Full-Steam Ahead

If you shout Yeeee-Haaaaaw, will a beer magically appear in front of you?

That’s one of the frequently asked questions posed on Yee-Haw’s FAQ page. While the jury’s still out, the chances are getting better every day, courtesy of Yee-Haw’s ever-expanding distribution footprint.

Yee-Haw has defied the typical trajectory of a mountain microbrewery. 

Yee-Haw came out big when it opened its brewery in Johnson City, Tennessee, in the summer of 2014. It essentially skipped the start-up stage, and hasn’t let up since.

“We may be a new brewery but we are not new to the game,” say Jeremy Walker, Yee-Haw’s sales and marketing director. “We knew what we needed to do, when, where, and how — and we went and did it. Not that it was easy.”

Most craft breweries open with an in-house brewing capacity just big enough for their own bar patrons. If, and when, the brewery proves its mettle with a local following, it expands a few barrels at a time to tap larger markets.

Not Yee-Haw. 

It built a production-scale brewery out of the gate. Within 6 months of opening, Yee-Haw was knighted as the Official Craft Beer of the Bristol Motor Speedway. Not even 2 years old, Yee-Haw beer is sold at hundreds of locations from Chattanooga to Nashville and upward into southwest Virginia. 

“We took off a little faster than expected. And you hold on and keep working and that’s what we did,” Walker says.

That kind of success took more than a cool name. It took good beer, and that’s where Yee-Haw’s head brewer Brandon Greenwood comes in. 

Yee-Haw isn’t Greenwood’s first rodeo by a long shot. He’s been a brewer for a quarter century, with five breweries on his resume before Yee-Haw. He’s done it all, from head brewer to setting up new facilities, including the retrofit of a 300,000-square-foot steel factory in Chicago into a Lagunitas brewing facility.

Yee-Haw, at just 10,000-square-feet, is his smallest foray by far, but offered just what he was looking for: A ticket out of the corporate beer world and creative license to create something of his own.

“The idea of building a brewery and hiring the team and developing the products was a big factor to join this project. It allowed me to put into play everything I had been learning over the past 20 years,” Greenwood said. Plus, it got him out of Chicago and into the mountains.

Greenwood credits the vision of Yee-Haw’s founder and primary investor, Joe Baker, for giving his team on the ground free rein. 

“Joe trusts my experience and background. He gave me carte blanche to build a world-class, state-of-the-art brewery,” Greenwood says.

Baker ensured the brewery was well-capitalized, hired top people, and turned them loose. 

“We absolutely cut no corners,” Walker says. “We were fortunate enough to have the tools at our disposal to come out swinging and we did.”

Greenwood’s philosophy as a brewer is simple, literally. 

“Keep it simple. That is my overarching principle,” Greenwood says. “Beer shouldn’t have such a complex pallet that people are confused by it.”

Some craft beers come with a white paper describing their brewing formula and ingredients. But Yee-Haw prides itself on being “user-friendly.” 

“We joke that our beer is made for drinking, not thinking,” Walker says.

Don’t be fooled, though. A biology major and chemistry minor, Greenwood has it dialed in. 

Yee-Haw’s lab has all the same equipment as Sierra Nevada or New Belgium.

“Every batch of beer, every bottle and every keg will have been tested 36 times before it’s released. So we are intimately familiar with our products,” Greenwood says.

The expertise Greenwood brought to the brewing side, Walker brought to the distribution side. His official job title is the “director of exponential mayhem,” but he’s also known as the sales and marketing director.

Like Greenwood, Walker had an impressive resume, from managing distribution territories for New Belgium out West to overseeing the East Tennessee territory for Eagle Distributing.

Walker admits the beer business is “incredibly competitive,” but it pales in comparison to Yee-Haw’s in-house beard competition.

“We’re just having fun,” Walker said. “It isn’t everyday you get paid to go to bars and talk about beer for a living.”