On this episode, we are pleased to introduce you to a great place from Dickinson, ND. It's a traditional barbershop, cigar shop, and craft beer lounge. Their craft beer selection does a fantastic job of highlighting North Dakota craft beer. There's always something interesting to fine here. Please check out our Facebook page for photos and links to their buisness.
deporreshouse.com
SPEAKERS
Patrick Ahmann, Connor Brekke
Connor Brekke 00:03
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Ombibulous, a show where we discuss a variety of topics about alcohol. From beer styles, the brewing process, distillation, in spirits and even liquor laws, there's a fascinating world to discover. Joining me today is Patrick Ahmann of DePorres House of Barbering and Lounge here in Dickinson, North Dakota. On today's episode, we introduce you to Dickinson's very own DePorres House of Barbering and Lounge. I'm your host, Connor Brekke. Let's all raise a glass to The Ombibulous.
Connor Brekke 00:38
Welcome back to the show everybody and it is my pleasure to introduce Patrick Ahmann. Welcome to the show, and thank you for coming on.
Patrick Ahmann 00:46
Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.
Connor Brekke 00:47
So this place is a it's a traditional barber shop, cigar shop and a craft beer shop. The craft beer portion does a really good job of highlighting North Dakota brews and has all kinds of other fun stuff for you to try... coffee shop and some beer cocktails. But uh, why don't you introduce yourself and yeah, have at it.
Patrick Ahmann 01:09
Absolutely. So again, Connor said my name is Patrick Ahmann. I'm the lounge manager here at DePorres House of Barbering. I've been in that role for about a little over two years. I am a part time manager I guess. My full time job is as an eighth grade math teacher at Dickinson Middle School. I've been in Dickinson for about six years. We've moved from a variety of different places. We've lived in Idaho, Maine, Hawaii, I grew up in in North Dakota in Williston, North Dakota. We got back to Idaho and decided we want to get back to... to back to North Dakota here. So we've been here for about six years, and I've been teaching and coaching and had an opportunity through a couple of mutual friends to meet the owners ofDePorres here, Paul Ellerkamp and Matt Ellerkamp. And from there just as..., over the last three years, this... the partnership that I've had with the two owners here is ust kind of gradually grown and we got some really good things going on here. So outside of that, my own personal life, I've married to my wife, 15 years, her name is Tiffany. I have a daughter who's 10. She'll be a fifth grader this year, and we adopted a little boy, his name is Justin. He'll be a third grader this year. He's eight years old. And we recently just got a dog. Her name is Frannie. She's a fantastic dog. So just a little bit about myself... yep, that's that's what I got for you.
Connor Brekke 02:20
And you can see him serving up drinks every now and then down here. You can see him running around trying to get the really awesome beer selection that they have. It's uh... it's really cool. It's... North Dakota's beer scene is transformed dramatically in the last five-ish years. And it's kind of hard to find a place like this that actually brings in North Dakota beers because some of these places are, you know, brand spankin new and they don't have distribution yet. So it's, it's interesting to see Minot's Atypical or Fargo's Drum Conrath, or Swing Barrel, or Icewind, or you know some other different things you don't get to try out very often. So how did you become the beer manager here, the one in charge of all the tasty beverages.
Patrick Ahmann 03:05
So again, I have a couple of friends... we have a pay forward board here, and my buddy bought me a haircut and a beer and he said you got to come down to this right when this place opened up. And I came down and as soon as I walked in the door, I was in love with this place. They had seven taps of the taps they had they had the Coffee Bender from Surly on tap and, one of my favorite beers. Just just really super cool atmosphere, huge humidor, he would walk in the barber shop, 1950s kind of retro barber shop in the back end, it just was a different vibe. So maybe two weeks after I came in and met the owner and they put a post out there that's they're looking for somebody to pour beer. And I've been a craft beer lover for 20 years plus. And I thought well, what a better place. You know, I work as a teacher, it would be a great side gig came in, and as soon as I started pouring beer and talking to our customers, really just fell in love with this job. And I said probably about, maybe about a year into it I they've asked me both Matt and Paul approached me and asked me if I was interested in, you know, managing the place and trying to bring in different beers. And you know, we have a great relationship with three distributor, distributors that we have here in Dickinson and just trying to bring in different things, and then starting to build these relationships. So with a lot of these different breweries just reaching out to these people and asking if we can bring in their beer. So you know, that's kind of how it started. You know, just pouring beer talking to the people figuring out that we have a really good crappier crowd in this town. And you know, just from there, it's just they figured out that I knew a little bit about beer and some of the breweries have had a lot of different experiences traveling in the United States and, you know, family members that have craft beer guys. And so that's, that's kind of where it's at and, and just kind of grown from there. have been doing this, like I said, for about two little over two years now. As the manager here, then I just love every minute of it.
