Collaborators, Amateurs, Semipros, Small-Fries, Gypsies: Inside the Men—and Women—Behind Your Beer
SOME INDUSTRIES ARE TOUGH NUTS TO CRACK. TO become an NFL player or a nuclear physicist, you better be a freakish physical specimen—a Mensabrain or megabrawn. Brewing doesn’t require such genetic luck. Buy a sack of grain, a handful of hops, yeast packets, and a couple of pots and carboys (a vessel suited for fermentation), and you too can brew. The first couple of experiments may be overcarbonated catastrophes. In time, though, the ratios make sense. Results improve, from drinkable to delectable. Your beer might be just as good—or better—than suds served at the bar. What next?
In the past, brewers eager to go pro may have apprenticed or worked for a brewery, or decided to open their own operation, a laborious, debt-ridden undertaking. Now the path to a brewing career, and the definition of a brewer, isn’t so clearly defined. Beer making’s ranks have swelled with small-scale nanobrewers, rootless gypsy brewers, collaborators and conspirators, and homebrewers who straddle the amateur-professional divide—men and woman alike. Today’s homebrewer might easily be tomorrow’s brewing star.
Getting It Together: Brewery Collaborations
Let’s pretend I own a factory manufacturing, oh, sneakers. It’s a frenzied Friday afternoon on the assembly line and, lo and behold, I discover that I’m short shoelaces. My suppliers have clocked out. Work has halted. Deadlines are imminent. I need those laces—and the only person with any is my closest competitor. I’d be screwed. Why help a rival?
That’s not the case for craft beer. Though breweries battle for the same bucks, the industry is driven less by competition than by kinship. “The brewing industry is collegial in nature,” says Paul Gatza, the director of the Brewers Association. “Brewers are friends with their competitors. You often hear conversations like, ‘Hey, do you have some Cascade hop pellets? I’m short this week.’ That wouldn’t happen in any other industry.”
Further demonstrating their bonhomie, droves of brewers have teamed up to concoct collaboration beers. This is less a style than a phenomenon in which two (or three or six) breweries combine forces to create a singular beer. Sometimes brewers commingle to exchange ideas. Other times, it’s to avoid a lawsuit. Back in 2001, Avery Brewing and Russian River Brewing Company discovered they both made beers named Salvation. Instead of calling lawyers, they ganged up in 2008 to release the now-annual Collaboration Not Ligation Ale, a combination of the two beers. It’s 50 percent Avery’s Belgian golden ale, 50 percent Russian River’s Belgian strong ale—and 100 percent delicious.
Blending two batches is pretty extreme. Normally, brewers concoct a single recipe, one that lets their freak flags fly. Each year, Georgia’s Terrapin Beer Co. and Colorado’s Left Hand Brewing manufacture a madcap Midnight Project beer. (The 2010 release was Oxymoron, an American IPA brewed with a large portion of German malts and hops and Left Hand’s proprietary lager yeast.) Chicago’s Half Acre Beer Co. joined with Michigan’s Short’s Brewing in 2010 to make Freedom of ’78, an IPA brewed with 1,000 pounds of guava fruit. Seattle’s Elysian Brewing Company and Colorado’s New Belgium create the Trip series, oftentimes crossing hopped-up West Coast ales with Belgian flair.
Two great breweries, one great beer. Teamwork never tasted so good.
Two Collaborations to Try
Brooklyner-Schneider Hopfen-Weisse
Brooklyn Brewery and Private Weissbierbrauerei G. Schneider & Sohn
ABV: 8.5%
Brooklyn brewmaster Garrett Oliver and his German counterpart, Schneider’s Hans-Peter Drexler, collaborated on this strong, hoppy, limitedrelease wheat beer, which they brewed in each other’s breweries. Though both breweries share the label, each version differs slightly in the dry-hopping: Drexler opted for America’s citric Amarillo and floral Palisade hops, while Oliver went for Germany’s zesty Hallertauer Saphir (his version is Schneider-Brooklyner Hopfen-Weisse).
Signature Series
De Proef Brouwerij
ABV: Varies
To create the revolving Signature releases, master Belgian brewer Dirk Naudts partners with different American brewers to create an ale that embodies both breweries. For example, Les Deux Brasseurs (brewed in conjunction with Allagash Brewing’s Jason Perkins) was fermented with each brewery’s BRETTANOMYCES strain, while Van Twee uses sour cherry juice from Michigan—home to Bell’s brewer John Mallet.
Professional Homebrew
Every couple of months, I become a tour guide. In New York, this is a commonplace profession: tourism is a bedrock of our economy, with pretty pennies to be earned escorting visitors to the Statue of Liberty and Times Square. That’s not my bag. I’m a journalist and a beer lover, not necessarily in that order.
Thus, I lead a homebrewers tour. I escort suds fans to apartments and lofts, where we sample brewmasters’ liquid bounty. Offerings run from the expected (inky stouts, citric IPAs) to the unexpected (Earl Grey tea-infused pale ales, peanut butter porters), with the commonality being the beer’s quality: “I never expected homebrew to taste this good,” two or three attendees will utter each tour. I’ll smile, watching misconceptions burst like beer bubbles.
Yes, that’s me.
“I judge homebrew contests, and in every competition I find half a dozen beers that make me think, That could be a professional beer,” says Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association. At its and attendees on my core, homebrewing is beer making’s minor leagues, where liquid chefs perfect techniques and recipes before turning pro. When done properly, a pint of homebrew can be just as satisfying as anything poured at a corner saloon. In fact, that homebrew might be poured at a corner saloon.
Look at the happy hosts and attendees on my homebrew tour.
Breweries such as Baltimore’s Clipper City Brewing Co. and the Boston Beer Company sponsor competitions in which the winner’s recipe is brewed, bottled, and sold. Other microbreweries, such as Widmer, collaborate with homebrewers to craft their suds, then distribute them. Building on that concept, Portland, Oregon’s Green Dragon brewpub allows homebrewers to run its small, in-house brewing system—with the delicious results dispensed on draft. The line between amateur and professional brewers is growing as fuzzy as a barfly’s eyes at last call.
