Today we’d like to introduce you to Morris (“Mo”) Nuspl.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
My wife (Robin Nuspl) and I are 14-year residents of the Bay Park neighborhood of San Diego with our wonderful 5th-grader son, Elias. Facing a career crossroads that was likely to force a move away from San Diego, I teamed up with a friend and tech industry executive, Kevin Malik (from Scottsdale, AZ), to leverage my love of and ability to brew tasty beer and our collective business and engineering skillset to start Deft Brewing in our home neighborhood, helping us grow deeper roots in this area. After an exhaustive search for an appropriate location and facility for the brewery, we discovered a great 3,ooo square foot suite in an old fishing boat manufacturing building on Banks Street, just off Morena Blvd (just North of Old Town and down the hill from USD, near where Morena Blvd, Linda Vista Rd, and Friars all meet, and near Sears Outlet, Catalina Offshore Products, Brickyard Batting Cages, and the Morena/Linda Vista trolley station). This home of Deft Brewing is an unassuming corrugated-metal industrial building from the 1950s, but had been deftly retrofitted with many doors and windows, an oversized roll-up door facing Banks Street, an open floorplan with high ceilings, and an outdoor patio area, all contributing to the bright, open, airy feeling patrons now experience when visiting the Deft tasting room. Within this space, the Deft team has been brewing and serving our acclaimed beers from a menu that focuses on classic European styles that are clean, tasty, smooth, and very drinkable.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Throughout Deft’s 18 month history, and in the prior two years of planning and preparation to open the brewing operation and tasting room, we have encountered numerous obstacles and challenges, including delays, unplanned but necessary expenditures, and equipment issues. The most notable of these challenges to-date was a burst underground sprinkler system water pipe that occurred in late January, flooding the entire brewery and tasting room and threatening to shut Deft down for an extended period of time. After an amazing effort by the team, neighbors, building owners Jason and Nick, and the restoration company, Deft’s tasting room was back up and running within three days and beer production resumed within two weeks. The overcome setback was memorialized in the name of our Wet-hop IPA from this past winter, “Patio Hops & Geysers” (winner of a Silver medal in the 2019 LA International Beer Festival within the Fresh-hop beer category).
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Since opening our doors, Deft Brewing has been focused on providing more classic and often hard-to-find European beer styles to our customers. This approach makes Deft fairly unique within the expansive, and oft hop-focused, San Diego beer market. With a small 2-barrel pilot system (which is phase 1 of a two-phase plan that will have us expand to a 10-barrel brewhouse with larger tanks in the relative near future), I have teamed with brewer Mike Finn to create a diverse offering of delicious beers over the past 18 months. I oversee the menu, recipe development, and production operations, but Mike handles most of the actual brewing activities. In fact, we are so proud to mention that many of our beers have earned medals and awards in recent International Beer Competitions. To-date, Deft Brewing has earned 12 medals/awards, including 4 gold medals, for our beers in those competitions. Customer and beer judge favorites like the “Dawn of the Deft” English Porter, “DoubleDeft Secret” Sticke Altbier, “DeftHopt Golden” English IPA, “Bruxelles Trip” Belgian Tripel, and “Bay Park Blonde” Blonde/Kolsch-style Ale are served daily in the Deft tasting room and at a small number of select retail locations around San Diego.
Besides being known for our delicious and award-winning beer, Deft Brewing has built a reputation for being a fun and friendly place to enjoy beers and entertainment. Our staff of attentive and engaging beertenders is often mentioned in the online reviews and stellar ratings of the tasting room. Other features and amenities of the Deft tasting room include a warm, inviting live-edge wood bartop, a kids area with a puppet show theater, a dog-friendly atmosphere, ample on-street parking, TVs, WiFi, occasional food trucks, clean like-home restrooms, and lots of entertainment. Activities in the tasting room include fun Trivia every Thursday night that I personally host, a group workout and weekly Euchre (team card game) group play every Tuesday night, game nights, occasional live music, and numerous other seasonal and fundraising events. Patrons can even enjoy their beers on the breezy outdoor patio while relaxing under the very Chinook and Centennial hop plants that will eventually flavor the beers they’ll likely be enjoying later this year — it doesn’t get much more “locally sourced” and “fresh” than that.
We are excited to now mention that later this year Lost Cause Meadery, an award-winning mead brewer currently located in the Miramar area, will be moving its brewing operation into our building and opening a beautiful new tasting room adjacent to the Deft tasting room. Deft is already collaborating with Billy and Suzanna Beltz from Lost Cause to provide comfortable and inviting shared tasting room space and even more amenities and activities for our respective customers. This new buildout will also likely provide Deft Brewing and Lost Cause customers with the opportunity to order substantial, high-quality food options throughout the week from a planned on-site kitchen. This partnership and the new buildouts will undoubtedly make our destination on Banks Street a must-visit for anyone interested in craft beer and mead.
What were you like growing up?
Growing up in Fridley, Minnesota (suburban Minneapolis), I was a good student, active, friendly, and straight-laced, but not yet “driven” and “focused.” My work ethic and entrepreneurial bent developed later while in college during my Mechanical Engineering program at the University of Minnesota. I then realized I had to buckle down and learn to balance the virtually unlimited social activities that college-life affords with the need to work hard, learn and perform well in an infinitely more challenging educational environment (as compared to high school). I also had to work numerous jobs to pay my way through college. My first entrepreneurial venture also started while in college, as I partnered with a close friend and roommate and started a small software company developing and selling a program specifically designed for the then-infant “fantasy football” industry. While our company only survived a handful of years without the savvy and business acumen that only experience can provide, we gained invaluable experience in starting and running a business at a young age. While there at the University of Minnesota, I also developed a preference for European beers, especially imported German and English beers.
In the middle of a career that took me from engineering and into business consulting (at Andersen Consulting/Accenture where I first met co-founder Kevin), supply chain re-engineering, eLearning, corporate compliance, operations, and supply chain, Robin and I moved to Philadelphia for two years so that I could complete the full-time MBA program at the Wharton School at the Univerity of Penn. That experience prepared me well for the rigors and variety of disciplines involved in starting and successfully running a brewery. While living in downtown Philadelphia, Robin and I would frequent a nearby and famous Belgian pub called “Monk’s Cafe”, where we developed an affinity for the flavorful Belgian brews. This love of Belgian beers, in addition to the German and British/Irish styles I was already enjoying at the time, formed the basis for my focus on traditional European styles in my homebrewing, and eventually became the focus of Deft Brewing’s everyday beer menu.
Contact Info:
- Address: 5328 Banks Street
San Diego, CA 92110 - Website: www.deftbrewing.com
- Email: mo@deftbrewing.com
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/deftbrewing/?hl=en
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/DeftBrewing
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/deft-brewing-san-diego
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