a submarine.

- How to drive a submarine, 101.

Like how long are you under the water?

- The longest I was ever out for was 48 days in one stretch.

But you spent about half your time over the course of a year or a couple years out at sea.

- But 48 days.

I mean, you're coming up for air or... - Ah, we would come up and ventilate periodically depending on where we were and how much we cared about people seeing us or not.

- Ah, you're there on the most powerful weapon on the face of the earth.

- But we're the only ones that know that, so.

(Darin and Rob laughing) - How about you, Matt?

- So, I went into the Naval ROTC which, you know, submarines, Navy aviation, all that falls under.

But for some reason, I drank the Kool-Aid and decided to go to the dark side at the very last minute and I went Marine Corps direction and spent five years as a Combat Engineer in the Marines.

- Okay, well, explain what a Combat Engineer is.

- Pretty much about as technical of a position as the Marine Corps has when it comes to like explosives, bridging, heavy equipment, power, water, construction, that kind of stuff.

Kinda like Seabees but very light and we called it expeditionary.

Which means you don't have to be that good at it, just keep moving type of thing.

If something was gonna get built, any infrastructure was gonna get built at a higher standard, that would come later after we've probably already moved on.

That was kind of the way I explained it to folks.

- Gotcha.

But you go through all the training.

Can you kill a man with a drinking straw?

- I'd prefer with a 5.56 round if necessary.

Luckily, I never was in a position where I needed to do that.

I always bragged, I got outta the Marine Corps with the lowest-grade martial arts belt possible.

'Cause I was just so busy the whole time, and somehow I slipped through the cracks.

So yeah, I'd rather have to engage with somebody else with a weapon in my hand rather than my hands alone.

- Yeah, but still, as you're sitting there and I'm making jokes at you, are you like, "At any second, I could end him."

- You know, maybe the beer can across the... Actually, now this is shaken up, you don't wanna open that one.

- Mmm, it's like a weapon now.

(Rob, Darin and Matt laughing) - Okay, well, thank you for your service, both of you.

So you get out.

And then tell me what happened then.

- Well, really, it kind of started in college, and we discovered this wonderful beverage called beer that somebody told us was made from mostly grain and water.

- We said, "Well, we grow grain on our farm.

"Wouldn't that be a cool idea someday?"

So throughout our time in the military, we were always kind of looking at that option and how we would do it and, you know, visiting breweries and drinking beer and seeing how much we liked it.

And even fiddling a little bit with home brewing and trying to figure out that... As it turns out, we didn't know what we were doing.

And that didn't seem like a great way to start a business.

- [Rob] Did you get the kit, the home kit?

- Oh, yeah.

- Absolutely, Mr.

Beer Kit.

There's a picture of me on our website I think with my Mr.

Beer Kit.

- How awful was that beer?

- It was, only a mother could love.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

(Rob laughing) - Okay well, before we get into that, tell me stories about how each of you met your significant others.

- So my wife was, and currently still is, the sister of... - [Rob] That's right, my current wife.

- My current wife, of how many years now?

2009, whatever the math is.

- Dude, I'm not good at math.

- That's 16. maybe 16 years.

- Why don't you know this?

- Well, I remember 2009.

I think my bases are covered there.

And then I did the math real quick and I think I got it right.

But her brother was an exchange student at our tiny little high school.

And I became good friends with him.

And I went to visit him a couple years later and ran into his little sister.

And I found his little sister more interesting to hang out with than him during a period of time there.

- And that didn't break any bro codes?

- No, I think that first trip, he didn't really fully know.

The second trip, he was outta the country on work.

So I just met up with her.

And then by then, we figured out we'd probably have to tell him.

And you know what, it's been great.

We're still very good friends to this day.

(Rob laughing) - Darin, where'd you meet your current wife?

- Actually, in the Navy.

We both got stationed overseas in Italy together, which is an interesting place to try to live for two years when you don't speak any Italian when you show up.

And so, we spent a lot of time with other, you know, Navy people trying new things, going places, trying to interpret restaurant menus and things like that.

And ended up hanging out with Gail and really taking a liking to her.

And she did the same, thankfully.

- How many years?

- 11.

- He nailed it.

But he had time to do the math.

- I had time to do the math already, yeah.

- You tell yourself whatever you want.

(Rob, Darin and Matt laughing) Okay.

So, you guys, you have the family farm.

I mean, did you know just going right back to it that it wasn't gonna be enough to... - Well, we knew beforehand.

Dad was real clear about, you know, our need to have to diversify, do something different.

And really what he was kind of coaching us on was other off-farm jobs.

And what Darin and I really thought would be cooler was, how can we make something on the farm and just add more value to it.

- Yeah.

- More directly involved.

And so when we started thinking about beer and doing that, I mean, back then, regionally made beer was not very common in this part of the country, at least yet.