Great American Beer Festival Pro-Am Competition
Each September, Denver hosts the Great American Beer Festival, which I liken to U.S. craft brewing’s Super Bowl. Hundreds of microbreweries bring thousands of stouts, IPAs, and barrel-aged oddities to the Mile-High City, hoping to win a medal that could forever alter their fortunes. Same goes for homebrewers.
In 2006, the Brewers Association and the American Homebrewers Association launched the GABF Pro-Am Competition. “We wanted to keep in everyone’s mind in the industry that professional brewers come from the homebrewing ranks,” Brewer’s association director Paul Gatza says. In the contest, breweries partner with homebrewers to re-create their amateur recipes. But this is no Make-a-Wish event: Each team is equally invested, with medals awarded to both professional and amateur—who may, in turn, become tomorrow’s professional.
Yes, the Great American Beer Festival is really THAT much fun.
(Not) Fighting the Law
The legalities surrounding selling homebrewed beer are as clear as Bud Light. When President Jimmy Carter legalized homebrewing in the late 1970s, he allowed folks to brew up to 100 gallons of beer a year. Many brewers slosh over the threshold, but it’s unlikely that cops will come a-knocking. That would happen only if homebrewers sold their tipples. “There’s a defining line between amateurs and professionals: Are they selling their beer and paying their taxes?” Gatza says.
Vending beer means hacking through a tangled web of regulations wrapped around the three-tier system, in which breweries sell to distributors, which then peddle to stores and bars. Taxes are collected at every step. Plus, there’s the cost of acquiring a federal permit from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. It’s a pain in the butt to sell a pal a growler.
However, no law prohibits a brewery from producing a semipro’s recipe. Each spring, San Diego’s Stone Brewing Co. hosts a homebrewing competition, in which the winner’s brew, such as Ken Schmidt’s Aloha Plenty Porter in 2009, becomes the basis for a Collaboration Series release created with other breweries. In this case, Schmidt teamed up with Stone and Maui Brewing Co. to create Kona Coffee Macadamia Coconut Porter.
For its annual homebrewing battle, Baltimore’s Clipper City Brewing Company, the maker of Heavy Seas beers, bestows the winner with the Letter of Marque—a document that once branded a pirate a professional privateer. “We’re making a homebrewer a legitimate professional,” says Clipper City founder Hugh Sisson.
The Letter of the Marque, which is released in Heavy Seas’ strong-beer Mutiny Fleet Series, was born from Sisson’s “enormous respect for people who homebrew on a really high level,” he says. “People who are able to overcome the challenge of making beer with stockpots and other equipment that wasn’t designed to make beer, and still focus on learning the process and craft, deserve to commended.”
Winning brewers are invited to Heavy Seas, where they discuss their recipe—say, a hoppy rye porter—with the brewmaster, then help craft the beer. “This is about passion, which is driving the craft beer industry. You don’t get any more passionate than homebrewers.”
More critically, if it weren’t for homebrewers, America wouldn’t have so many breweries. “When we started back in the eighties, homebrewers were nourishing the craft-brewing movement,” says Boston Beer president Jim Koch, whose first batch of Sam Adams was concocted on his stove in 1984. In order to “keep the connection between craft brewing and homebrewing alive,” Koch says, the Boston Beer Company launched the Samuel Adams LongShot American Homebrew Contest in 1996, soliciting recipes from brewers nationwide. Of the 800-plus annual entries, the top two, along with a Boston Beer employee’s best brew, are scaled up and sold as the LongShot six-pack.
“As a professional brewer, the quality of LongShot beer reminds me that the line between a talented homebrewer and a professional is largely arbitrary and unrecognizable,” Koch says of the winning beers, among which have counted a potent barley wine, a lemon-pepper saison, and a cranberry wit. After more than 25 years in the business, “I still learn from tasting homebrews,” Koch says. “Some of the best brewers in this country are homebrewers.”
Beer Today, Here Tomorrow
By and large, these amateurs-gone-legal beers are one-off releases to be savored and never sipped again. Sometimes, though, a homebrew beer is so good a brewery can’t say good-bye. In Portland, Maine, Peak Organic brewer Jon Cadoux was so smitten by pal Tim Broderick’s IPA recipe that it inspired Peak’s floral and citric ale—one of its biggest sellers. One of Boston Beer’s LongShot winners leapt into regular rotation, with Ken Smith’s Boysenberry Wheat becoming the basis for the Blackberry Witbier. “Homebrewers’ experimentation can lead to a commercial product,” Koch says.
That sentiment is understood in Portland, Oregon, home to Widmer Brothers Brewing Co. In the late 1990s, cofounder Rob Widmer says, homebrewers had limited access to the eclectic yeast strains now available. “Unless a guy was cultivating his own, the only yeast strain came from a packet of dried brewers’ yeast, which was infinitely horrible stuff,” he says.
To aid the Oregon Brew Crew, a homebrew club, Widmer Brothers began giving members the brewery’s yeast strain. In return, Widmer Brothers asked for bottles of the resulting batch, helping the brewery better understand its yeast’s properties. “Some of the beers they brought back were so good,” Widmer recalls, that in January 1998 the brewery launched its annual Collaborator competition.
The rules are as simple as they are groundbreaking. Widmer Brothers foots the ingredient bill for the homebrewers to craft their beers. The resulting brews are entered into a contest. The winners (there could be one or four; nothing’s set in stone) are invited to Widmer to help formulate and brew a large-scale batch of the victorious beer or beers, which then hits the local marketplace. To date, Widmer has released more than 30 Collaborator beers, from a bright and fresh kölsch to a smoked porter. Pop into Widmer’s Gasthaus Pub or a fine Portland taphouse, and you’ll likely find a Collaborator on draft. But of all the releases, it was the very first Collaborator—a milk stout, released in summer 1998—that was too tasty to let disappear from the draft line.