Connor Brekke 04:49
So what was your first introduction to craft beer or, you know, how you how you got into being a beer fan?
Patrick Ahmann 04:54
So yeah, I mean, my wife... initially, her brother, he's from Portland, Oregon. So those people that know craft beer Portland, Oregon is kind of the mecca of really good West Coast IPA stuff. We were dating at the time we made a trip out to Portland. I met her brother, maybe it the first time I met him? And he said, "Do you want a beer?" And I said, "Sure." And at that time, I was maybe drinking Coors Light, or Widmer Hefeweizen or something very light, easy drinking. And he said, "I got a beer for you." And he brought me an Old Rasputin, which is from North Coast brewing, I believe out of California. And it's a big beer, maybe 9, 10% and as soon as I drank it, it was just it was fantastic. You know, and from there he just was introduced me some darker beers, Black Butte Porter, out of Deschutes... you know, Obsidian Stout from Deschutes. And when we lived in Idaho at that point, there's some good beers from Oregon. So he kind of gave me that first introduction. And then from there, you know, he he brewed beer, it was just really intrigued by the process. And I just kept trying. Every brewery brings out new and fun and funky stuff. So I just kept trying stuff and it's gone from there I guess.
Connor Brekke 05:54
Yeah, the craft beer world is fascinating. I... I'm still kind of new at the whole craft beer. I think I only started really exploring about 2018. And there's a pretty awesome world out there. There's all kinds of different stuff. And then you guys do a really good job of... you do mostly a lot of North Dakota stuff. But then you also bring in some other more regional stuff, too, which is really great. That's just... you always have something different. We have kind of a spectrum of stuff on your guys's tap. And it's really cool to come in and go through a porter then a sour then a lager and then an IPA. It's always nice to try different things, you know, because you don't know what you like until you try them. Could you tell us a little bit about how this place came to be like, it's a barber shop, it's a lounge, it's a cigar shop, it's...
Patrick Ahmann 06:44
Yeah it's a little bit of everything. Yeah. So the like I said, when I... Paul and I've talked a lot about, you know, when he was up, it's up north in Dickinson Big Sky, he was always wanting to do that.. little cigar selection up there. And he's always been a craft beer guy. And so his his vision of this place was to open up a place where, you know, he could cut hair in the back him and his brother and a couple other people and he could pour a pint of beer for somebody maybe while they're waiting to get their hair cut, and it's just gone from there. It's just, you know, that was their vision of bringing some really good scar selection in the town, you know, to try to find that niche market here in Dickinson. So yeah, it's it's like I said for the last three years slowly but surely, we built this clientele of people that really enjoy good craft beer really enjoyed good cigars. We've started working on a coffee menu. We've got a couple girls up front that are fantastic at creating different menus for our different recipes for different coffees. Yeah, it just... it's some of the finer things kind of doing it... you know, old school where we... you know, customer service wins everything. You know, we're, we're here it's we always treat our customers, you know, whether they're in the lounge or in the barber shop. You know, just I think Customer service is very important. So that's that's kind of where we've been for the last few years with the DePorres.
Connor Brekke 07:56
Normally I'd say the best thing to go with beers food, but you don't know anything until you've had a haircut and shaven and a beer here and then a cigar so.. Yeah, it's a it's a really cool place. It definitely feels really relaxed and calm. And you guys have some interesting events every so often to you have... well actually, let's first talk about your guys's mug club membership. You just started that this year, everybody has the opportunity to purchase one of these mug club memberships. Let's... could you talk a little bit about that?
