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Ass Clown Brewing Company

17039 Kenton Drive #102

Cornelius, NC 28031

704-995-7767

E-mail: matt@assclownbeer.com

Website: http://assclownbrewery.com

Hours: Monday–Friday, 9:30 A.M.–5:30 P.M.

Owner and brewmaster: Matt Glidden

Opened: 2011

Regular beer lineup: Apricot Seed Pale Ale, Dark Chocolate Blueberry Porter, Peach Fig Pale Ale, Poplar Brown Ale

Seasonals: Fresh Hop Simcoe IPA, Chocolate Pumpkin Brown Ale, Dark Chocolate Pumpkin Porter, Pumpkin IPA, Coffee Tequila Oatmeal Stout, Smoked Scotch Ale, Hazelnut Nut Brown Ale, Smoked Maple Syrup Black Ale, Orange Citrus IPA, Lemon Wheat IPA, Vanilla Bean Chocolate Brown Ale, India Brown Ale, Dark Chocolate Cherry Porter

Ass Clown Brewing Company is located in just about the last place anyone would expect: inside a mortgage company office. When visitors approach this small brewery in Cornelius, a northern suburb of Charlotte, they’d never know anybody was making beer, particularly inside an office space labeled, “Interesting Mortgages.”

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Matt Glidden of Ass Clown Brewing Company

The left side of the business is what might be expected from a mortgage company: a desk with a computer, scattered papers and pens, a rolling office chair, and a few filing cabinets. The right side, however, catches the eye in a completely different way. Small, gleaming stainless-steel fermenters are visible as soon as visitors walk in, followed by a keg box topped with a long row of taps. A wall of growlers stands next to the doorway. Everything is branded with the laughing, almost mocking visage of the Ass Clown.

“It was kind of a joke to begin with,” says Matt Glidden of his company’s name. Glidden is a big fan of beer festivals, but he’s always had one complaint—afterward, when people asked him what he liked, he could never remember anything specific. “I thought, If these companies would focus more on some sort of whacked-out name that I can’t forget, then my chances of remembering them would be better.” The name came to him later. “I used to have a coworker who was a good buddy that used to call me an ass clown, and I’d kind of throw it back at him, and after a while we were just calling everybody ass clowns. It was kind of catchy, and I just thought I’d see how far we could go with it.”

Despite the “whacked-out” name, Glidden has serious plans for his company. His website advertises that the brewery is “small, local, and ‘green,’ using the best local organic ingredients (when possible).” He has plans to find local sources for hops, malt, spices, and fruits. “I’m kind of tired of drinking something or eating something with ‘All Natural’ just thrown up the side of it,” he says. “ ‘All Natural,’ to me, doesn’t mean squat. I really like to know what’s in my beer.”

Drawing on his youth in Addison, Vermont, where he grew up on a farm, he already grows his own hops and uses them in some of his beers. He’s also been meeting with local hops farmers and the proprietors of a new malting facility in Asheville.

Like most small brewers, Glidden started out of his garage as a homebrewer. That was back in 2003. He used to share his beer with friends and neighbors. When he noticed the crowds getting bigger and bigger, he decided to give brewing a shot, mainly as an exploratory effort.

“About three years ago, when I started looking into making the jump, I kind of knew mortgages weren’t going to be around forever, so I figured it would be nice to get slowly into brewing and see if I’d fall on my ass or if I’d be able to make a decent living out of it,” he says. For now, though, the mortgage company is still a primary source of income for Glidden, and one of the reasons the two businesses share offices.

As a brewer, he likes to experiment. Glidden counts Sam Calagione from Dogfish Head Brewery in Milton, Delaware, as an inspiration, even citing Calagione’s startup model. “My niche is that I’m looking for an odd or a unique flavoring that’s not out there.” Some of the beers he has made show his love for experimentation: Apricot Seed Pale Ale, which uses both apricot fruit and pits; Dark Chocolate Blueberry Porter; Smoked Maple Syrup Black Ale; and Coffee Tequila Oatmeal Stout. Glidden says he has 40 to 50 different recipes he rotates, and that he modifies each 20 or 30 times to look for new combinations of flavors. “In my head, you don’t really know what you might stumble across unless you try new things.”

Fortunately, his brewery’s small size allows him room to experiment. Glidden currently brews batches of about 15 gallons at a time, using the small one-barrel fermenters in his office space. But he plans to grow. He’s waiting for a 10-hectoliter system to be delivered and has found a warehouse near Charlotte that will fit his system. There, he hopes to expand not only his brewing production but also his hop growing. He says he plans to create his own “legal indoor grow room.” He will also aim for environmental responsibility in his new facility, using alternative energy and recycled items including lights, furniture, and equipment.

In the future, Glidden hopes to turn the day-to-day operation of the company over to someone else while he focuses on his passion: the recipes and continued experimentation. For now, though, visitors can find him brewing in a small office inside Interesting Mortgages, a business that could not be more accurately named.