Here at 92-9 the Game we have it good. We watch sports, we talk about sports, we argue about sports, we entertain... there isn't much that could make life better.
Add beer? OK, now we're talking.
Labor Day Weekend marked the unofficial end of summer and the emergence of fall and college football. To us, it was the holiday weekend leading up to the launch of one of our favorite creations. Well, OK, we helped a little.
September 10 marks the three-year anniversary of the first purchase of Hey Man Ale in metro Atlanta... we think. So, we thought it would be fun to get Carl Dukes, Mike Bell, and Taylor Lamm and Leslie Tillery of Oconee Brewing Company to share some thoughts about this revolutionary beer collaboration.
Dukes & Bell's Hey Man is a 5% blonde ale made by Oconee Brewing Company in Greensboro, Georgia. It's very approachable and easy drinking, plus light, smooth, and refreshing. This beer was the brainchild of brewmaster Taylor Lamm and media director Leslie Tillery, who brought the idea to 92-9 the game back in 2018.
In the early phases of this project, Lamm and Tillery brought a contingent of Oconee Brewing minds to Atlanta to meet with Dukes & Bell and the 92-9 team. Instead of conceptualizing a beer and letting Lamm and his team run with the idea, everyone at 92-9 wanted to be involved. Dukes & Bell planned a few "field trips" to Oconee Brewing to learn about the process, learn about beer, and aid in this brew's creation.
"I remember how good a fit everything felt," Tillery said remembering the first time both groups sat together, "It just made a lot of sense for us to bring craft beer into this unique sports market and just how enthusiastic everybody with 92-9 the Game was. I knew it had the potential to be big because I knew how much Dukes & Bell mean to the Atlanta market and their fans are so enthusiastic."
Coming up with exactly what beer to make wasn't a quick process. On their first trip to the brewery Dukes & Bell had to try numerous different styles of beer (it's tough work but someone had to do it).
"I remember their contagious energy and the excitement building up to that taste test," Lamm said. "We knew going in that it should be a light beer to appeal to the widest range of beer drinkers and applied year round to whatever sport was in season. Making those samples was a lot of fun. It's a very fond memory because they were so excited about it. It's a good thing they both landed on the same one. What if Mike had really liked one style and Carl had been like 'Nah, I hate that one.' Then what would we have done?"
Dukes & Bell both landed on Blonde Ale. But the creation process wasn't nearly done. Now that Lamm had a style to work with, he needed to brew sample batches in that style to further narrow what Dukes and Bell wanted. A few weeks later Dukes & Bell made another "field trip" to learn about Blonde Ales and drill down on exactly what this beer should taste like.
With a number of different Blonde Ales in front of Dukes & Bell, they both agreed on the same brew, but had just one adjustment. After both selecting the same beer in a blind taste test, Lamm read off the specs. When the brewmaster got to 4%, Dukes & Bell almost in unison told him "It's needs to have more alcohol." That was the only tweak Lamm said he had to make, raising this beer from 4% to 5%.
Since that day we first saw Hey Man Ale in stores, a lot has changed. From the early days when Lamm remembers stores having issues keeping this beer in stock to now being able to find this Dukes & Bell beer all across the state of Georgia.
"We were a baby brewery when this all started," Tillery said, as Oconee Brewing was barely older than 1 year old when Hey Man launched. "This was our first collaboration, it was our first beer to really hit the Atlanta market and go statewide, it's just a source for me personally of great pride."
And it opened doors in Atlanta, too.
"We we're on the outside looking in to Atlanta," Lamm said. "Being with the brand of 92-9 and Dukes & Bell, the Hey Man brand, getting in those grocery store chains and the larger package stores, it wouldn't have been as easy for our other brands that didn't have that tie to the Atlanta market." Now the beer is a force all over the state. And there are some visitors to the taproom in Greensboro, Georgia (just about 80 miles away from the 92-9 studios) who funnel through and realize that Oconee is the brewing force behind Hey Man Ale.
And not only is Oconee Brewing growing, and the brand behind Dukes' and Bell's show growing, but the Hey Man Ale brand is growing. This past summer marked the second year a seasonal version of Hey Man Ale was produced. Oconee released Hey Man Watermelon Lime in 2020 as just a taproom offering. For its second season, Oconee sent it out into distribution throughout Georgia.
"It developed among our local community a bit of a following where if we didn't have it on people were like 'What the heck? Where's the watermelon lime version?'" Lamm recalled as that made the decision easy to push the seasonal version out more broadly. It's also got both Oconee Brewing and Dukes & Bell pondering other seasonal options.
"It would be awesome," Lamm said. "There's absolutely no reason why this train should stop here. Especially after seeing how successful the launch of watermelon lime was into distribution. I'd love to think that eventually we'll have four seasonals of Hey Man Ale"
Dukes & Bell are all smiles to that notion. Who's ready for five different versions of Hey Man Ale? Until then, Dukes & Bell sit and reflect on craft beer, having their faces on a can of beer, and how their journey with Oconee Brewing has impacted their lives, their show.
"Taylor's vision and his creativity allowed Hey Man Ale to be developed," Dukes said. "He allowed us to taste and mix and match brews that he had come up with and originally we weren't sure what we wanted. But we wanted something that was going to be for the masses and we didn't want it to be too specific. So his creativity was really what led us to come up with the beer. And then even expanding on that was having the Hey Man Watermelon Lime where he was just playing around with some different things and he brought it to us and asked 'Hey, do you guys like this?' It's really taken off. He's one of the best brewmasters in the country. It was really about Taylor's flexibility and willingness to work with us and say 'OK, I'll go back to the drawing board and try this and try that' until we got it where we wanted it. We think it's perfection."
Happy birthday, Hey Man Ale. The first three years have been a stellar ride.