Meet the Avery Rascal — Travis Rupp
We all have a little Rascal in us. A monthly feature of who makes Avery, Avery.
This month’s Rascal is Travis Rupp, Research & Development Manager and Beer Archaeologist at Avery Brewing Co.
What do you do at Avery Brewing?
I am the research and development manager at Avery Brewing Company. I oversee most beer ideation and beer invention from the Special Projects team (a team that focuses on experimental and barrel-aged beer). I also help coordinate beer ideation on a brewery-wide level so whenever we are trying to create any new beers — barrel-aged or not — I help keep the project and process moving forward, as well as troubleshoot any potential issues that could arise. I’m involved in a huge range of beers such as our canned The Real Peel IPA, a new packaged IPA soon to be released, all the way to our one-off specialty and barrel-aged beers. I also oversee our barrel program, which includes choosing and acquiring barrels such as rum, bourbon, tequila, or really anything. I also oversee what goes into those barrels, as well as when that product comes out and is ready for packaging.
I also have a title of Beer Archaeologist at Avery Brewing. Outside of Avery, I teach anything related to Greek, Roman, Near-Eastern, Egyptian, and Classical Mediterranean history at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Doing research for that job, I coupled it with my brewing background. The goal was to recreate ancient beers in a way that people haven’t done before or haven’t done for a couple thousands of years. We created a new series of beers in September 2016 called the Ales of Antiquity series. These Ales of Antiquity beers take several months or even years of research to create.
What brought you to Avery?
I’ve been at Avery for about 5.5 years. I graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2010 with a master’s degree in Material Culture and Ancient Archaeology. I was focused primarily on Roman Archaeology. At the time, I thought that I wanted to get out of academia so I was exploring a lot of other avenues. I thought about going into Sports Management & Administration so I was exploring that world and talking with multiple organizations. I got an interview with the Philadelphia Eagles, but I knew that I wasn’t going to get the job because I was applying for their non-profit organization and I had zero non-profit experience. I was going up against people who had 40 years of experience. During that interview, it was recommended that I go into law, maybe sports law because of my background in Latin. I took that advice and was at a job fair waiting to interview with a law office that represented all of the major sports industries in Denver when this guy approached me and we started talking. Turns out, he worked for Apple and was doing recruiting for the business sector. This was in 2010 when there were no jobs available due to the recession, so I decided to take the job. I had no idea what it entailed and I had never been in sales before. I had owned my own business at one point when I was living in Iowa, but it was a contracting company so I did remodeling of bathrooms and roofing for a few years. This was way different. I took the Apple job and became a business rep. My job was to sell computers and iPads to businesses that were looking to convert from a PC platform to a Mac platform. I did that for 2 years and was pretty successful at it, but the corporate world just wasn’t for me. I wasn’t having very much fun. My girlfriend at the time, now my wife, encouraged me to rethink what I was doing and go into what I was passionate about. I didn’t really know what that was, but she brought up that all I ever did (and still do) is talk about beer. She reminded me that I’ve been homebrewing since I was 19 years old, I went to Avery Brewing every weekend for their new releases, and I constantly talked about beer.
I decided to apply to a handful of breweries, Avery being one of them. I remember coming into the taproom and telling Matty (Matt Lambuth, Restaurant General Manager) that I had applied for a job and he didn’t believe me. I had been hired by the University of Colorado as a part-time professor and was teaching Greek Art at the time so they couldn’t believe that a professor wanted to work at a brewery, but I was serious. They did run me through the ringer, I had to go through three interviews to be a bartender, but I was hired. I bartended for about 10 months and then I was pulled into brewery production shortly thereafter. I had the opportunity to join the sales team, but I decided to go into production and I’ve worked my way through various roles over the years.
You are called a Beer Archaeologist. How did that come about?
When I was working in the taproom as a bartender, a bunch of employees asked me what I taught and asked if they could come to one of my lectures to listen. I was teaching a class called, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Rome, and I was completely fine with them attending. They started to come to my lectures in the evenings and next thing I know, they are there every week and every class, listening in and taking notes. During the week, the crew started to ask me follow-up questions about my class, they clearly wanted to know more. At that time, there was a whole group of people preparing to take the Cicerone exam, so there was a lot of curiosity about beer history itself. I started putting together beer style and history lessons to help everyone study. Once a month, I would go buy a selection of beer that was BJCP true-to-style, then I would give a lecture about the beer style and history, and then we would drink! Once I moved into production, I started to put together more formal presentations at the production meetings. There would be so much Q&A in those meetings and it just started to grow. I would ask the staff what they wanted to learn about, it might be about the origins of high-gravity brewing or simply what was the difference between imperial IPAs and double IPAs. I’d spend a month doing research on that subject and then present it to the team. Eventually, through my research, I started to find gaps in the history that historians were not really exploring. I had bought many books on beer history and was starting to get really frustrated because almost everyone starts in the 12th century with Belgian breweries and monastic traditions even though we know that history of beer dates way farther back. That’s when I started to do my own research to fill in those gaps and that’s how I eventually came up with the Ales of Antiquity series. The first beer in the series, Nestor’s Cup, took me about three years of research to create because no one writes about Greek brewing at all.
What are the highs and the lows of your jobs?
