DCBEER recently had a chance to speak with Bill Madden of Mad Fox about their first three months of business. As anticipated, the response has been overwhelming, and Mad Fox has even more surprises in the works.
What’s been the most unexpected challenge during your first few months?
Our biggest challenge on the brewing side was that the first few weeks we were slammed to the point that we could not brew fast enough. I had folks reviewing Mad Fox saying things like we did not know what we were doing and to only have 3 beers on tap meant we were not a good brewpub. That stung me personally, especially since I pride my brewing style to be one where having more on tap than most brewpubs was always my mark. We have since brewed harder and smarter to get our offerings up to 8 to 10 beers on draft with 2 to 3 on cask. In three short months we have brewed 44 batches as of today, over 660 barrels of beer or 20,460 gallons for a very thirsty clientele.
How has the area responded to your beer? Are you able to keep up?
The area, Falls Church City, has been very responsive and very supportive, that is the nature of the people who live here. If you have something that is good and you support Falls Church they, in turn, will support you and we embrace that sort of thinking. There is a marketing campaign to have the catch phrase of “The Little City” associated with Falls Church, we call it the “The Thirsty City”.
Are you at all afraid of the quality of the beer suffering because of the need to rush it to the taps?
I am not afraid. I will not rush any beer before its time, period. This is how it came that we went down to just three beer styles at one point because I will not rush anything before it is ready. Work hard, brew smart and it will all come together eventually without compromise.
How have non-craft beer people embraced the brewpub concept? Do you get a lot of people asking for the equivalent of BMC?
I have an answer, Kolsch.
What’s next for Mad Fox? Sours? Experimenting? Collaborations?
What’s next has got to be fun, challenging and experimental along with our regular production. We have, in a way, collaborated with Cotoctin Creek Distillery to receive their used whiskey barrels to age some of our beers like the Wee Heavy in. Sours, I am interested to mess with but once you go sour there is no going back, but we can do that. We have designed a restaurant that is able to do many different beers that I was never able to do in the past. I am looking forward to expanding my past work to include many unique products. For example, we are now working on Project IPA where we will have three IPAs coming out in the next couple of weeks in response to requests for more hoppy beers. More fun to come !
Read our full pre-opening post here and by all means, if you haven’t already, get over to Mad Fox Brew Pub !
Mad Fox Brewing Company
444 West Broad Street Suite I, Falls Church, VA
