Cumming City Center’s Crooked Culture Brewing shares how the community has welcomed them, the inspiration behind their unique name, and their must-try beers.
By Tiffany Belflower / Photos courtesy Crooked Culture Brewing
Crooked Culture Brewing’s origins are as rebellious as its name suggests. Driven by a passion to craft the finest beer on a smaller scale, founders Patrick Leonard and Nick Estes challenged the status quo by rejecting the large 200-gallon systems used by bigger breweries and sticking to a simplified version of brewing. Forget the days of a few flagship beers found in your local grocery store. This flavor obsessed duo wanted to keep the focus localized. With an ever-evolving taproom lineup of innovative beer flavors, Crooked Culture has elevated the timeless craft of home brewing to a professional level at this must-try brewery.
How did you get involved in the craft beer industry? Well, I was a pretty serious home brewer… meaning my entire garage was a miniature professional brewery (my wife was a big fan of this), ha ha! I am a pretty competitive person, so competition home brewing scratched that competitive itch. I had won a handful of awards and made some pretty tasty beer. When Jekyll Brewing in Alpharetta opened, they were looking for a brewer. They heard I was a badass brewer, and they had to have me! (Insert wink emoji!) I made the leap from renovating and flipping houses to making beer five days a week. Jekyll took off and I was finally working with a group of folks who shared a love for craft beer. We were all brewing for our jobs and still brewing at home as a hobby; it was awesome. There was a lot of talent under that roof.
Why Cumming? I moved from Atlanta to Cumming when I was 15. It felt like I was at the end of the earth with cow pastures and gravel roads. I was attending high school in Lilburn, so I did not spend a lot of time in Cumming and never had a plan to settle here. After about a year at Jekyll, I wanted to get closer to work so my wife and I bought a small house on a couple of acres in Cumming. My two boys grew up here, playing baseball since they were five years old, and we have made a ton of friends here. I was actually looking at opening in Woodstock or Chamblee, but I was too connected to Cumming, our friends, and the community. When they announced the new Cumming City Center, I knew that was our spot. It’s a beautiful building in a great development with a fun atmosphere.
What is the story behind the name Crooked Culture? The name has several meanings to me. I mentioned earlier that I brewed out of my garage. My neighbors thought I was Walter White 2.0, so the cops slowly rolled by a lot. I think everyone thought I was doing something nefarious. I’m a little sarcastic so the name kind of pokes fun at the folks who thought I was up to no good. We also have grand plans to capture and cultivate “wild” yeast and domesticate it — wild yeast, aka crooked culture. This is going to be a lifelong journey trying to find new clean yeast strains that are undiscovered, but we have a lab set up here to take on this epic project.
What has the community support been like? So far, so good. Not only do we have a great community of patrons, but the other breweries close by have been great to us, too. In April, we brewed a collaboration beer with NOFO and Cherry Street to raise money for a few local charities. We are super proud of that team effort to be able to give back and do bigger things than just make great beer. The people who have been here keep coming back, so that’s a sign that we are doing things the right way. We were also recognized as one of the top 20 new breweries in the U.S.! So yeah, the Cumming community has been great, the beer community has been great, too!
What sets Crooked Culture apart from other Georgia breweries? A lot. I have worked at two other amazing breweries and have learned so much. I think the top thing that sets us apart is that we are a brewer-owned brewery, so the quality and dedication to making great beer is numero uno. We sell most of our beer over the bar in our taproom, so our focus is more on fresh quality ingredients over the price per ounce to produce. We have three full-time employees, so we are very nimble to be able to do what we want to do when we want to do it.
What is your favorite beer in the taproom? Today… It’s GORDON’s Survival Guide. It is our new hazy pale ale with experimental hop 1019. It has an ABV under 6.0% so it’s easy to drink a couple and still beat people in Connect 4. We play a lot of Connect 4 here! But truthfully, I am always drinking through the tap list to keep a finger on the pulse of the beer quality and how it is holding up.
If you could recommend a seasonal beer for people to try this fall, what would it be? So our head brewer, Geoff, just brewed a pilot batch of Fits Like a Speedo, a watermelon sour with ginger and lemon. I will be honest, I do not like watermelon but this beer is pretty dang good. We also have Ken vs. RYU, our cherry lime sour that is a staple here, and a Peach Punch sour just got released. Something about sour beers just hits right. But if you are here at Crooked Culture, you better be drinking the hazy IPAs- that is what we do best!
Are you currently hosting any events in the taproom? Of course! Our GM, Lucy, is always coming up with fun weekly events. We hold a weekly Connect 4 tournament on Mondays. Wednesday, we have Trivia with Raquel, and once a month we partner with our friends at F.A.M.E. to have an open mic night. We have food trucks every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and are working on having a permanent food partner on site starting in September. We post our events, specials, and other news every Monday on Facebook and Instagram. Check us out and follow.
Tell us a little bit about your brewing team. We are lean and mean here! Patrick Leonard (that’s me!) is the owner/brewer and current repair man of all things from equipment to picnic tables. He pretty much annoys Geoff and Lucy until he gets his way. He has never fished in Alaska but will hand out losses in Connect 4 on the reg. He can name hops in a beer just by smelling it, and he can tell you random meaningless facts about most bands from 1987-2006ish.
Nick Estes is our owner/CFO. Nick does it all… including the things that require clean shirts and pants with no holes in them. Nick was a home brewer, and he is a craft beer lover. He even owned a growler store before a brewery!
Geoff Gardner is our head brewer. Geoff has worked at a handful of breweries in Georgia and Asheville, N.C., before that he was a home brewer, and he taught brewing lessons at a home-brew store in Asheville. Prior to Geoff being called into the world of brewing, he was a salmon fisherman in Alaska. Geoff has an awesome beard and two plaid shirts. He is a very good Connect 4 player and can name most songs that come on the radio.
Lucy Teusink is our GM and so much more. Lucy has also worked at several breweries in Georgia as a sales director, canner, cellaring team member, bartender, in marketing, and probably every other area in a brewery – she can do it all. Just recently, Lucy was voted to be on the Board of Directors of the Georgia Craft Brewers Guild. Get this, Lucy also worked in the Alaskan fishing industry before being a part of Georgia brewing! No kidding, what are the odds? Lucy is not as good as Geoff at Connect 4, but she keeps us on the rails here at Crooked Culture.
We also have a great team of bartenders and event staff that care for our customers, our space, and our beers, which is truly the most important part of the Crooked Culture experience.
For more information on Crooked Culture, follow them on Instagram @crookedculturebrewing. CrookedCultureBrewing .com
Crooked Culture Brewing 421 Vision Dr., Cumming GA 30040