Patrick Ahmann 08:30
Sure. Absolutely. Yeah, we last year we started having conversation during COVID. You know COVID was tough on everybody and just trying to figure out how we can generate a few extra dollars here at the barber shop. And we've been I've been to a lot of breweries and a lot of good breweries will have mug clubs. You know here in Dickinsonian our Phat Fish brewery has a mug club and you know, different breweries throughout North Dakota will have them. So we thought what a great idea you know, you don't have to be locked into a certain breweries beer, you know we get a variety of taps that run through, we've seven taps, we're always rotating our beers out. So yeah, we have one... we have a mug that was created by one of the girls that works here in the morning. And she works in the afternoons too, I guess in the evenings, but she created the the medallion that went under mug. It's a $250 one time lifetime membership fee. With that comes the mug which stays here at the barber shop. It's a 22 ounce pour, you pay the 16 ounce price for that. So there's a lot of different benefits a lot of merchandise we've gotten into merchandise a little bit more some shirts stuff, some hats that we have barbershop products in the back. If you're a mug club member here you'll get discounts on that. What else? Birthday beer obviously you if you have your birthday, you come in you get your free pint or your free mug of that beer. Yeah, just it's, it's a cool little thing. And the money that we're using the from the mug club is we're going to help continue to build this business. Try to revamp things up front a little bit. Try to bring in more right now we have seven taps. I think the goal is to bring in anywhere from 10 to 12 taps and maybe just say you know we have a Laughing Sun tap and we've got an Icewind tap and we've got a Dialectic tap. We're going to try to keep those breweries very local. We're going to continue to support our breweries in North Dakota. And so we're going to expand their tap line. Hopefully, that's kind of the plan, might take a little time. But we have 250 mugs total. I think we're probably a little over right around 100 mugs we sold. So for those that are interested for sure we have some mugs still available. But it's been a very good thing for us so far.
Connor Brekke 10:15
Mug clubs are always a great thing. It's always nice to have that beautiful mug and sit down and be like, "yep, I'm a mug club member." And then people look at "what's that?" Oh, and then of course, you're supporting not only this place, but you're supporting the craft brewing industry in North Dakota as well. You guys do some pretty cool things called tap takeovers. You got one coming up in August... Icewind brewing I believe is coming soon. What is a tap takeover?
Patrick Ahmann 10:41
So yeah, we do, we do a lot of events and whatnot. Predominantly, we've done a lot of tap takeover stuff. So essentially, we reach out to the brewery we reach out to Icewind which is out of Mapleton, North Dakota. And they'll come down and they'll bring beers that you know, maybe very few people in Dickinson, they don't distribute their beer here in Dickinson, we try to find those breweries that don't have a lot of... skin in the game here in Dickinson and we bring them in so people can be introduced to them. But typically we have seven taps. So we try to predominately take over those taps. So if there's four or five beers that we'll put on, we have a few people that'll come down, we'll do some trivia stuff. We've been trying to incorporate our local food trucks here for events. We have different benefits for a mug club members. But yeah, we just it's a big, big party essentially. Usually the beer rep or the owner or the brew master will come down. We've had different through masters do tastings with some of our, with our clientele, talk a little about beer, they're always here to answer questions about what what their beer is what they've got going on. So yeah, we've got Icewind brewing out of Mapleton coming up on the 26th, which is very first day of public school here in Dickinson. So that'll be great. And we've got here coming up here July, not a local brewery, but one of the predominant... typically it's one of the top 10 breweries in the United States. We've got Toppling Goliath, that'll be here on July 22. So we're pretty excited about that one too. So yeah, we'll do other events we've got we do an Oktoberfest, we do a cookie and beer pairing. We've done cigar pairings with beers. We've had live music in the back of the barber shop... had stand up comedians. So the little small venue that we have, we try to be very creative with the space and make a very fun venture or a very fun event for other people that come in.
Connor Brekke 12:16
Because I remember the last last event I was at was the Bismarck Brewing Company and you guys had a band in the back and then trivia and then Grub Tub food truck out.
Patrick Ahmann 12:25
Yeah.
Connor Brekke 12:25
So it's a good time. There's... you know, it's hard to beat it really good craft beer that you don't really get to try in the area, different entertainment and food. It's... and your regulars are pretty awesome, too. So...
Patrick Ahmann 12:37
Yeah, we, will have too, they'll bring different things for for our customers. A lot of breweries will bring like stickers and T-shirts and hats and a lot of giveaway stuff that comes along with that too. Which again, for those people that are craft beer junkies, they they enjoy all the all the swag that you can get from these breweries, and they treat us really well around here. So it's always... the events are definitely a highlight of one of the things that we do here.
Connor Brekke 12:59
So being both a barber shop, no loans, you guys do have different hours for each aspect of your guys's business. You want to just kind of let people know what what they are.
