All Relation Brewing And The Rise Of The Cocktail-Inspired Beer

“For me, it’s a big thing to engage people who don’t usually give a shit about beer, and to surprise them.”

This is the driving force behind Bobby Bendily’s new venture. Once the second brewer at Other Half Brewing, the Brooklyn-based brewery largely behind the last half decade’s explosion of craft beer, Bendily recently started a new project — this time as an owner. He joined industry-veteran Quinby Chunn, founder of Hattiesburg, Mississippi-based Southern Prohibition Brewing Company, in creating All Relation, a new brewery based in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Kenny Gould: You’re pretty well known in the industry for brewing at Other Half during its early days. How’d you get there?

Bobby Bendily: I had a couple buddies that worked over there. At the time, Other Half was taking off, but it hadn’t really gone off yet. My buddy Joe Tracy was a brewer there; he knew I was down in Mississippi working at Southern Prohibition and that my partner was still in New York. He was like, “We’re going to be looking, you want a gig?” I was like, “Fuck yeah, man.” At the time, Joe and I were the only two brewers. When I started, we still had single and double brew days.

KG: I’m sure that changed quickly. What do you think Other Half was doing that made it so successful?

BB: It was no one thing. It was an amalgamation of ideas. Part of it was that they were in the right place at the right time. The beer scene was getting ready to blow up but hadn’t taken off. I think Sam Richardson had been in the industry so long and had a really good idea that the IPA thing was about to hit. So we said, “What could we do that would make this style a little more signature?” But he also focused on what people were into, and the collectibility of what we do. He started treating the product less like beer and more like people treat sneakers.

KG: Other Half really started that “collectible” culture. 

BB: Beer has always been marketed as a lesser thing. It’s not champagne. It’s not a nice bourbon. The fact that we go around putting stickers up everywhere… you’re marketing yourself like a college student markets their band. But Sam tapped into the idea that beer could be a nicer thing. You could use nicer ingredients and make a nicer product, and New York loves that. They love to take things and make it the best version of itself. 

KG: Those things — the collectibility, the nicer ingredients — they feel like they defined American craft beer culture over the last three to five years. But what’s next? How do we keep the culture growing?

BB: I think that in this next wave, brewers are going to have to push the product further than beer. They need to create a new category. You see people flirting with this. Like Jeppe, at Evil Twin Brewing in New York City. He’s making pastry seltzers. People are playing around but I don’t think anyone is locked in yet. 

KG: How does this come into play at your brewery?

BB: Our way forward, we’re really leaning into the cocktail-inspired beer. The thing that gets me is, I know I can make amazing Helles. I know I can make an insane IPA. But when I engage a non-traditional beer drinker, that’s… that’s what I love. When I’m behind a bar and someone tries a Pina Colada Berliner Weiss and their eyes shoot up, that shit is like crack. Engaging people that would otherwise not give a shit about beer is what’s going to bring in that new wave of culture. 

KG: Yes. The new wave is experiential. You’re providing things someone has never seen before.

BB: This market in New Orleans is still a few years behind everybody else. All the time, I get people who are blown away by something and I forget, Oh yeah, you don’t have this yet. When I put out a fifteen percent pastry stout and call it a vending machine stout, people are like, “Where did you come up with this?” I’m like, “Dawg, I’ve been doing this for five years.” Now, you have to walk the line. If you make too many beer-adjacent products, you’re going to become that brewery. You want a portfolio where you can tell people, “I’ve still got you. This is going to be what you know, but we’re also going to fuck around with some other stuff.” Because I can make a cocktail-inspired beer, but if it’s not its own thing, they’re just going to get a fucking Pina Colada. At that point, I’m not solving their problem, I’m solving mine. I need to offer them something new.

KG: It’s fascinating to me that you’d leave a place as fertile and dynamic as Other Half. Were you just ready for a new experience?

BB: I wish that was the story. But I sort of fell ass-backward into it. I’d worked with my partner, Quinby Chunn, before. He owned Southern Prohibition Brewing, where I used to work. He bought this building and… I don’t want to misquote him, but I think he wanted to put a satellite Southern Prohibition in here. But he reached out to me and said, “What’s your level of interest here? Because he knew I was from here.”

KG: And your level was…?

BB: I said I wasn’t interested. And at the time, I really wasn’t. I had an amazing job at an amazing place. I mean, there’s an allure that comes to working at Other Half. It’s the best job I’ve ever had. The people are amazing. They’re creative. They’re extremely capable. And you don’t usually get that. You get one or the other, but not both. So I wasn’t in a real hurry to leave.

KG: So what happened?

BB: My wife and I had been together for about 10 years at that point. We decided, let’s get hitched. We were in the process of planning our wedding down here and our wedding was three blocks from where the brewery is. We kept coming down, my wife started looking at jobs, and we started getting hit with all that… stuff. We wanted to be closer to family. We started talking about a kid. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen someone carry a stroller down a set of subway stairs, but you only see that long stare from lifers in jail. 

KG: So it kind of occurred naturally.

BB: We figured we’d be in New York for a while. But based on everything you see on the news, New Orleans is a limited time offer anyways. We thought, It’s going to be underwater in 20 years. Let’s enjoy it while we can.

KG: What has it been like starting a brewery in New Orleans, which has notoriously difficult brewery laws?

BB: New Orleans is tough. I think I didn’t realize how tough it’d be until I got down here. But I think that’s what inspires a lot of creativity. When someone says, “Here are the lines,” you can do what everyone else is doing, or you can say, “Where’s my wiggle room? How do I get creative without running afoul?” 

KG: What separates All Relation from other breweries?

BB: My whole thing is a portfolio. Obviously there are hazies there because… look, I went to Other Half for a reason. I’m still hopelessly obsessed with hops, even if the market is getting less so. My favorite time of year is hop selection. I can’t wait to go see what I can get my hands on. What’s next. It’s like fantasy football for brewers. So half the menu is going to stay hazy. Right now, we also have two pastry stouts, a mixed culture saison, a pilsner. The first thing we brewed that we always keep on is a Mexican lager. Also, I didn’t want to get too close to what everyone else is doing. So maybe a quarter of our menu, we’re focused on things like cocktail-inspired beers. Maybe we’re using ingredients that aren’t traditionally used in beer. And then we push that, and make beer cocktails with them. By and large, beer cocktails are awful. When you go to a bar that does beer cocktails, they’ll have twelve specialty cocktails and one beer cocktail, and it’s usually the worst and least appealing thing. But if the base product isn’t awful, but something that’s designed to be made into other iterations, it opens what you’re doing. That’s what we’re exploring here.

KG: So people get diversity of style. What else does All Relation offer?

BB: When we built a taproom, I didn’t want our place to look like a brewery. We dropped the ceiling, made it feel more secluded, made it feel like a cocktail bar. We want people to come in and be a little confused about whether or not they’re in the right place. I think Smuggler’s Cove does a great job of that. Also Alinea, in Chicago. There’s a hallway — you walk down it and then a side door opens. It jars you a little. There’s almost a theme park thing to it, where it resets your brain.

-Interview edited for clarity and brevity.