Thick-N-Thin Brewing Co. in Hagerstown

In this episode of the UnCapped podcast, host Chris Sands headed to Thick-N-Thin Brewing Co. in Hagerstown to talk with owner Adam Shaool, lead brewer Jake Beamer and assistant brewer Daerek Siewert about the business, how the brewery operates, and what they want the brewery to be. Here is an excerpt of their talk.

UnCapped: Adam, tell me a little about your background.

Adam Shaool: I grew up in Hagerstown, went to the University of Maryland and stuck around the area in my family business. My brother and I work together. We live almost side by side. About four or five years ago, we talked about opening up a brewery. We have a real estate business and commercial centers, and we were looking to do something fun. As we’ve always worked together, it can kind of get heated. It can get rough as the years go. We’ve been working together for over 20 years. So we were talking about doing something more fun. It’s also a lot of work, and these guys can definitely attest to that.

My brother and I just jumped on it, about three years ago. We started the drawings, the ideas, the marketing, and all of a sudden it was just a happy coincidence, and Think-N-Thin was born.

UnCapped: Shortly after I met you, Jake, you called and asked if I knew anyone hiring a brewer, and I was like, “You know what? I think I do.”

Jake Beamer: Yeah, that’s right. And when I did finally reach out to Adam and follow that lead, it turned out that Adam and I had actually met about two years previously and had talked about making a brewery. I think the stars just weren’t right at the time, but then everything just worked out.

UnCapped: It fell into place perfectly. What led you and your brother to go the brewery route?

THICK-N-THIN BREWING CO.

18330 Spark Drive, Hagerstown thickandthinbrewery.com

240-366-4147

I was doing that, COVID hit, so that changed a lot of variables in the business plan. From a business standpoint, that was the original concept: bring feet back into our centers.

We’re looking to really focus on this home spot location in Hagerstown and our original roots — of being local, being a craft brewery, making good beer, and kind of put all that big business stuff aside.

My brother and I are beer drinkers; we’re not beer makers. Jake’s here, Daerek’s here, and they do really good work — artists, in my opinion — and have a lot of fun doing it.

Because breweries aren’t nearly as lucrative as real estate, from what I understand.

Shaool: No, not at all. Definitely, you have to have a passion. You have to have an interest. I would say the original idea was simply that we are businessmen, and we enjoy creating businesses and working with people

— our staff, our clients, our customers — so it started with that idea.

We grew up in a family business. My father had an oriental rug business, and we were in sales a lot. We looked at each other, back in ’98, and said, “We don’t want to work weekends anymore,” and we started real estate.

To jump to Thick-N-Thin, we have a lot of commercial shopping centers, and getting people back into centers, the walk-in crowds, besides grocery stores and liquor stores and convenience stores and things like that, we wanted to bring something more interesting. We looked at restaurants versus breweries. While

Honestly, I didn’t like sours before I met Jake. I wouldn’t drink a sour. There was House Cat in Frederick, if you remember that. That didn’t help my palate. And also, I saw a lot of, like, milkshake sours and cream lactate sours … I didn’t like any of them, really. I like regular beer — IPAs, pilsners, lagers — more of a Hagerstown, Western Maryland, simple palate.

Part of opening this place up, when we’d go out to breweries, we would feel like we weren’t part of the in crew. We wanted to really have a place where everyone felt welcome, where there was always something to do for fun, and it wasn’t just about drinking beer. We wanted easy drinking, the style Jake’s known for, and to put a little twist on it. I feel like we’re still building on that idea.

This excerpt has been edited for space and clarity. Listen to the full podcast at fnppodcasts.com/ uncapped. Got UnCapped news? Email csands@newspost.com.