So during our time in the military, it got more and more common nationwide, this, you know, movement of craft or regionally made beer.

And that's what kind of gave us the signal of like, "Hey, maybe the market back home is starting to be ready "for this type of thing.

"So let's make a plan.

"Let's drop papers, you know, "get outta the military at the same time, "go get some education, "get some work experience in the industry "with the hopes of someday being able "to make a go with this thing we've been talking about "for a lot of years."

- Okay, and you got a sample here.

Is this kind of like the best sellers, or just what?

- Well yeah; actually, the best seller is on top here, the one I just shook for you.

Our wheat beer, that's our number-one-selling year-round beer.

And then we've got a hop water, non-alcoholic, no calorie.

- Hop water?

- Yeah.

It's a bit of a niche segment, but it's pretty cool.

I mean, I drink a couple every day.

It's a carbonated flavored water, but the flavor comes from Illinois-grown hops.

About 20 miles south of here, there's a hop farmer.

And, you know, I'm proud that we're able to inject profitability not just back into our own farm but, you know, this guy's hop farm.

I think we bought $7,000 worth of hops off of him this year.

And we're by far his biggest customer.

So that's a product that directly supports Illinois farmers with no middleman.

- And there's also some Illinois hops in the other beers too.

- Yeah, in the other beers as well.

American Lager is kind of our other year-round beer.

And then we got two examples of seasonal beers here on the side.

Every month, we make a new seasonal to keep things, you know, rotating.

- People want new stuff?

- Sure, some people.

Some people don't.

I got a lot of customers that just drink this.

- I like the wheat stuff.

- Lemme give her- - Well, be careful.

Open slowly, I've shaken it twice now.

- Ahh, look at that.

(pop-sizzle the can opening) - Look at that; you're a professional.

- Yeah.

Okay, it's my first beer.

- Oh; well, today.

- Maybe.

(Darin and Matt laughing) - It's German-style wheat beer.

So it's gonna have a little bit of kind of a little bit of fruitiness, a little bit of a clovey spiciness.

- Clovey, wow.

- Yeah, that comes from the fermentation.

That's made with wheat and barley from our farm.

- You know, it's always interesting, right, when we have people that have their own food or their own whatever, wine or whatever.

And you gotta drink it and you don't wanna be like, "Oh, it's awful."

(Darin laughing) This is good, I would buy this.

- A lot of people do.

(Rob, Darin and Matt laughing) - Fortunately.

- Good point.

- Yeah, fortunately, we're nine and a half years of selling it now and things are going well, so.

- You guys talk among yourselves.

- Yeah, yeah, you go ahead and finish that one.

We got a couple other samples, but I think we promised some of the crew here some, so.

- I don't care.

- But this is your show, I guess.

It's literally named- - You would think so.

But like after this, they're gonna be like, "Oh."

This will all disappear before I get my microphone off.

- Well, you'll have to come by Urbana sometime where we've got more.

I mean, we've got more... You can go to the grocery store down the street and we can get some.

- Yeah, where do you sell it?

- We sell to probably about 900 bars, restaurants, liquor stores, grocery stores throughout most of Illinois.

- No kidding?

- Yep.

Here in town, in Peoria, you can go to Hy-Vee and get it.

Walmart has it.

We sell to a lot of Walmarts in Central Illinois.

- We work with several distributors throughout the state of Illinois that cover different territories for us.

So brewery's up here in Peoria, - You'd almost have to, right, because you guys can't.

That'd be a full-time job.

- Absolutely.

- Yeah, and it wouldn't be profitable.

Because the thing about the wholesalers is they're able to put 30 different brands on a truck when they go and deliver.

Where if it was just us, it'd be one brand.

And all the stop-and-go and invoicing would gobble up all the margins.

So we're very happy to team up with wholesalers that can give us a little bit of efficiency in doing that.

- Yeah.

Like you talked about, this market has grown.

So when I go in to buy a beer, I mean, it's not like it used to be: Bud Light, Miller Light, and Blue Moon, right?

Now, you've got 100 different choices.

How do you guys stand out?

- Well, I mean, the big one is we use grain from our family farm.

200 tons of corn, wheat, and barley that we grow ourselves on our farm.

And I don't know of anybody in the country that can say that, let alone, you know, regionally.

So that's really our main point of differentiation.

- We kind of tend to focus on more traditional German and American styles instead of some of the more what is popular in the craft segment that are poppy and maybe not as approachable.

We think of the beer style as traditional.

That's 'cause people like to drink it for a long time, so.

- Which means it's probably a good style.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- So yeah and, you know, fresh, smaller batches.

We're not a huge brewery.

So the key there is we're able to... The small batch size means that we're keeping product flowing and it's fresh.

That's a main advantage that we have as a regional beer producer.

It's a little bit different with wine and spirits 'cause those things kind of age nicely.