Collaborator Stout was so successful that it was selected in 1999 as the American Homebrewers Association’s Big Brew recipe for National Homebrew Day, in which homebrewers nationwide use the same recipe. Then, in 2004, Widmer again boosted Collaborator Stout to the big leagues. The recipe served as the basis for Snowplow Stout, which ran for four years as the brewery’s winter seasonal. Oh, and that year at the Great American Beer Festival? Snowplow won gold in the British stout category. Not a bad feather in a homebrewer’s cap, indeed.
Think Your Homebrew Is Up to Snuff? Try Entering These Amateur-to-Pro Competitions
Meet Me at the Homebrew Pub
When people take my homebrew tour, the main attraction is the beer. Yet an equally important, if less acknowledged, lure is the voyeuristic thrill of entering a stranger’s home. There’s their toothbrush, their laundry basket, their cigarette-stained couch. Initially, attendees are awkward—until the second or third beer. Then the homey setting creates the kind of casual intimacy I wish existed at every bar. Strangers talk. Relationships bloom. It’s like a roving house party, which is a lovely thing.
The Elizabeth Street Brewery (above) and Richard Brewer-Hay crafting a batch of backyard beer.
That’s what makes San Francisco’s Elizabeth Street Brewery so wonderful. Back in 2003, eBay employee Richard Brewer-Hay began cooking five-gallon batches of beer on his stove. Richard’s interest in brewing grew, but his home did not. His wife, Alyson, contacted the TV show While You Were Out, and the program transformed the couple’s storage room into a speakeasy-like den decorated with a dartboard and beer bottles galore.
If it were up to me, I’d make this the ultimate man cave. Instead, Richard turned his den into what he dubs a “homebrew pub.” “I’ve always been the one throwing the party,” Brewer-Hay explains. “I had a huge mailing list, so I started inviting friends over to have beers.” Maybe once a month, he and Alyson send out the Iword on Twitter (and their rather professional website), setting a time frame during which curious drinkers can stop by for free samples of his creamy Daddy’s Chocolate Milk stout, hopped-up Auntie Ben’s IPA, and namesake Elizabeth Street Bitter.
While it’s a leap of faith to open his home and taps to strangers (“We once had more than a hundred people in our basement, and people were opening beers that were still fermenting,” Richard says), by and large, “the kind of person who goes into someone’s home is good people.” To meet demand, Brewer-Hay now brews ten-gallon batches of beer, and he won’t open his door unless he has at least fifteen gallons available. Adding to the bounty, local homebrewers often bring by beers to be poured on tap. In a way, he says, “we’re providing a community service, by bringing the community together in almost a town-square setting.”
If you’re wondering how this is legal, it’s because Elizabeth Street Brewery doesn’t charge. People can provide donations, but there’s no requirement. “We’re like a nonprofit homebrewery,” Brewer-Hay says. “We’re not making any money, but we’re not losing that much, either.” That may change. In 2010, Richard collaborated with Shaun O’Sullivan, of local brewery 21st Amendment, to create Imperial Jack, a souped-up ESB that won gold at the World Beer Cup. The success has started Brewer-Hay thinking about opening a legal brewpub. Still, he’s hesitant to go pro.
“What we have going is as good as it’s ever going to be, as far as an emotional reward. I don’t have to deal with taxes, or regulations—but I do have to go to work,” he says. If the pub happens, he wants to do it on his terms, in his neighborhood. “Everything has been very organic, from the growth of our fan base to the growth of my hobby,” he says. “I don’t want to force the next level.”
Step Right Up to the Tap
If you’re not lucky enough to hit Brewer-Hay’s home, or visit Pat Wlodarczyk’s Reno, Nevada, barn converted into the community-centric Woody’s Nano Brewery, or have friends that brew, how else can you taste homebrew? Let’s head back to the Oregon Brew Crew. While Widmer has been kind to the OBC, the club’s beers are hardly exclusive to the brewery. In 2009, the OBC began a collaboration with Portland’s Rogue Ales—owned Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub.
Part of the tasty tap selection at Portland, Oregon’s Green Dragon, where homebrewers’ craft beer is served on site—check out No.7.
The Green Dragon’s tap handle.
Dubbed the Green Dragon Project, this unique union lets club members use the pub’s single-barrel brewing system—equipment originally used by Rogue head brewer John Maier—to craft 20- to 22-gallon batches. Just messing around on Maier’s system might be reward enough for some brewers, like an amateur ballplayer swinging Babe Ruth’s bat. But Green Dragon goes one step beyond, offering each OBC beer as one of its 50-odd eclectic drafts.
“We’ve gotten a great response from the beer-drinking public,” says OBC communications chair Josh Blender of the beers, which have included porters, dark and hoppy IPAs, and a farmhouse-style French ale partly aged in a Rogue Dead Guy Ale whiskey barrel. “Each release”—there’s a new one every few weeks—“usually only lasts a couple days.”
On several levels, this project is an ideal educational tool. First, the OBC gets to act like a full-fledged, if small-scale, brewery. While Green Dragon supplies the brewing license and pays taxes, members of the Green Dragon Project Committee select and refine recipes, source ingredients (Rogue foots the bill), and shepherd the brew from conception to tap, including naming the liquid creation. Can I interest anyone in a pint of 5-Point Exploding Palate Technique or Golden Dragon Ale?
Second, and in some respects more crucial, this project educates consumers, breaking down barriers and drawing the connection between breweries, homebrewers, and bargoers. Most nights, a consumer can see firsthand “the amazing quality of beers that can come from homebrewers,” Blender says. It’s one thing to have someone praise a pint of homebrew in a basement, but it speaks volumes to pony up cold, hard cash.
Does this make it professional? Is it still amateur? Why make distinctions? No matter a beer’s label, its quality boils down to a matter of taste.
Nanobreweries
Sometimes, a nasty recession can be a blessing. Just ask northern New Hampshire’s Bill Herlicka. A couple of years ago, with the economy freefalling, Herlicka read the writing on the wall at his Fortune 500 firm. “I knew I was facing an impending layoff,” Herlicka says.
