Two friends joining forces to offer specialty beers

If two people are going to start a business together, it must make sense for them to have skills and experiences that complement one another.

That is certainly the case with Se Padilla and Jan Martásek, who together have formed Two Tales Brewing, which aims to produce high-quality beers and sell them in both Asia and Europe.

Born and raised in San Francisco, Padilla has spent the past decade in Prague. He has a background in the entertainment industry, including many years as a professional musician, and also has long experience in the food and beverage sector, including being a partner in the popular Prague Beer Museum which has 30 taps of rotating beer specials. He will be handling European operations from his base in the Czech capital.

By contrast, Martásek, who is originally Czech but lived in Canada for many years, has high-level financial experience, which will come in useful as he runs the Asian side of the business from Bangkok, where he recently relocated.

When The Prague Post sat down with them to learn about their venture, which starts full production in the Czech Republic this month ahead of an official launch in March, they appeared more alike in personality than might be expected from their dissimilar professional histories.

The Prague Post: What gave you the idea to start brewing specialty beers?

Jan Martásek: The idea of craft beer came from my feeling and experience of Toronto. That's where it all started in the early '80s. That's when I started seeing craft beers in pubs.

Se Padilla: It's starting here now. It's starting all over Europe. You see the diversity of beers here. Five years ago, you could only get five or eight different types of lager, five or eight variations of the same beer in the major markets. Now people are getting ales, flavored beers, seasonal beers, all kinds of different varieties, and they're growing. We thought it was an opportunity to be part of this and to take it to the next level - taking this mom-and-pop microbreweries concept and making it more widely available and not just in one pub and one restaurant, but making it a brand people can enjoy all over Europe and Asia, as well.

TPP: What distinguishes craft beers made by companies such as yours from mass-market beers?

SP: The mass-market beers are fairly flat as far as taste goes. [They are] noncomplex. Craft beers and our beer, it's an entire experience. When you smell it, you smell bananas and pears and some berries. With the nose you're getting a lot of fruitiness, but when you taste it, you taste a lot of the opposite. You're tasting wheat, a lot of the hops. The back of your palette tastes it as well. Your whole mouth is alive. That's why our beers are not beers you have six pints of down the pub. It's more a sipping beer.

JM: It's a beer you remember the next day. You can still remember the smell and taste of the beer. It stays with you. The true alchemy is finding a proper balance between the bitter and the sweet and the other surrounding tastes and as in life, that's what we do. Balance is important.

TPP: Although there was a partial recovery last year, statistics have shown that beer consumption has fallen in the Czech Republic since the financial crisis began. Is now a bad time to be launching a microbrewery?

JM: With the craft beer, the beer that is made with passion, the market has had a double-digit increase in the past three years in Europe. Craft beer is coming back after many, many years. It's taking what we believe is its rightful position … [but] craft beer will never be able to take a large proportion of the market. You cannot compete on price. You don't want our beers in Makro and Tesco. You're going to see our beers in more select bars and restaurants and hotels. It's more a boutique beer and more boutique types of sales outlets.

TPP: What hurdles have you had to overcome in setting up your venture?

JM: The only problem, and it's become a failure of the overall economy, has been the financial backing we needed. We had a lot of financial backing [in 2011], but we weren't ready yet. Since we finalized things, a lot of financial backing has dried up. It's been a very strong reflection of the economy - not of the consumption side, but of people's investments.

TPP: Why are you also focusing on Asia as well as Europe?

JM: The Asian market came upon us, instead of us trying to break into the Asian market. Before Christmas [in 2011], there were floods in Bangkok. My wife decided to do a concert here in Prague to raise relief [funds]. We flew to Bangkok and gave them some money. We met a number of people who were exceptionally grateful. They found out we were in the beer market and were creating our own brand of beer. It was originally their suggestion to come and study the Asian market.

TPP: You have been making small quantities of your beers already. What has the response been like?

JM: We have had batches of the beer so far, but we've been making it in small, 500-liter batches. Probably it takes one month to brew 500 liters.

SP: It's incredible. We've done zero marketing, and the beer sells out within two weeks.

Daniel Bardsley can be reached at
business@praguepost.com