Beer, the fresher the better.

So a small regional producer I think has a bit of an advantage.

- How long does it last?

So like when you brew it, can it, how long would it be perfect, fresh for?

- It depends on the brand.

Unfortunately, our top seller is probably the most fragile beer we make.

You know, three or four months from packaging is gonna be peak freshness.

This dark German Lager, this one, you could six months, eight months and it's gonna be in great shape still.

So it's tough to give you a perfect... The hop water, a year or more.

So it just kind of depends.

But we always encourage our... Our wholesalers are contractually obligated to cold-store the beer.

And then we try to encourage 'em to only sell into places that are gonna keep it cold.

Because it is an unpasteurized product, which means that... You know, a domestic style beer, which I would argue we're actually more domestic than domestic style beers.

But those are pasteurized, which helps extend the life a little bit.

Our unpasteurized beer, we encourage folks to keep it cold and drink it sooner rather than later.

- It's a little bit different than like a milk that's pasteurized.

The beer is not gonna go bad and, you know, get you sick or anything like that.

But just, the quality won't be there.

- The flavor changes.

- We've all had that beer before.

It's like, "Oh, that one's been in the back of the fridge "for a year."

- Or in the back of the garage and it got 95 degrees in the summer.

Yeah, that's the worst for beer.

- It's gotta be taste.

And what drives me nuts is like when people will come to your house or whatever and it's like, "Oh, we brought some beer."

And all they do is they pick the cans that look cool.

And then you open it and it's like swine swill.

- Yeah, I mean, you can tell by our marketing, our branding here, we don't do a ton of that.

Most of it's just the R logo which has our farm in the background.

- Yeah.

- See that little barn?

That's at Darin's house.

- [Rob] I didn't bring my readers.

Oh yeah, there it is, yeah.

- Yeah, as a farmer-owned and brewer-owned brewery, we really try to focus on quality and not nearly as much on the marketing and shock value.

And so far, nine and a half years in, knock on whatever this material is... - [Rob] Knock on wood, yeah.

- That's served us pretty well.

- We try to keep our branding consistent across the different, you know, varieties of beer that we make so that people know, "Hey, it's coming from Riggs.

"This is probably a good example of that style of beer."

- Tell me about the brewery itself.

I can go there and have a drink?

- Yep, we're open Thursday through Sunday.

We sit on 22 acres on the edge of Urbana.

15 of those acres, we actually farm.

So we like to either have a crop of wheat or barley growing at any time to show folks so they could sit down and literally look over their shoulder and look at next year's beer growing.

We'll do a cover-crop rotation, of course, on some of that ground.

We're not just continuously going with small grains.

So we'll have a nice clover field which doubles as overflow parking for big events.

'Cause it does get busy out there.

We got a beer garden that seats several hundred people.

- [Rob] Oh.

- And then we also have a chunk of the field, a couple acres, where we do some specialty stuff.

We grow sweet corn and have a sweet corn festival every summer where literally the FFA kids come, pick it off the stalk and boil it up.

And then all the profits go back to the FFA chapter.

- [Rob] Nice.

- You can't get any closer to agriculture.

We try to bring the consumer right to the place where the stuff's growing and try to keep as much of that value on the farm as possible.

And it's worked out well.

- So as far as people that are coming to your brewery, what is your bread-and-butter customer?

- You.

A guy like you, comes in every Thursday after work.

- Yeah.

So it isn't people that are coming necessarily to see the whole experience of it.

They're looking for a good beer and a place to talk to people.

- Family run atmosphere.

- We've got a lot of regulars, so people who are from the area and either walk over or short trip.

And, you know, repeat customers is our bread and butter.

- We do have some people that, you know, travel around the country visiting breweries and stuff.

And that's a small piece of the business.

But, you know, the regular customer is the biggest piece.

I would also encourage you to remember, you know, wholesale is the majority of our volume.

Probably about 80% of our volume goes in a truck out to bars and restaurants.

- [Rob] As far as profit though?

- Well, yeah.

Majority of the profit is probably derived from the tap room, although the majority of the liquid volume goes wholesale.

There's profit on both sides.

But it is better over the bar, 'cause there's no middleman in that one.

Just like in ag, anytime you can cut out any middleman, you should probably at least examine that possibility.

- So every time we interview someone, right before we go on air, it's like, "Is there anything you want me to stay away from?"

Just in case, you know.

It's like, some people will be like, "Well, don't ask me how long I've been married.

"I know the year I was married, but I don't know how many."

Stuff like that, right?

- Yeah; next time, I'll definitely do that.

- I don't wanna stick my foot in my mouth.

And, you know, joking.

Most people say, "Yeah, politics," whatever.

You made a really good point about beer being one of the last bastions of society that the right and the left can all agree on.

- Yeah.