Instead of panicking, he assessed his situation. Since 1994, this resident of teensy Hooksett (population: about 13,000) had been a passionate homebrewer, cranking out Belgian tripels, bold and complex Russian imperial stouts, and oak-aged English barley wines. “I loved beer and brewing”—he even built a beer cellar to study how brews age and evolve—“and people seemed to enjoy what I made,” he explains. As for the job, “I realized I hadn’t been happy with what I’d been doing. I thought, You only live once. Let’s see how you can make a brewery work.”
White Birch founder Bill Herlicka doing what he does best.
In June 2009, Herlicka launched the artisanal White Birch microbrewery—extra emphasis on the micro. White Birch Brewing began as a one-man operation, with Herlicka brewing, bottling, labeling, and distributing his robust, nuanced line of limited-edition barley wines, sour ales inoculated with wild yeasts and bacteria, and Belgian-inspired brews. Emphasis on limited. When he started, Herlicka brewed only one barrel (about 31 gallons) at a time, meaning that each release comprised just a couple hundred 22-ounce bottles.
“My only goal for ‘production’ is to grow organically in a way that doesn’t burden me with huge debt and does not make me feel I have to cut a corner to meet an arbitrary goal,” Herlicka says.
In recent years, the global beer industry has consolidated. Behemoths such as Anheuser-Busch and InBev, as well as Miller and Coors, have combined to gobble market share. Conversely, many microbreweries are growing itsy-bitsier. Nowadays, homebrewers who are eager to turn pro yet keep their operations intimate and expand as demand necessitates are opening nanobreweries: a small-scale, do-it-yourself brewery typically run by one or two people on a threadbare budget and operating on a three-barrel system or smaller. “My son is my only employee—and I don’t pay him,” jokes Jim Jamison, owner of Foggy Noggin Brewing in Bothell, Washington. In his spare time, he produces half-barrel batches of English-style ales, distributing beer to neighbors, folks who drive up to his garage brewery, and outlets around Seattle. “I like getting to know the people that drink my beer.”
Back to Brewing’s Roots
Consider this a revival of the concept of the village brewer. During the early days of the twentieth century, America was dotted with breweries rooted in the community, whose beers slaked townsfolk’s thirst. Too bad Prohibition, combined with America’s push toward industrialization, wiped aside these unique lager makers. This Bud’s for you—and you, and you, and you.
No longer. Hyperlocal nanobreweries are bringing craft beer to the community level. On Long Island, Blind Bat Brewery’s Paul Dlugokencky fashions three-barrel batches of flavorful artisanal ales, such as the Long Island Potato Stout, made with locally grown organic potatoes. On the other coast, Northern California attorney Kevin McGee spends his weekends running Healdsburg Beer Company, concocting brews like the English-style IPA Alexander Cask. And in Northwood, Iowa (a town of about 2,000 located on the Minnesota border), brewer Peter Ausenhus’s Worth Brewing Company (he is partners with wife Margaret Bishop) is turning out ten-gallon batches of spicy saison and the malty, hazy, well-hopped Dillon Clock Stopper.
When it comes to brewing delicious beer, size doesn’t matter.
Dollars and Sense
When making the professional leap, brewers need a business plan as excellent as their beer. After factoring in the costs of securing space, equipment, and licensing fees (not to mention grains and hops), the funds needed to open a brewery easily crest $100,000—and often go much, much higher. Then there’s the issue of selling enough six-packs or kegs to start repaying the loan. Debt can doom even the best brewer.
Nonetheless, brewers don’t need six figures of seed money to make and sell quality beer. In Seattle, Schooner Exact Brewing Company began in June 2006, when homebrewers Heather and Matt McClung wanted to increase their production capacity to brew beer for their pending nuptials. They found a used pilot system for about $1,500 and, along with pal Marcus Connery, decided to purchase it. When the men were retrieving the system, Heather told MSN.com, the men looked at each other and mused, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we decided to go pro?” That idle thought became Schooner Exact, makers of beers like the assertively hopped 3-Grid IPA and the summery Gallant Maiden Hefeweizen.
Whereas Schooner Exact waded into the waters of a city with a thriving craft-beer scene, Peter Ausenhus opted to make a splash in a small town. Ausenhus caught craft-beer fever back in the 1990s, when he worked for Minnesota’s Northern Brewer supply shop, then put in time at St. Paul’s Summit Brewing. In 1998, he and his wife, Margaret Bishop, relocated across the Iowa border to a farmstead in Worth County’s Northwood. Bishop launched a successful engineering firm.
A decade later, in 2007, Ausenhus decided to turn his passion into a profession. He bought downtown’s historic Peoples Gas and Electric Building and rechristened it Worth Brewing. Perhaps a better name would have been Cross Your Fingers Brewing. “Our main concern was, ‘Are these people going to take to craft beer?’” Ausenhus recalls. “Most of the residents were Bud and Miller drinkers, who hadn’t tried any craft beer.”
Worth Brewing’s Peter Ausenhus picking through a pile of hops.
Working in his favor was the low barrier to entry—since Iowa liquor licenses are based on a percentage of a population, his cost about $250 annually—a modest ten-gallon brewing setup, and no payroll. Ausenhus decided to serve as brewer and bartender, pouring a pale ale, lightly hopped brown ale, and an easy-drinking cream ale. “I thought, I better have one more on the mild side,” he says, laughing. To his surprise, his brown ale took off, as did business. “When we were imagining this and thinking how many pints we needed to sell a day, we thought, ‘Can we sustain it?’” Ausenhus says. “I thought, ‘Well, I’ll do this part-time.’ Very quickly it went full-time.”
Encouraged by consistent sales, Ausenhus started expanding his beer selection. Now among his six taps you can find a wet-hopped ale, Smoked Kellerbier, and even a Belgian Grand Cru. “We’re attracting people from thirty miles around,” Ausenhus says. “It’s nice to feel like I’m a productive member of the community.”
