"Drink
My Beer-- Forevermore!"
Quoth The Creator of The Raven Brew
Towson, MD. - He was an Honorable Mention
All-America lacrosse player during his undergraduate years at the University of Maryland,
way back in the early 1970's. As a lightning-fast, stutter-stepping attacker,
Stephen Demczuk prided himself on his "quick hands" and his ability to
"keep the ball in the stick, until you were ready to feed somebody!" A
second-generation Polish-American, the 46~year~old Demczuk is also extremely proud of his
"Baltimore roots". "My grandfather ended his career by dying of a heart
attack on the job at Bethlehem Steel," says this high~spirited entrepreneur and
beverage industry innovator, "and my dad worked all his life at the General Motors
plant over on Broening Highway. "I grew up around Dundalk, and I went to Patapsco
High School before heading off to Maryland on an athletic scholarship. I don't know how
you could be any more connected to Maryland than that!" As a blue~collar kid and a
superjock from Crabtown's rough-and-tumble East Side, Steve Demczuk (pronounced DEM-chuck)
seemed likely to end up as an hourly wage earner, himself, in one of the smoke-belching
factories that gave Baltimore its flavor during the 1960's and early 1970's. But Demczuk
is nothing if not a man of surprises - and he startled just everybody who knew him, two
decades ago, when he not only graduated from college . . . but then went on to earn a
Ph.D. in molecular biology!
"I really don't know how it happened," the mustachioed and blue-eyed
brewmeister will tell you, when you ask him to explain how he went from butting heads with
lacrosse goalies to running biochemistry experiments in the lab. "I guess I realized
early on that I didn't want to work for somebody else. And I also ran into a terrific
professor who encouraged me enormously. "The bottom line was that I wound up teaching
biology - first at Wake Forest University, down in North Carolina, and then at Geneva
University (in Switzerland), Karloinska Institute in Stockholm and finally at the
University of Luxembourg. "I'll always be gratefuI for the Geneva years, because it
was during that period that I had what I describe as my 'N.R.E.' - or 'Near Religious
Experience'. It happened in Germany, during the early 1980's, when I tasted my first
naturally fermented beer. "It was a Belgian Gueuze, and it had been fermented by wild
yeast-which means that they open the roof up in the brewery, and simply allow the yeast
and the bacteria float into it. "I took a sip of that beer, an everything changed for
me. The skies lit up, and it was like getting glimpse into the beyond. I told myself:
'I've had an N.R.E. - an I'm gonna start brewing my own beer!"'
A Perfect Symbol of Baltimore?
For the beer-worshipping Demczuk, that moment in the Mainz Pub was the start of a
Magnificent Brewing Obsession. After trying and failing-to launch a brewpub in Luxembourg
and then an entire brewery in Belgium, the bold and endless ly innovative Demczuk returned
to his beloved Baltimore to attempt another surprising business stunt. As the creator of
the world's first! international "Beer of the Month Club," which now peddles
interesting beverages from around the globe via a monthly newsletter,"Beer
Sips," Demczuk got a thrilling introduction to the risks of entrepreneurship. "I
think I have knack for creating new projects an coming up with new ideas," he says
with a delighted chuckle. "I guess I enjoy the uncertainty that goes along with not
knowing what I'm gonna do next!" After several years of careful planning and lots of
research, Demczuk took the next logical step: He created a beer which "captures the
heart and soul of what Baltimore is all about." The Raven! "If you had to name
the perfect symbol for Baltimore," says this still lean and youthfull looking
entrepreneur, "you'd probably come up with choices - either the flag at Ft. Henry,
the home of the Star Spangled Banner, or Edgar Allan Poe, one of the world's greatest
poets, his name is synonymous with this town."
A moment later, to prove his point, the brew-quaffmg literature-lover is reciting
furiously from Poe's classic 1845 opus, "The Raven":
Open here I flung the shutter
When with many a flirt and flutter,
In stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore!"
Wow! Eyes shining, the unstoppable Steve Demczuk
quickly admits the obvious: He hasn't had this much fun since the days when he
regularly knocked the defensemen from Johns Hopkins flat on their butts! "When I
decided to brew my own beer I sat down and asked myself what I wanted," he says
happily. And I realized that what I wanted most was beer that said Baltimore. Remember
'Natty Boh' [National Bohemian, now defunct]? I wanted a beer like that - a local
niche-product that would be instantly recognizable, and that would announce loud and clear
that it represented Baltimore."
A Raven Above Every Tavern Door?
After consulting with half a dozen brewers and beer experts in Maryland and around
the world, Demczuk came up with "The Raven" - a "dark lager" that he
describes in the following terms: "This is a very aromatic beer, superbly balanced in
the hops, with no harsh, bitter taste. It's medium- to full-bodied, and 5.5 percent
alcohol. Very smooth ... and very drinkable." After less than a year of development,
Demczuk has begun producmg and selling his Raven in the Baltimore-Washington area. You can
learn all about it at www.ravenbeer.com on the World Wide Web.) Ask him to describe his
"marketing strategy," and the gung-ho innovator sounds like a kid with a
brand-new toy: "My strategy is real simple. I do everything unique and different! If
you're gonna succeed with a product, there has to be something unique, something
distinctive about it. "Edgar Allan Poe captured the imagination of the entire world,
there's no doubt about that. And that's why we're putting Poe on the bottle cap, and Poe's
signature on the bottle, itself." In another savvy marketing touch, Demczuk will
unveil a 22-foot-high outdoor billboard, located between the two stadiums at Camden Yards,
that will feature a jumbo-sized Raven, along with the legend:
The Taste Is Poetic "Baltimore needs a niche-beer that it can really relate to,"
says the ebullient brew-man. "I want to put a metallic raven above the door of every
bar, every pub that serves this product. "Let's say you're walking around down in
Fells Point - the same places where Poe walked, 150 years ago and you look up above the
doorway, and there it is: The Raven! And it tells you that you can buy my beer
there." He claps his hands, and laughs out loud, and once again his eyes are shining
with the wacky gleefulness of the born entrepreneur: "Remember how the raven
sat...sat on the bust above my chamber door? "How can a beer like the Raven miss, in
a great market like Baltimore?"
The Maryland Beverage Journal, July 1998 |
