One founder has adopted the job title of Big Kahuna. He and his accomplice's idea of advertising is the company logo imprinted on a Frisbee. Their annual investors meeting bears resemblance to a beer bash.

Now Freddy Bensch and Kevin McNerney, former college roomies who plunged into the suds business initially to secure free six-packs, are about to taste-test a fresh concept for their firm: operating on a detailed financial budget. This, while winding down the 10th year of their Sweetwater Brewing Co.

"We pretty much ran things week to week," Mr. Kahuna/Bensch acknowledges, some 500 weeks after liftoff.

Imbibers and brewing competitors, perceive at your own risk this pair as stumbling around like drunks with an angel on each shoulder. Dumb like foxes are Bensch and McNerney, who washed up in Atlanta at a ripe moment for microbrews, began churning out uniform beers that hit the public's sweet spot and wrapped it all in a counterculture image with a wink-wink, nod-nod name for the cornerstone product.

Even rivals left by the wayside offer a thumbs-up with one hand and a raised glass with the other.

Atlanta Brewing founder Greg Kelly, who recently sold his interest in the tepid granddaddy of local craft beers: "Highly successful."

Crawford Moran, Dogwood Brewing president until its demise two years ago: "They should be applauded."

Sweetwater has so far defied the business law of gravity (not to be confused with the state's 2004 high-gravity beer law).

What goes up ... has kept going up.

Barely two years in their latest brewquarters within earshot of I-85 in Midtown, Sweetwater has required two expansions and commissioned a third. The thirst for its hops is that strong — 18,000 barrels (at 31 gallons per) produced in '04, followed by 24,500 last year and 33,000 this, Bensch and McNerney project with a blend of delight and concern.

Plans to peddle their nectar on new frontiers next year have been shelved in favor of focusing on established markets. They are leery of growing too fast, like a sprouting adolescent whose parents can't keep him in clothes that fit.

"The theory all along is to grow wisely," McNerney says. "Our product is unique. We want to keep an eye on it."

Around-the-clock brewing

Which he does, hawklike. Carrying the more mundane title of brewmaster, McNerney monitors the multistep beer creation — ramped up these days to around-the-clock except on weekends — in the building's back room. Led Zeppelin or Cake blast through speakers and some of the 15 little Kahunas on staff dunk basketballs during breaks through a low-hanging hoop.

On a recent weekday morning at work, McNerney sips a soda, which may shock taste buds accustomed to a hoppier assault. Bensch, who handles the business side from a front office, nurses a beer.

They have seen other regionals like their own spread nationwide. Confirming their prosperity, they have been tantalized by feelers from heavyweight brewers interested in partnering or buying them out.

And, heeding advice from some seasoned investors, 22 all told, the two majority owners have assumed a steady-as-she-goes approach. Bigger is not always better.

"It's still fun right now," says Bensch, who brings his tennis-ball-chasing dog to work.

Echoes McNerney, "It's just getting really exciting for us."

They won't say what the private company is worth, or how much revenue it generates, but Sweetwater has distanced itself dramatically in sales from other metro Atlanta brews. To the enduring half of the original four-man ownership team, it's a trend as bittersweet as a full-bodied ale, one that affirms its success but emphasizes that there is always trouble brewing with some players in the business.

Trouble for rivals

When Sweetwater capped its first bottle in 1997, three other Atlanta micros were bustling. One, Marthasville, had a short shelf life. Dogwood went dry in 2005, burdened by a statewide procedure that often binds brewer to distributor even if the company that transports to stores and taverns becomes the wrong fit. In its case, the distributor fatally chose to downgrade beer priorities and stressed wine and spirits, says ex-Dogwood chief Moran.

Atlanta Brewing still stands but has been handcuffed by uncertainty over its location. Housed in a Midtown site alongside I-75, it has braced for years for an eventual uprooting by the Department of Transportation. Now that DOT has purchased property on the block that includes Atlanta Brewing, a move to north Atlanta is imminent.

"Things are picking up, but slower than we would like," concedes Director of Operations Dave Weil, who forecasts a jump of nearly 4,000 barrels this year to 6,000 in '07.

Another company, Zuma, brews on a smaller scale, also in the substantial shadow of Sweetwater.

"I want them to do well," says Weil of the front-runner, "and I hope they want us to do well."

Sweetwater is doing so well, "they can probably become anything they want," Kelly, the Atlanta Brewing founder, says. "They can become the next Sierra Nevada [the model for craft brews nationwide] or they can stay who they are.