The stuff that makes me most excited is the research. I love research, I do. I love being able to dig into all aspects of everything and then trying to create something out of that. That goes for both of my jobs. I launched a new class this year on Ancient Sports and we’ve never offered one at the University before. It took me two years to develop that class. So, the research is always ongoing. Even though you can “can” lectures, I constantly go back to old lectures and build in new material. Same goes for brewing. The high for me is when everything is really clicking really well here. I have an awesome team; there is six of us, including myself, so the days where I’m not necessarily needed on the floor and I’ve caught up on the tasks of making sure that we have tanks, the yeast, and materials to create our beers, I get really excited about being able to dig into that next project. For example, my next Ales of Antiquity is George Washington’s Porter. Most of the research is done at home, I’ll sit in my office at night and do a lot of reading and research, but there are those days when everything works seamlessly and I can take it to the next level by diving into my next project while at work. I love that.
The other big high of my job is that I have the gift of gab. I know it, I’m a talker. I love speaking to people about what I do. It’s so cool to me. I never thought that my job would transition into where one of my major roles at the brewery is going out and talking to people all over the world. It’s so much fun to see how excited people get when they are educated, but also when they can tangibly get to experience the thing that you are educating them on. Beer is so unlimited, there are so many avenues. I strongly believe that someone cannot not be a beer drinker because there are so many different types of beer out there. Those are the highs for me. I love being a cheerleader for what we do.
Now for the lows… I can easily tell you what it is at the University of Colorado. I absolutely loathe grading. I hate it with every part of my being. My students know it, they think it is hilarious, but they do think that I’m a fair grader. I loathe it because I’m such a perfectionist. When I grade exams, I grade them twice just to make sure that I maintain consistency, so it takes forever. It’s the only low of my University job though. I love teaching, there isn’t anything else that I don’t like.
At the brewery, it’s always sad when you have put a lot of work into a project and it just doesn’t work out. For example, you put all this work into a beer, you have all this ideation, you put it all together, but then the beer just tastes terrible and you have to destroy it. It’s hard, but we just have to build callouses because it just happens. That’s just part of being involved in Research and Development; not everything is going to work out. I think what’s even harder is when you put a new beer on tap and you think it is the next big thing, but then people don’t buy it or just simply don’t get it. That’s always a little bit of a low, but at the same time, we don’t ever take them as lows, we take them as learning experiences. You just have to look at every failure as a learning experience in a creative company because that is just what we do.
Do you ever wake up not feeling inspired?
Right now, I never have that feeling, but that’s because of the niche that I’ve found. I think that if I didn’t have the Ales of Antiquity series, I might stall out. With the Ales of Antiquities series, I have no problem with coming up with ideas. I half-jokingly say this in talks, but I’m actually pretty serious, I don’t think that I will ever run out of ideas by the time I retire from the industry. Every culture has beer, every historical period has beer, and within a culture, if you move from one community to the next, the beers are different. The United States is a prime example of that. I have a focus on beer, but that can mean everything. Even within my specialization of Beer History, I can become an expert in ancient South African beers, or the North East of the United States beers, or Antarctica beers. I don’t think I’ll ever run out of ideas.
With my University of Colorado job, I have an ongoing list of ideas for classes that I’d like to offer. What does happen though is that sometimes I’ve taught the same class so many times that I just need a break from it. For example, I’m taking a break from teaching Egyptian Archaeology next semester because I’ve taught it every semester for the last 5 years, so I’ve taught it like 15 times. I can tell when I’m lecturing that I just want to get it done, so that’s a case where its good to step away from it for a little bit and then come back to it in the future.
What’s your favorite Avery Beer?
It’s a tough one. The beer that brought me here was Maharaja. I had been living in Colorado for 8 days and one of my best friends from my graduate program brought me to Avery. Maharaja was the first beer that I had, and I had no idea that beer could taste like that. I think across the board, though, that one Avery beer that I’m constantly coming back to is New World Porter. It has always been one of my favorite beers that we put out every winter. I was so bummed when we stopped bottling it, but I’m really excited because we are putting it back on tap for a bit this winter.
Favorite Non-Avery Beer?
I drink a lot of New Belgium. I love Trippel, I think it is one of the best Belgian Goldens out there. New Belgium is pretty easy to find, so the beers that I am always seeking out are those foreign/imported or historic beers. Delirium is probably one of my favorite breweries in the world. I love Delirium. In the U.S., I love Surly in Minneapolis. I think that their beer is fantastic. I love Odell’s IPA. Call to Arms makes great beer and I hang out at Wibby in Longmont a lot too. I also drink a lot of non-beers too. I drink a lot of wine and spirits. I’m a big scotch fan. Being in charge of the barrel program, it’s kind of a “responsibility” to drink the stuff that originally came out of the barrels.
Outside of brewing and teaching, what hobbies do you have?
There is very little that I’m not interested in. Outside of my two jobs, I’m an avid reader and I do go well beyond just history & research. I read a lot of fiction. I spend more time reading than anything else. I’m also writing a book right now, so I guess you can call that a job, but it is also a hobby that I took on. I write a lot. Beyond those things, I love museums. My wife Sara and I hang out a lot at Denver Museum of Nature and Science and the Denver Art Museum. We are also really interested in food in general. I don’t cook, I’m just terrible at it, but Sara is way better. We love pairing drinks with food and Sara is really into food culture and history. We are always trying to put together historic dinners and pairings. I’m also a Trekkie and spend a lot of time watching Star Trek. I run a lot. I’m not fast, but it is just something that I enjoy doing. And I spend a lot of time with my dog, Kona. She is probably my biggest hobby.