Patrick Ahmann 13:08
Yeah, sure, absolutely. So we open at the same time. We... if anybody's not been down here before, right when you walk in the front door, you know, and you're looking for a haircut... bviously the haircut, we have for barbers in the back, they do a fantastic job we're going to take on a couple new barbers hopefully here at the end of the month. But people typically walk in the doors and they don't see that barber shop initially. So the barber shop opens first cuts is at eight o'clock. Typically through appointments, they're on Facebook, you can do that and you can make an appointment online or you can just call us here in the lounge and we can book an appointment for you. But first cut for most of the barbers are at 8, 8:30 in the morning. They run until five o'clock every night. And again, best bet is usually to make an appointment. We do do some walking stuff, but it's it's usually pretty busy. So they're open... so eight to five, the lounge opens right away in the morning. We got good coffee stuff that rolls out. We're looking at adding some food possibly here as we move forward, but the lounge is open every day. During the summertime we're open from 8am until 9pm at nights and depending on when people leave, you know we might be open later than that we don't have you know if we've got 20 people sitting in the lounge we're not going to kick you out if if people are buying beer and having a good time. So but yeah, we've we have eight to... eight to five for the barber shop and then eight to... eight to 9pm for the the lounge.
Connor Brekke 14:18
And let's touch up a little bit on your guys's collaboration or relationship you have with local breweries in the area too.
Patrick Ahmann 14:26
Yeah, that's that's probably one of my favorite parts of my job having the opportunity to meet. You know, actually I met Connor through the Dialectic Brewing. You know, I make some trips out to these breweries that are brand new and don't distribute. You know, they don't go through our local distribution here, whether they're just small and they just, you know, they don't have enough beer to get out there and distribute. So I've essentially just gone out and made phone calls and when I'm in town when I go to Bismarck, I stop in some little breweries out there.
Patrick Ahmann 14:51
We have a great relationship with Dialectica out of Mandan, Dylan and Hannah always treat us very well. Their beers's very good. We've got Mackenzie North Dakota, Black Leg Brewing, which is one of my favorite newer breweries that we started bringing in here. Jay Doan is the the brew master out there, he's he's fantastic. Valley City we've had them in, Brockopp Brewing, Scott Brockopp and his wife, they've, you know, getting beers that you're not going to get in Dickinson you know, they just don't bring beer out here. So again, it's one of those things we're making the trip out to Fargo. I'm stopping in Valley City. I'm stopping in Mapleton, which again is Icewind Brewing. Talking to Rick Brandvols out there. He's one of the guys that does the brewing out there. Atypical, Eric Johnson, probably... I don't want to play favorites, but he's he's done a fantastic job. Those people that really love sour stuff... it's he does a fantastic job. Half Brothers out og Grand Forks, one of the larger breweries in North Dakota, they don't distribute here, but we've built a relationship. We've had a couple different events with them. They bring beer every couple of weeks to us, if we need it. We just started a relationship with Busted Knuckle, which is out of Glasgow, Montana, but they have a brewery here in Williston. So again, I'm from that area. So I reached out to that, that brewery and they were more than happy to give me the down... the essentially the what they have for their beer and brought a couple kegs. And we put those on tap this week.
Patrick Ahmann 16:05
So yeah, it's it's, it's, it's one of my favorite things about this job is just going out and meeting the people that are brewing beer in North Dakota and trying to bring all the smaller breweries into here and then make it our place. I won't say more unique, but it's we have a different tap line than everybody else in town. You know, we support the Laughing Suns, we support the Bismarck Brewings that do distribution, we love them just the same. But some of these breweries that don't do this distribution, they just kind of take care of their people in their own town, we're always trying to get kegs from them. We've had a lot of success. And a lot of people come in and always compliment our tap line. But they always travel when they're in Minot they're looking up Atypical or when they're going to Valley City, they're stopping in supporting all these breweries. So it's, it's been fun. So we're going to continue to seek out those people and and continue to support them.
Connor Brekke 16:47
It's a pretty exciting time to because in the last, you know, three, four or five years, the brew scene in North Dakota has just blown up. And then a lot of these places are only, you know, three ish, four ish years old, and then everybody lost a year last year. So kind of exciting to see how this new North Dakota stuff coming out. And this is one of the few places that I've seen that not just in Dickinson but anywhere really that does this type of work for, you know, it's beer drinking crowd. It's, it's amazing. I love it.
Patrick Ahmann 17:20
As I like I said, I enjoy my teaching job a lot. It's one of my favorite things to do. But I have a pretty good side gig working with different breweries and, you know, giving them this good craft beer in and again, like the crowd that we have that supports us here is you know, there's a lot of questions that come and you know, we have a very knowledgeable staff here about beer and, and you know, cigar stuff. Obviously cigars are very big here too. We have a huge crowd here in Dickinson that enjoys good premium cigars. So we're all learning about that stuff and you know, coffee stuff and yeah, it's just it's it's a very enjoyable place to be.