No Compromising Taste
For brewers, one of the benefits of running a nanobrewery is creative control. With no boss to demand they make a double IPA or, say, a Christmas ale, brewers can indulge their creative muse and craft the beers they crave. “I have twenty-three different beers fermenting in the brewery, as well as several wild ales that might not see the light of day for two or three years,” says White Birch’s Herlicka, who also has beers aging in oak barrels once used for bourbon, whiskey, and wine. “The ability to be creative and actually call it a business—what can be better than that?”
That’s what drives McMinnville, Oregon’s Rick Allen. After more than two decades as a homebrewer, the Oregonian founded Heater/Allen Brewing in 2007 with a focus that’s rarely found on the hop-mad West Coast: classic, German-style beers such as his effervescent Pils.
“There was this huge hole in Oregon,” Allen explains of concentrating on German-style beers. His decision was both aided and hindered by the quality of imported German beer. “So much of what we get on the West Coast is stale,” Allen says. “It works in my favor because people say, ‘Wow, this is really fresh.’ On the other hand, people don’t want to try German beers because what’s available is stale or pasteurized.”
To ensure his beer met his exacting standards, Allen embraced a kind of obsessive-compulsion common to restaurant chefs and professional brewers. “In 2006, I started brewing the same things over and over. I brewed fifteen consecutive batches of my pilsner. My main concern was getting brewhouse procedures down and to understand the ingredients.”
Likewise, Foggy Noggin’s Jamison also noticed an underserved niche in the Northwest beer-drinking scene. “No one was doing any classic British beers,” he says. Unlike prevailing Pacific Northwest styles such as IPAs and imperial IPAs, whose alcohol percentage can hit double digits, Jamison’s flagship, the Bit o’ Beaver bitter, registers 3.4 percent ABV. “It’s a beer you can drink two or three of,” he says proudly.
A loyal Foggy Noggin customer.
Since he brews only on a half-barrel system, Jamison could quickly face the problem of demand outstripping output. “I’d rather have my fear be ‘People can’t have enough beer’ than worry about trying to pay back a loan or employee expenses,” he says. “I don’t have any debt—and I want to keep it that way.”
Trouble in Paradise
Freedom. Creative control. What’s the catch? Well, running a brewery by the seat of your pants can have its drawbacks too. With few, or no, employees, a helping hand can be hard to find. “In my head, I knew I was going to be working a lot of hours, but it’s different once you’re actually working the sheer number of hours,” Worth’s Ausenhus says. However, he has no qualms about brewing; as the only employee, it’s pouring beer that drives him batty. “I’d rather be on the other side of the bar drinking the beer,” he says, laughing.
When you go it alone at a nanobrewery, you’re forced to assume every role: beer maker, custodian, distributor, and, most crucially, salesman. “You’ve got to be comfortable selling beer, because that’s at least fifty percent of the job,” explains Heater/ Allen’s Rick Allen. He first released his beer in bottles but found shelf space tough to come by in competitive Portland, Oregon. “It would’ve been smarter to have been in kegs first,” because people are more willing to try a draft beer, Allen says. With bottles, “it’s difficult to increase your volume in the market.”
But with a push toward kegs, Heater/Allen is growing: In 2010, he produced 428 barrels of beer, inching toward his goal of about 575 a year. Allen has even hired his first employee: his daughter, who has been able to help with the increased brewing, kegging, and cleaning.
Small, measured growth is a fact of life for many nanobreweries. When you’re brewing such small quantities, there’s nowhere to go but up. Build your brand, create demand, and very quickly a nanobrewery can become a small craft brewery. In 2009, Plains, Pennsylvania, pals Chris Miller and Mark Lehman turned Miller’s garage into Breaker Brewing Company. On a wood-lined one-and-a-half-barrel system, they created liquid tributes to the area’s mining past, such as the coffee-y Olde King Coal Stout. A bit more than a year into the endeavor, the duo increased production to four barrels and will soon relocate to a former church they’ll convert into a brewpub. White Birch is now brewing up to seven-barrel batches (and operates an apprentice program for young brewers), while Schooner Exact has upgraded to a fifteen-barrel system.
But for some brewers, staying itty-bitty suits them just fine. “There’s no guarantee that I’d make more money if I expanded,” Ausenhus says. “Being small, I have total freedom.”
Ten Nanobreweries to Try
Barrier Brewing Co.
Oceanside, New York
“Brewing for quality, not quantity” is the motto of Evan Klein’s single-barrel brewery located on the south shore of Long Island. He specializes in aromatic, hop-forward brews such as the spicy Ruthless Rye IPA, Greenroom Pale Ale, and the cardamom-spiced Beech St. Wheat. Barrier beers are sold on draft at bars in Long Island and New York City and by the growler at the brewery.
Lawson’s Finest Liquids
Warren, Vermont
Veteran homebrewer Sean Lawson specializes in small-batch curiosities such as Maple Tripple, a strong ale brewed once a year during sugaring season with maple sap instead of water, and Red Spruce Bitter, a coldweather seasonal spiced with cinnamon and infused with sprigs from red spruce trees. Draft and bottle distribution is limited to Vermont’s Mad River Valley.
Oysterhouse Brewing Company
Asheville, North Carolina
Located inside Asheville’s Lobster Trap restaurant, OysterHouse Brewing uses a half-barrel system to craft tasty brews such as Upside Down Brown (made with brown sugar) and Moonstone Stout. Each batch includes five pounds of oysters, shells included, which imparts a slightly salinic character. Find the beer at the brewery.
The Blind Bat Brewery
Centerport, New York
Bad vision inspired the name of illustrator Paul Dlugokencky’s parttime operation, based on the north shore of Long Island. Using a three-barrel system (a step up from his one-third-of-a-barrel beginnings), Dlugokencky creates idiosyncratic smoked beers such as his campfire-flavored Hellsmoke Porter and Belgian-esque Beached Blonde, jazzed up with cardamom and coriander. Find his beers on draft and in bottles on Long Island and in New York City.
