225 East Sixteenth Street
Traverse City
231-944-1239
OWNER: Russell Springsteen
BREWER: Sam Sherwood
FLAGSHIP BEERS: CEO Stout, a stout brewed with coffee; Will Power, a session pale ale; Northern Hawk Owl, an amber ale
THE PUB AT RIGHT BRAIN BREWERY REFLECTS OWNER RUSS ELL SPRINGSTEE N’S ECLECTIC AND CREATIVE PERSONALITY.
If the brewers at Short’s Brewing Company are like children playing with toys, then Russell Springsteen and the crew at Right Brain Brewery in Traverse City are like mad alchemists.
Who else would think of making a brown ale laced with peanut butter and Thai chili peppers, a cherry beer brewed with entire cherry pies, saisons made with beets and cucumbers, or a beer that tastes like Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies?
And then there’s Right Brain’s most notorious creation: Mangalista Pig Porter, a smoky beer that’s brewed with a Mangalista pig’s head and sixty pounds of smoked bones. It won the gold medal for best experimental beer at the 2011 Great American Beer Festival.
Three things drive the bold creativity at Right Brain. First is a healthy sense of curiosity that causes the brewers to ask, “What if we try this?” The innovation could be something as simple as making the same beer with a different type of yeast, or as dramatic as pairing unusual and contradictory flavors.
Second is a desire to match beer with food, similar to the way sommeliers match wines with different types of food. That was the inspiration for Mangalista Pig Porter. Springsteen attended Pigstock, an annual culinary festival in Traverse City that’s devoted to all things pork. During the event, Springsteen asked himself what kind of beer he could make to pair with a pork dish. Which led to a conclusion that would probably not have been obvious to most of us: why not a smoky pork-flavored beer?
To make sure that nothing would be wasted, Springsteen asked for the leftover head and bones. He researched food-safety techniques and laws, and went to work making the beer. The resulting beer turned the stomachs of some—and the heads of others.
Cans of Will Power, a pale ale, are ready to be filled at Right Brain Brewery in Traverse City.
The third reason why Right Brain wants to be creative is, well, just a desire to be different. It’s not just the beer. Everything about Right Brain is different. Most breweries try to locate themselves in busy downtowns, hip neighborhoods, or old buildings with character; Right Brain occupies two-thirds of a modern, one-story cinderblock structure in a Traverse City neighborhood that seems light years away from the trendy restaurants that appeal to tourists and foodies. The Right Brain taproom is one large open space filled with an assortment of tables and clutter. The walls are decorated with the works of local artists and cartoonish sci-fi illustrations, and meaningless trophies sit on a shelf behind the bar. Since employees often bring their kids to work, on summer days it can seem that Right Brain is more of a day care center than a brewery.
What’s the motivation for the desire to be different? “A lot of that stems from Russ,” says former brewer Nick Panchamé. “He doesn’t do things the normal way.”
And that may stem from the way Springsteen views himself. The name of the brewery comes from an episode during Springsteen’s senior year in high school when a teacher gave her students a test to see if they were left-brained or right-brained. (Neurologists say the right side of the brain is responsible for a person’s creativity and imagination, among other functions.) Springsteen was the only person in his class to be identified as right-brained.
Springsteen has long had a love affair with beer. He started drinking it in his teen years, but he admits he didn’t understand, appreciate, and respect beer until he went to Germany on a competitive wrestling exchange program. He was immediately fascinated by a culture where it was possible for him—still a teenager—to sit at a bar and be treated as an adult. His next revelation came upon his return home. “Then I came back and realized our beer tasted like wet cardboard.”
That’s when he decided he would try his hand at brewing his own.
Springsteen’s life took a turn in 2000, when he and his wife moved to the Traverse City area. Springsteen figured he would end up with a job as a barber in his new location, but he put in an application at Jack Archiable’s Traverse Brewing Company. Springsteen’s timing was perfect; Archiable was looking for a new brewer because his young, hotshot brewer—Joe Short—was leaving to take a job downstate.
Springsteen soon began to develop his own business plan for a combination barbershop and brewery. His first stop for financing was the local small-business development center, which told Springsteen he had to get funding from a bank. The bank immediately rejected his idea. “They thought I was crazy,” Springsteen said. So Springsteen decided he would finance himself. He went back to cutting hair to make money and started buying and renting real estate. Before long, with the help of two investors, he had enough capital to open a brewery.
Springsteen chose a run-down old building on Garland Street in Traverse City’s warehouse district, just west of downtown. There was only one other business on the street and parking was a problem. Nonetheless, Right Brain caught on and soon had a devoted clientele. That’s when things began to backfire: Springsteen realized he was losing customers because Right Brain was too popular. People were coming to the door, but they couldn’t get in, and Springsteen couldn’t brew fast enough to satisfy demand. The decision was made to move the brewery (and barbershop) to its current location south of downtown.
(Incidentally, Right Brain Brewery had a huge positive effect on the fortunes of the section of Traverse City in which it was originally located. The area is now home to the Workshop Brewing Company, and the warehouse district is one of the city’s trendiest, up-and-coming sectors, with new art galleries and housing developments.)
With the move to the new location, Springsteen began to look at the business in a different light. Initially he set out to be a home brewer writ large—no flagship beers; he just wanted to brew what he likes. But in 2011, Springsteen hired brewer Nick Panchamé, who used his culinary training at Johnson & Wales University to introduce new flavors and techniques. After graduation, Panchamé cooked for a couple of years at St. John’s University Law School, then took an unpaid internship at Cricket Hill Brewing Company in Fairfield, New Jersey. Once he had enough brewing experience, he worked as an assistant brewer at 508 Gastro Brewery in lower Manhattan. After a year brewing in New York City, Panchamé took the job at Right Brain because it appealed to his left brain—it was a place where he could apply his culinary knowledge in an logical and analytical way.
Together, Panchamé and Springsteen looked at beer from a practical standpoint—what makes sense and what flavors go well together? For Schrute Farms, a saison brewed with beets and toasted coriander, it was a matter of matching up two ingredients that Panchamé says are “polar opposite” in taste. The inspiration for Hefe Cubano came from a banana milkshake with a shot of espresso that Panchamé used to drink when he lived in Rhode Island. The memory of the unique flavor combination stuck with him. Once he got to Right Brain, he knew he was in the right place to use the naturally occurring banana-like esters in a hefeweizen (a style of wheat beer from southern Germany) to make a beer that reminded him of that special milkshake.
As crazy as Right Brain’s beers sound, Springsteen and says the top priority is still on the beer. In March 2016, Springsteen hired Sam Sherwood, one of Michigan’s most experienced brewers, to take over when Panchamé departed for a new brewery in Ann Arbor. Springsteen hired Sherwood to improve efficiency as the brewery continues to expand and increase distribution. The move also gives Sherwood an opportunity to make beers and experiment with recipes he couldn’t make at his previous breweries. They don’t promise that every beer made by Right Brain will be an award-winning beer, but they do promise everything they serve has been well thought out and well made.
Springsteen, meanwhile, says that it’s best to play it safe when brewing something like an asparagus beer: “We have to drink it, so …”
ONE MORE THING: Right Brain has the reputation of being one of the state’s best incubators for young brewers, a perception that Springsteen encourages. Former Right Brain brewers have gone on to work at Brewery Terra Firma, Rare Bird Brewpub, the Workshop Brewing Company, and Beggars Brewery, among others.