Yeah, we see that in the tap room all the time.

We have big communal tables.

And we see people from different walks of life sitting down together and sharing a beer.

I call beer the ultimate social lubricant.

Because after one or two of 'em- - Sounds so naughty.

- Yeah, it sounds a little... But, you know, I didn't go into any more detail.

We don't have that type of license at the tap room.

(Rob and Darin laughing) But no, I think people can relax a little bit more after a beer and let their guard down.

And I think that that's really helpful for society.

It's refreshing to see it, people that you know that are on different sides of the spectrum.

'Cause maybe you've picked that up independently from conversation.

But then you see 'em talking together, you think, "Man, we need more of that."

- Yeah, I agree.

I think, you know, you talk about how society evolved and, you know, going back to the Middle Ages when the bars were open and that's where the cities started being built around.

But, you know, in today's society, it seems like everybody's so polarized: right, left or whatever, there are so very few things that can be that middle icebreaker where we can remember that, hey, you can have a nice conversation, learn something from somebody that you don't agree with at all.

- Mmm, yep.

Yeah, and there's good people on both sides and in the middle.

And I think a lot of people forget that.

But you can remember it over a couple of beers when you kind of let that guard down a little bit.

So yeah, we see it all the time, and we're proud of that.

We traveled around the world in the military.

Been to a lot of countries where there's a lot of beer, a lot of countries where there's no beer.

And I don't think it's a coincidence, in my opinion, that the countries with no beer, I think were less pleasant, and the countries with a lot of beer were way more pleasant.

I don't think that's a coincidence.

- To quote Homer Simpson, "Alcohol, the cause and solution to all of life's problems."

- All of life problems; yes, sir.

(Rob laughing) Wise man.

- What do you want people to know about brewing beer that they generally wouldn't know?

- Hmm.

- I like to point out to folks that it's an all natural product.

It's ancient, all natural.

There's a lot of things that you're ingesting today that is relatively new to the human body, right, heavily processed stuff.

This isn't.

This is grain, water, hops and yeast.

The hops, the hop water, it's just water and hops.

But the beers: ancient, all natural.

And then I always try to remind folks with our brand, that value isn't going through multiple, you know, publicly traded international corporations.

That value is coming straight down to an independent, small family farm.

And it's keeping us alive and solvent.

So like, you're voting with your dollar and supporting real independent ag at the local level when you choose our brand.

- Beer is really closely tied to agriculture.

In fact, my professor at brewing school claimed that beer was the reason for agriculture and why we settled down and started growing this stuff that could make this delicious beverage for us.

- You know, we talked about the old days when there was, you know, five, six beer... You had PBR, right?

Remember that?

You just had those beers and that was it.

And then when this started coming in, I really liked it.

Because it gave opportunities to people like you.

I mean, you aren't going to work for Anheuser-Busch.

You guys are actually doing it on your own.

I think it's a great opportunity.

I think it's fun to see where people are looking at other alternative uses for their farm.

If people wanna find out more about you, where would they go?

- We've got a pretty decent website.

- Yeah, riggsbeer.com.

- Darren studied Computer Science, so.

- It does all right.

- Do you know, AI can build you a website in like three minutes now?

- I heard that; I haven't tried it yet.

- Man, you should have some of the AI beer.

Whew.

(smacking fingers) - I bet.

(Darin and Rob laughing) I bet it looks a little weird.

- I'm still trying to figure out what exactly AI is.

Some of the stuff's impressive.

Some of this stuff, I'm like... - Believe me, if there is a profession that AI could take over, it's sitting in this chair right here.

(Rob, Darin and Matt laughing) So then, what's the website?

- Riggsbeer.com.

You know, come check us out.

We do brewery tours about once a month.

Got a big beer garden.

We have a Christmas market actually.

- Yeah, it's going on right now.

- Going on right now.

- Just churning out the parking lot this morning before coming up here with the scraper.

- Yeah, that's a fun experience except for when it snows a bunch.

And then we gotta get the Kubota out and scrape two and a half acres of parking.

- That won't happen this year.

(laughing) - We need the moisture though.

So it's, I don't know.

I think it's really cool.

And y'all aren't very far from Peoria.

So I mean, what better... Everybody's looking for something to do, right, some different thing to do.

And I don't know why you wouldn't hop in the car, head down to Urbana and check you guys out.

- Yeah, and ask for it at the local grocery or your neighborhood bar.

We are distributed here in town.

You can find us.

- Absolutely.

Matt and Darren Riggs from Urbana, Illinois.

Riggs Beer Company.

Guys, make sure you go check 'em out.

Everybody else, catch you next time.

- Thanks.

(upbeat music) - If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to explore more of our local content.

You can connect with us on our social media platforms, visit our website, or download and watch the free PBS app.

We can't wait to see you next time on "A Shot of Ag".