Hess Brewing
San Diego, California
Mike Hess and his wife, Lynda, run San Diego’s first licensed nanobrewery, which is among the city’s smallest. Hess, who boasts more than a decade of homebrewing experience, churns out 1.6-barrel batches of beers influenced by Europe (golden Claritas Kölsch), Mexico (Grazias Vienna Cream Ale), and the West Coast (wildly hopped Amplus Acerba San Diego Pale Ale). Buy Hess at San Diego pubs and at the brewery.
Merry drinkers mingling at San Diego’s Hess Brewing.
Lefty’s Brewing Company
Bernardston, Massachusetts
Former-Roofer Bill “Lefty” Goldfarb runs this two-barrel brewery. He hand-bottles and hand-labels each brew, including Chocolate Oatmeal Stout, Coffee Porter, and robust pale ale with a full-on floral aroma. Lefty’s is sold at select bars and stores in northcentral Massachusetts.
Craft Brewing Company
Lake Elsinore, California
With more than 50 years of brewing experience among them, a quartet of homebrewers took their passion to a professional level in March 2010. The dependable, way-drinkable offerings include silky, vanilla-hinted Raven Stout and lightly hopped Obadiah Poundage Porter. Swing by the brewery for a growler fill.
Foggy Noggin Brewing
Bothell, Washington
In March 2010, Jim Jamison turned his garage into a traditional English-style brewery, featuring milds and bitters concocted in half-barrel batches. Come weekends, you can pull up to his house and fill a growler, or hit up one of the numerous Washington pubs carrying his British brews.
Vertigo Brewing
Hillsboro, Oregon
A warehouse serves as the headquarters for Mike Haines and Mike Kinion’s Vertigo Brewing. The twosome brew offbeat fruit beers, such as crisp Apricot Cream Ale and refreshing Razz Wheat, made with more than twelve pounds of raspberries per barrel. Vertigo began with a single-barrel system but has since upgraded to a seven-barrel system. Sample their beers on draft at bars around western Oregon.
Natian Brewery
Portland, Oregon
A part-time operation run by Natalia Laird and Ian McGuinness, Natian—a mash-up of their first names—uses a 1.3-barrel system to brew beers such as Destination Honey Red (made with Oregon honey), their balanced Everyday IPA, and Lumberjane Stout. Find Natian’s beers on tap at Portland bars.
Natian founders Natalia and Ian
Nomadic
For Baltimore’s Brian Strumke, the party was coming to an end. The techno DJ and producer had long made a living performing in Europe. But gigs were growing scarcer. Boredom had set in. “I needed a creative outlet,” Strumke says.
Looking to channel his restless energy into a new hobby, he borrowed a brewing kit from his friend and started making batches in his kitchen. Like a piano-playing child prodigy, Strumke showed a savant-like knack for formulating flavorful, innovative beers such as a cabernet sauvignon lambic and a Belgian ale flavored with molasses and ginger. On a lark, he entered them into Samuel Adams LongShot and Holiday Homebrew competitions, as well as the American Homebrewers Association’s National Homebrew Competition. He won. “I thought it was a mistake at first,” Strumke says.
That wasn’t Strumke’s big break. It came one day in 2009, when Belgian-beer writer Charles “Chuck” Cook convinced Brian Ewing, owner of Brooklyn’s 12 Percent Imports, to sample Strumke’s beers. Ewing was wowed at first sip, both by the brews and by where they were manufactured. “Brian was amazed that I brewed this stuff in my basement and backyard,” Strumke says. Ewing struck up a deal to distribute Strumke’s beers, starting with Stateside Saison, under the label Stillwater Artisanal Ales. Only there was one problem: He needed a production facility, and his backyard wouldn’t do.
Luckily, Strumke had a friend who used to own DOG Brewing Co., located in nearby Westminster, Maryland. He approached DOG about brewing on-site, under a relationship called an alternating proprietorship. They bit. “We had a contract drawn up within twenty-four hours,” he says. And so, Stillwater was born—without a brewery to call its own.
Stillwater’s zesty Stateside Saison
Follow the Money
Building a production brewery from the ground up is insanely expensive. Costs can spiral into hundreds of thousands—if not millions—before suds enter a keg. For many brewers, alternating proprietorships are an appealing middle ground between paying someone to brew your beer (contract brewing) and investing in infrastructure. It’s a relationship that’s beneficial to both brewer and brewery owner due to a simple fact: Like an airplane, a brewery should be running full-time, at 100 percent capacity. If there’s extra capacity, it behooves the brewery owner to rent time on its brewing system.
These relationships aren’t always advertised, but look closely, and you’ll see them. In Asheville, North Carolina, the Biltmore Brewing Company brews its British-style Cedric’s ales at the local Highland Brewing Company, while Erie, Pennsylvania’s Lavery Brewing Company leases equipment at Brewerie, a local brewpub.
Start Me Up
Dann Paquette has been a professional brewer since 1992, tending to kettles and fermentation tanks across the Northeast and England. By 2008, he was ready to be his own boss. So, along with his wife, Martha Holley-Paquette, a scientist at MIT, he decided to launch Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project. While they had boundless ideas and enthusiasm, they had precious little capital.
“The paradox for a brewer is that, if you’ve been brewing for any length of time, you don’t have enough extra money,” Dann says. “Doing it on your own is out of the question.” Luckily, Dann, now based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had colleagues at Westport’s Buzzard’s Bay Brewing, located about 70 miles away. The brewery had extra capacity Pretty Things found a place to hang its shingle. “I treat it like it’s my own brewery,” Dann explains. “I get there five hours before anyone else does.”
Pretty Things’ do-it-all duo Martha Holley-Paquette and Dann Paquette.
Untethered to loan payments, Dann is able to explore whatever catches his fancy. One week, he’ll do a hopped-up Belgian Tripel, the next, a vintage British mild that clocks in at nearly 10 percent ABV. Even his flagship brew, Jack D’Or saison, goes against convention, created with a trio of yeast strains and a quartet of hops. “I have complete creative control,” Dann says. “Having worked for so many breweries for so many years, I can tell you what most did wrong. It’s always the same problem: You are desperate to make your money back quickly. I’ll never take a dime of anyone else’s money.”