Connor Brekke 17:51
And then if you guys are curious about this place stuff, you can always check out their Facebook at de Porres house, the bar brewing lounge, and then they do have an untapped they are, they are untapped, and they update what they have on their list. And it's pretty fun ride to watch that and see what pops up because it's all kinds of cool fun stuff. So make sure you check out their Facebook page and then check out on tap because they got a lot of cool stuff.
Patrick Ahmann 18:17
untapped will have if you click on the menus, you find our venue click on menus that also will give you the on deck stuff that we have. So and then we also do have Instagram. I'm not huge on social media, but I know we have Facebook and we have a lot of people to follow us there and Instagram. They do the same but yeah, and then untapped, always untapped. We've we've got a really good following on top.
Connor Brekke 18:38
known in addition to the tap room lounge, you also have a pretty cool beer fridge. It's always stocked with all kinds of different things too, that you can't get around. not talk about that a little bit.
Patrick Ahmann 18:50
Yeah, so we started here. When we first started, we we had storage for like three kegs. That was it. We've had storage for like 1012 kegs. Now when we're looking at putting the walk in cooler. We didn't have cans at all for the most part we carried our domestic stuff. We have a lot of people that still enjoy their domestic their Busch lights or Coors Light carries hams, we carry MC ultra so we have some of that stuff for those people that are still not not necessarily crappier fans but we started adding craft beer stuff and I think our canned sales is like quadrupled in the last couple of years. We bring in toppling Goliath again They'll be here the 20 seconds we've got a huge selection from them half brothers brings us 16 ounce cans of their sour stuff, just fun and funky things things that you wouldn't be able to go to liquor store here in Dickinson and get we carry again ice when cans just a variety of different cans again, that are usually typically four packs and you know if you buy them in the liquor store, they're going to cost you 16 $17 for a four pack and not everybody wants to buy four of them so you can come here have one try it figure out if you like those kinds of beers are cooler also has some things you know there's not everybody's a beer lover So we have some mohito stuff, some Margarita stuff like the Cayman Jack's, we do some meal stuff. We do some flavored meals which is pretty popular with with a lot of our are following and tab, we're just we're always changing up our cooler. We'll get some nights where people won't drink very little on tap and will sell 3040 cans of beer just simply because it's new stuff and they want to try something new. So, yeah, we continue to try to stock that with with fun stuff.
Connor Brekke 20:14
You guys have some shirts to send. We got an actually I'm wearing it right now new design shirts for people who are kind of like me and just love merchandise for beer related things.
Patrick Ahmann 20:25
Yeah, yeah, we've just in the last we've had some, when we first started, we sold just limited quantities and we got rid of that stuff. And we decided to put a little more effort into putting out our merchandise. So we have some new shirts in the variety. We've got some women tees, we've got long sleeve tees. We've done some hat stuff. I don't know if we have hats in right now. But I know we've done a lot of hats in the past. Yeah, it's just I'm the same as you I enjoy every time I go to a brewery I go to a beer place I always try to find out if I get a sticker if I can get you know a hat or shirt or something that reminds me that place so we started jumping into that a little bit. We get a rack That's when you walk into the place has all the different colors of all the same logo. I think shirts start out I think they're 2499 I think is what we charge there might be a couple of other racks that are 1999. But for the most part, anywhere from that 1999 to 2499 range,
Connor Brekke 21:13
cigars, beer and haircuts all my This place is it's great. I just love coming in and trying different craft beers and getting a couple haircuts in the shave here. It's a great place. So if you guys in the Dickinson, North Dakota area are interested in the craft brew scene, you know, just want to try something different. I would highly, highly, highly suggest coming down to divorce House of Barbering and lounge here in Dickinson. Patrick, thank you so much for being on the show. was great having you.
Patrick Ahmann 21:45
Yeah, absolutely. It was it was fun. I glad that we had a chance to talk about this place. It's been it's been awesome.
Connor Brekke 21:51
So for you guys at home, make sure you come in and pay him a visit. So until next time, cheers.
Connor Brekke 21:59
The O,bibulous is made possible with Castos giving creators the tools to connect with their audience and community. The music is courteous of Pond5. With over 25 million royalty free stock videos, music, photos, and sound effects, there's something for every creator. For the latest updates, videos, photos and web links to our guests, please consider checking out our Facebook page, The Ombibulous Podcast. I'd like to thank Patrick for the use of DePorres House of Barbering and Lounge for making this episode possible. And of course a big thank you to all our listeners. Thank you, for all of your support. Until next time, cheers.