Today we’d like to introduce you to Beau Warren
Hi Beau, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I have been in the beer since I was out of college, so about 13-14 years. I bounced around to several beer companies doing sales jobs and acquired my Cicerone Level II certificate in the process, but eventually I wanted to start brewing on a professional level. I then bounced over to Columbus, OH to start my professional brewing career under Ryan Torres at Brew Brothers at Scioto Downs for 2 years, which was an awesome experience.
After that, I saw an opportunity over at Aslin Beer Co., in Herndon, Virginia (at the time). They were cranking out world class hazy IPAs at the time, and I was looking to spread my wings a bit and further expand my professional brewing experience, so I shot out my resume over to them, One thing led to another and I hopped on board there to begin as a production brewer. For the next 5 years there, and a couple years after that they sent me up to Montreal Canada to study beer microbiology with the expectation that I spearhead the brand new wet lab and QAQC program at the new production facility in Alexandria, Virginia.
After I got my hands dirty in the lab, I became completely obsessed with manipulating or capturing novel organisms in effort to create new drinking experiences in beer. I read a ton of books, research papers, and ran tons of experiments on my own time just for fun, and I learned a heck of a lot. Eventually, the owners of Aslin approached me about possibly using their equipment and staff to start brewing my own brands, or have my own contract brewery within Aslin.
I was like – “Are you kidding me?! Hell yeah, let’s do it.”
Thus, the first 3 beers of Species X were born and brewed, with a focus on novel beer microbiology. After the success of the first 3 batches, I decided to put the project on pause. I put it on pause for a couple of reasons: one reason was to have a physical taproom, and the other was to integrate AI and machine learning into the fold of Species X. AI, machine learning, and data science became a 3rd obsession of mine that I wanted to learn absolutely everything about, so about 2.5 years about I started taking courses online at OSU for a foundational understanding while also building my beer AI models at the same time.
Time came where my models were completed and ready, and we suddenly found a space (the old Platform Beer Co. location), and the ball really started rolling, and eventually on January 25th of this year we had our soft opening.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The biggest thing for us is brand awareness. Even with articles run on us from very big newspapers and local blogs, a large majority of people in the city do not know we exist, and if they do, a majority of these people do not know the rich story that we have here at Species X.
I will say it is really fun when customers find me at the right time and place where I can dive completely into everything that we do here, because you can see their mind blown in real time.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
In addition to being a brewery, Species X Beer Project is a continuous research endeavor seeking the next groundbreaking species for brewing beer, through both computational and biological means.
The hypothetical and theoretical “Silicon” species will originate from artificial intelligence and machine learning. Each unique AI model will generate unique and one-of-a-kind beer recipes, with varying degrees of guidelines and constraints based on anticipated beer recipe outcomes.
The novel biological species, dubbed the “Carbon” species, will either be novel or of forgotten origins, relative to humans. Methods for acquiring these species include (but are not limited to) hybridization, genetic engineering, mutagenesis, novel capture, and spore germination.
In other words, we are brewing beer with novel biological organisms and artificial intelligence.
In addition to the description above, we are positioning ourselves ourselves to make brewing in space more practical. Lunar Base, one of our flag-ship beers, is developed with this goal in mind. Genetically engineered yeast, enzyme utilization, and CO2 capture allows for a reduced reliance on resources.
We also use artificial intelligence in both our kitchen and cocktail bar. Antonio (which named himself) is an AI chef agent that creates a food special of the week after doing research of our kitchen inventory. Alex, our AI mixologist, does the same but for our front of house on a quarterly basis!
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
Every time I “clear” an AI model’s recipe that there is a certain risk to it. Every time I brew beer with an organism that I have no previous experience with, there is a high risk to it. Unfortunately there is no important learning points without failure, and I have completely accepted that.
Starting a brewery that is dedicated to two very controversial topics, novel organisms (such as genetically engineered yeast) and AI, is also very risky. However, with the amount of breweries saturating the market currently, you really have to do some wild stuff to stand out.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.speciesxbeer.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/speciesxbeer
- Facebook: https://www.speciesxbeer.com/speciesxbeer
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/speciesxbeer