Restless Brewers
The term nomadic brewer may be a bit misleading. By and large, most brewers are crafting their IPAs and stouts at a single location. It’s a stable relationship. Copenhagen’s Mikkel Borg Bjergsø doesn’t care for that kind of stability. Since the part-time schoolteacher launched Mikkeller in summer 2007, he’s developed a cult following with his offbeat beers. His Beer Geek Brunch Weasel coffee stout is made with Vietnamese beans that have been fed to and then “harvested” from the droppings of the civet cat (the referenced “weasel”), said to add a “certain something” to the flavor of the beans. Meanwhile, the abundantly bittered 1000 IBUs is enough to make you OD on hops.
Mikkeller’s genius gypsy brewer, Mikkel Borg Bjergsø.
Even more interesting than the beers is where Bjergsø—whose illustrated bearded image graces every bottle—brews them: everywhere. He’ll make ox-strong stouts at Norway’s Nøgne Ø, then craft barrel-aged ales and IPAs at Belgium’s De Proef Brouwerij and collaborate on a tripel at San Diego’s Stone Brewing. Making matters easier, the breweries usually source the ingredients, and an importer picks up Bjergsø’s beer and distributes it. “I get to have all the fun,” he says, “and I don’t have to clean up.”
This brand of international beer making also appeals to Strumke. In addition to brewing in Maryland, his importer arranged for him to create beers at smaller breweries in Belgium. “Brian [Ewing] said, ‘Let Brian brew this batch, and I’ll buy this from you, cash in hand.’” So Strumke headed to a small brewery in Beerzel, Belgium, to make his Of Love & Regret saison, featuring chamomile, dandelion, and lavender, and A Saison Darkly, which incorporates rose hips and hibiscus.
“Belgium is my testing ground,” he says. “It’s definitely a unique endeavor—an American going over to Belgium to create a beer for the American market.” The former DJ also enjoys the itinerant lifestyle. “I was used to traveling for music, and I took that business model and pumped it over to the beer world.”
Too Small for Their Britches
For many brewers, running their fledgling operation as an alternating proprietorship is a great way to get off the ground. However, this relationship can be as tenuous and troubling as it is beneficial.
In 2008, veteran Nebraska brewer Zac Triemert was looking to branch out. He left his head-brewer position at Omaha’s Upstream Brewing to launch the Lucky Bucket Brewing Company. Instead of buying equipment, he hooked up with the SchillingBridge Winery & Microbrewery, located in Pawnee City, just south of Omaha. It seemed like a great fit: “It allowed us to launch our brand,” Triemert says. Nebraskans were soon snapping up his light, aromatic lager. A good thing, right?
“It feels so naïve to look back now, but I originally thought that I would be working at this alternating proprietorship for three years,” Triemert says. “After three months, it became apparent that we were going to run out of capacity.” Triemert scrapped his business plan and began building his own brewery. His team worked quickly, cobbling together used brewing equipment. They weren’t fast enough. “Our contract with the brewery ended a little early, so our production went dry for six weeks,” Triemert recalls.
Such are the pitfalls of working on another brewery’s schedule. If product demand increases, or if there’s a special beer brewed that ties up the fermentation tanks, then the brewery renting space loses out. “You’re leaving your whole company and brand in the hands of someone else’s business,” Triemert says. “If you’re not in control of the equipment, you could really suffer. If I’m running a business, I wouldn’t put an alternating proprietorship as part of my business plan.”
Even if a brewery has excess capacity, that’s not an open invitation. “Most breweries I know wouldn’t let someone come in and start brewing on their equipment,” Pretty Things’ Dann Paquette says. “If someone were to say, ‘I’ve got this business and I’ve been homebrewing for ten years,’ 99.9 percent of the time the answer would be no. The brewery would be like, ‘You’re not touching our $250,000 brewing system.’”
Plus, there’s the public perception that sometimes accompanies this unusual arrangement. “When I started in Denmark four years ago, people looked at me like I wasn’t a brewer because I didn’t have a brewery,” Bjergsø says. “You can be a great clothing designer without owning your own factory.” Now breweries in Denmark are following his lead. Excess capacity is tougher to find.
Would Bjergsø consider starting his own full-scale production brewery? He’d be able to set his own brewing schedule, travel less, perhaps spend more time with his daughter. No, thanks, he says. “I’m opening a bar instead.”
Three to Try
Baby Tree
Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project
ABV: 9%
For an everyday guzzler, I favor Pretty Things’ Jack D’Or saison, which drinks dry and peppery, with a hint of hop bitterness and a mouthfeel as prickly as a cactus. However, when stepping up to the big leagues, I opt for Baby Tree. The dark, strong Belgian brew (the name is inspired by a friend’s tree filled with dirty, discarded baby dolls) is packed with dried plums, creating a velvety, caramelsweet sipper with a character that recalls fruitcake.
Beer Geek Breakfast
Mikkeller
ABV: 7.5%
Rise and shine with a big ol’ glass of Beer Geek Breakfast. What about coffee? Not necessary, thanks to Geek’s infusion of everyone’s favorite morning stimulant. But the grain bill (chocolate malts, oats, roasted barley) gives Geek a full body, mouth-coating creaminess, and an aroma that evokes milk chocolate. You have my permission to start drinking before noon.
Cellar Door American Farmhouse Ale
Stillwater Artisanal Ales
ABV: 6.6%
There’s nothing dark and dreary about Cellar Door, Stillwater’s summery saison. The beer’s backbone is German wheat and pale malts, which makes Cellar as crisp as a pressed shirt and as cloudy as Seattle. The aroma and flavors come from Sterling and Citra hops, which mean tons of tangerine and a grassy character. Oh, and that earthy accent? That’s sage.