"Their beer has always been good and consistent. And they have a cool, hip image."

Anti-establishment is conveyed with the Sweetwater slogan "Don't float the mainstream" and the tie-dyed delivery trucks, which stand out even on the crowded canvas of Atlanta traffic. The owners promote their fondness for all things outdoors, donating proceeds to Chattahoochee River upkeep.

Sweetwater's signature beer, called 420 — which accounts for about two-thirds of sales — "became a little underground cult thing," Kelly says. "It really got them going."

Among the college-age-and-up crowd that represents Sweetwater's core, the three-digit number carries marijuana connotations, mostly mythical in nature, such as police code in California for a pot bust. Some users observe National Pot Smokers Day on April 20, and the names of various marijuana-related paraphernalia contain 420.

Date first brewed

Bensch maintains 4/20 is the date in 1997 that the beer was first brewed. And that he and McNerney, both of whom attended a university (Colorado) ranked among the highest for marijuana consumption by the Princeton Review's survey of U.S. colleges, were unaware of the drug connection until later.

Their critical schooling came at the American Brewers Guild on the campus of a California university. Bensch recognized that the craft brew craze had yet to infiltrate the Southeast by the mid-'90s, so he roamed far afield to scout out fertile ground for a start-up.

His final tour stop was Atlanta — just months, propitiously, before the 1996 Summer Olympics. "There was a super buzz," Bensch remembers.

Unimpressed with the local micro choices, he summoned McNerney, and they set up shop on Fulton Industrial Boulevard, west of town, financed by $800,000 shaken down from family and friends and another $400,000 from a Small Business Association loan.

"Cheapest rent we could find," McNerney says, and also their first misstep. Brewery tours and free-beer nights (for visitors who buy a glass) are an essential marketing tool for micros, but Sweetwater's site was inaccessible to its target audience.

Back then, the bosses dressed in shorts and T-shirts. Not surprisingly, "nobody [in the industry] would give us the time of day," Bensch recalls.

'We've fallen on our face'

The learning curve was steep. There was a deal with the original distributor that turned sour, and Bensch devoted three years to negotiating a trade of wholesalers that teamed Sweetwater with the locally dominant United, a heavenly match.

"We've fallen on our face a few times," McNerney says, which was inevitable for two 20-somethings fresh off a campus.

Bensch: "Once you put your foot in the pool, you just start swimming."

Against the mainstream, as it turned out. But image has had little impact on the eight awards amassed at the annual brew-geek's Great American Beer Festival — notably, the 2002 Small Brewery of the Year.

It's an honor that won't be repeated, given that Sweetwater has transitioned out of the craft brew category — a designation by the national Association of Brewers as producing no more than 15,000 barrels per annum — into the regional grouping.

"They have had stellar growth," says Paul Gatza, association president. "They need to make decisions on how far they want to extend their reach."

They already have. If Sweetwater had a flow chart, it would show company beers ultimately flowing throughout the Southeast — as far up as the Mason-Dixon Line, as far left as Louisiana. But those dreams, they insist, will ferment for a good while.

Staying close to home

For now, they will concentrate on existing markets in thirsty pockets of Alabama, Tennessee, Florida and North Carolina. Plus, dig deeper into Georgia, spurred by the legislative bouquet tossed to the industry with a law that lifted the maximum alcohol content from 6 percent to 14 percent — thus accommodating Sweetwater, whose offerings top off at 10.5 percent.

The beer chemist McNerney intends to whip up four new seasonals next year, one to toast their 10th anniversary. Hummer, the popular summer seasonal, will be available year-round.

Nationally, craft and regional sales have risen at a double-digit pace this year, highest since the '90s. Gatza, from the association of brewers, senses no flattening out anytime soon.

"People are getting a better sense of beer style," he says. "They are going for more flavorful products. We're on the cusp of change as to how the public thinks about beer."

Still, Sweetwater vows to resist the siren song encouraging them to expand rapidly.

"The goal is Southeast regional. It's never to be national," McNerney says. "It's important to maintain the culture we've established here."

That means unleashing pets to work. Minimal advertising. (Bensch: "You start playing that game, you're playing against the Buds, Millers and Coors.") Sticking to the Sweetwater identity, conveyed by the rainbow trout logo for which it paid a local artist $500.

"The culture is what makes us who we are," Bensch says. "We're challenged with [holding onto] it every day."

Sometimes, though, concessions must be made. Signed on for next year: Sweetwater's first certified public accountant.