MetaBrewery: An Interview with Holger Mannweiler about his New Web3 Brewery

In an interview with Holger Mannweiler, founder of MetaBrewery, we discuss the various aspects of web3 and how he is using a community-focused NFT to provide German and American brews to beer lovers around the world using the blockchain. 

The collection marks a new variety of NFT that is attached to a larger business and has the potential to become a catalyst for many more industries interested in the role that blockchains can play in an ever-evolving, digital world where consumer involvement is built directly into the product. 

Before we get into Web3, can you tell us more about your team? I'm under the assumption that this brewery is newly acquired?

Yeah, the brewery is newly acquired. It's a brewery that has been operational for almost 150 years. So, the place has quite a history. It was really the purpose to buy a place that is in existence, that is fully operational, so that we can continue to brew beer there almost immediately. 

We are a team of seven with one professional brewer and we have another professional brewer in the extended team which we kind of merged with. One is German, experienced in brewing the traditional German brews, and the other one is American and experienced in the IPA space with American craft beers and experimental brews.

We joined forces since they were trying to set up an NFT project for a taproom on the Spanish coast. So, we're doing the tap room as well and have a second professional brewer in the team. We have quite a journey in front of us by bringing these two expertises together.

The beer we brew has a shelf life of six months so it doesn't need to be cooled. We're not using any preservatives, but we're filtering the beer. When it's filled into cans, we have hygienic conditions so that the beer is good for six months.

So, for the holder, what can they expect? Will they receive a box every three months?

That's exactly how it works. We grant an annual beer allowance of an average 200 cans per holder (which will vary by NFT rarity). On average, the holder receives 200 cans of beer per year. We break this up into four shipments of 50 cans which we ship every three months.

Every quarter, you will get a shipping window where you have to claim them. The way it works is we're going to airdrop an NFT to your wallet with your quarterly allowance. Then you have two choices. The first choice is you go to our website and claim the beer or sell the allowance NFT on a secondary market. 

We need to make sure that people don’t pile up allowances because that could potentially bring us into a position where we might not be able to produce enough beer in a certain amount of time. So, there is a claiming window, if you don't claim it then it becomes void.

How do you plan to ship products to the United States?

First, we require a $1 credit card payment so we can ship to a current address instead of blind or old addresses. That's something that we need to do for age verification too, but there's one condition - it needs to be shipped in bulk

I've personally been in the cosmetics business for more than 10 years, shipping products back and forth to the United States. Throughout that time, I've been working with logistics partners that do this very efficiently and I’ve learned many things from that. 

If we start shipping a single box to a single recipient at a time, it gets insanely expensive; but that's what we're currently doing to start. We are shipping out small boxes of three bottles or cans to people just to taste the beer. 

It cost us $25 per box, and we charge $1 per box for shipping. So, we subsidize it currently because no one would actually buy three cans of beer and pay $25 shipping, right? But we can't do that in the future. This is not a business model if we pay more for the shipping than for the beer. 

We’re working with our logistics partner who operates an amount of warehouses in basically all the major ports on the two coasts in the United States. It enables us to ship very efficiently, which actually means we have to pack pallets, or even fill containers. Then they do logistics from their warehouse in Germany to their warehouse on the East coast, the West coast, and then break it up from there, shipping it locally to the recipient. That is something that works pretty cost-efficiently. 

That's the reason why we have shipping and claiming windows for the beer allowance. We ship four times a year so we can ship all the boxes at once. That actually gets us into a position with very favorable logistics rates.

How do you think other local breweries, wineries, and distilleries will look at this? Do you think they'll try to emulate it? Is that something you want other people to try?

We would actually be really open to partner with other breweries that want to apply a similar concept or to learn from us. I think the concept of trying to use NFTs and web3 has the potential to really redefine an industry.

As far as I know, we're the first web3 beer brand and the first web3 brewery, but we would love to be kind of the first of a movement. We will not be afraid to help others kind of go the same way because the beer market is so huge. It's so enormous, but if you're talking to people who really like beer and have a certain kind of quality expectation on beer, they're not feeling well-served by these big companies. 

I think that this web3 approach - building a community, having your fan base associated with the brand, helping to drive innovation, understanding what they want, and bringing products to them that they desire and that they value - makes them part of the family. We’re building something together. Particularly, the beer space, and probably similar in wine or spirits, has the potential to redefine how marketing is being done. That's a win-win. 

There’s a DAO on your website. Are community members going to be able to vote on monthly beer recipes or anything like that? 

We really have the idea to involve the community as a kind of focus group, to understand what resonates with them and bring those products to market. Members will be able to vote on which beers we brew, ship, and sell on the market. 

Yeah, it's still an operational business. So, we were not going to ask them any kind of daily operations questions; but we're going to ask them about strategic things that symbolize the community itself because they're part of the decision making. We want their opinion.

Big consumer brands, they spend fortunes on setting up focus groups and doing market research with them, but we have our focus group built into the business model. That's our community of holders. We happily invite anyone to our community that wants to contribute and become a part of our decision making.

You have a Septemberfest. Can you tell a little bit more about that?

Septemberfest is a three-day festival that runs in parallel to the Oktoberfest in Munich. We initially wanted to call it Oktoberfest, but Oktoberfest is a registered brand of the city of Munich. So, we're not allowed to call it October. Instead, we decided to call it Septemberfest. We're going to have traditional Bavarian food and traditional music which will be free for our NFT holders in the future. 

We're doing it post mint, but we have to plan it now so that everyone who has ordered beer from us has the opportunity to participate. We have instructions on our Discord for everyone that’s minted to join for a three-day German beer festival at the brewery with free beer.