Women in Brewing
If you pay a trip to Westport, Massachusetts, where Dann Paquette and Martha Holley-Paquette toil at Pretty Things, you’ll notice little division of labor. While Dann may be head brewer, Martha is just as likely to heft 55-pound grain sacks, mill malt, wash and fill kegs, paint tap handles, and formulate recipes. Oh, and she handles the accounting too.
“I love everything about working in a brewery,” Holley-Paquette says. As a woman, she’s not alone. While brewing may be male dominated, a growing league of ladies has made inroads into the craft-beer industry. The Pink Boots Society—only women in brewing can join—counts more than 500 members, from managers to sales representatives to brewers mashing grain.
This isn’t unusual; this is normal. For thousands of years—stretching from Sumerians to Egyptians, from Vikings to colonial Americans—women were tasked with brewing, mainly at home. But according to the historian Alan Eames, this practice declined around the end of the eighteenth century. Blame money. Men saw they could turn a buck from beer. Industrial breweries blossomed. And, just like that, women were relegated to the sidelines of brewing.
No longer. Women have been vital to the resurgence of American craft beer. In the mid-1980s, Jim Koch’s right hand was Rhonda Kallman, who was instrumental in growing Sam Adams from a fledgling lager to an international brand. In 1987, Carol and Ed Stoudt founded Stoudt’s Brewing Company, with Carol serving as brewmaster. Down in Mississippi, Leslie Henderson brews Lazy Magnolia Brewing Company’s beers, such as Jefferson Stout, made with sweet potatoes. Up in Oregon, Tonya Cornett is Bend Brewing Co.’s brewmaster, cranking out the medal-winning Cherry Baltic Porter and Black Diamond Dark Lager. And the brewer list stretches on, counting Denise Jones (Moylan’s Brewery in Novato, California), Jenny Talley (Utah’s Squatters Pubs & Beers), and Barbara Groom (Lost Coast Brewery in Eureka, California).
But for women, brewing may be just the beginning. Recent studies have shown that when judging beer, women may have more acute senses of smell and taste than men. “Females often are more sensitive about the levels of flavor in beer,” Barry Axcell, SABMiller’s chief brewer, told the Wall Street Journal. Underscoring that, every year SABMiller runs an international competition among its 2,000 beer tasters to uncover the company’s best taste buds. In 2010, three of the six finalists were women, and the winner was Poland’s Joanna Wasilewska.
Lazy Magnolia brewmaster Leslie Henderson and her husband, Mark.
Men, your days may be numbered.
Five to Try
8-Ball Stout
Lost Coast Brewery
ABV: 5.5%
Founded in 1990 by Wendy Pound and Barbara Groom, northern California’s Lost Coast focuses on English-leaning ales such as the Downtown Brown nut brown ale and 8-Ball. Leading with a scent of citric hops and hot cocoa, the oatmeal stout drinks creamy and nimble, highlighting flavors of coffee and bittersweet chocolate.
Hop-Head Imperial IPA
Bend Brewing Co.
ABV: 9.2%
Brewer Tonya Cornett’s imperial IPA is a symphony of excessive IBUs, featuring a nose of tropical fruits, juicy melons, and pine. Unlike so many imperials, HH keeps the sweet malt dialed back; despite the sharp, bitter blast, it still tiptoes across your tongue.
Chasing Tail Golden Ale
Squatters Pubs & Beers
ABV: 4%
Head brewer Jenny Talley’s summertime sipper decants a translucent gold, sporting a malty bouquet that’s a bit earthy and fruity—thank you, U.K. hops. Chasing Tail starts off with light honey sweetness, then goes grassy. It’s a clean and quenching gulper.
Gold Lager
Stoudt’s Brewing Company
ABV: 4.7%
To compete with Czech pilsners, Germans brewers in the 1800s created the hoppier golden lager called Munich Helles (German for bright). Carol Stoudt’s take (one of the country’s best) pours the color of sunshine, with a light body, a morsel of sweet malt, and a hop snap.
Southern Pecan Nut Brown Ale
Lazy Magnolia Brewing Company
ABV: 4.5%
Husband and wife Mark and Leslie Henderson (she’s the brewer) head Lazy Magnolia, Mississippi’s first craft brewery. She focuses on southern ingredients, in this case, roasted pecans, which give the amber-toned ale a smooth, nutty character. It’s an all-afternoon drinker.
Women’s Taste
One day in 2006, Suzanne Woods was tending bar at a Philadelphia Belgian-beer haunt. It was a slow afternoon, so perhaps that’s why Woods, who began her suds-based career as a rep for Boston Beer, paid such close attention to the ladies who strolled in and ordered doppelbocks, a mocha porter, and other specialty brews. Since there were few customers, Woods spent time talking beer with the women, an experience that lit her lightbulb: “It got me excited about the idea of ladies tasting beer together,” says Woods, who soon thereafter founded the women’s beer-tasting club In Pursuit of Ale.
More or less twice a month, Woods (a writer better known as the Beer Lass and a sales rep for Sly Fox Brewing Company) organizes a meeting at a different Philadelphia bar serving at least six craft beers. Each IPA meeting focuses on educating attendees about subjects such as styles of beer (not just bitter IPAs, a common misconception due to the group’s acronym), food-beer pairings, hops, and homebrewing, all accompanied by copious liquid research. Since 2006, IPA has welcomed more than 600 craft-curious women, nannies, personal trainers, and lawyers, experts and neophytes included.
“It’s great to see younger women embrace craft beer,” says Woods, whose club has company countrywide. In San Francisco, there’s Women Who Like Beer, while Boston has Women in Beer; Girls Pint Out features chapters in Indiana, Arizona, Texas, and Illinois. In early 2011, brewer and Pink Boots Society founder Teri Fahrendorf launched Barley’s Angels, a global network of beer-education chapters for women. While these are women-focused gatherings, the opposite sex isn’t always excluded. “I’m just as excited to share a beer with a guy as a girl,” says Woods, whose group hosts four male-female mixers annually, including a killer Christmas shindig. “I’m not a woman who likes to drink beer,” Woods says. “I’m a person who likes to drink beer.”