SUZHOU, CHINA
This Indiana native had brewed 17 or 18 batches of imperial IPAs with his brother-in-law. They’d even dabbled in barley wines and boozy stouts. Selby naturally fantasized about starting a brewery. After all, how hard could it be? The two men raised funds just as the Midwest market yawned wide in the early 2010s.
But the best-laid plans often go awry. Selby’s wife, Darcy, accepted a job in China. In summer 2013, the family packed up their belongings and made the intercontinental leap to Suzhou, near Shanghai. They and their three children spent the next five years living in the Suzhou Industrial Park, a joint partnership between Singapore and China developed to attract Western companies. The Selbys joined a 100,000-strong expat community, many of them thirsting for a well-made pint.
In Selby’s words: “The first thing almost every expat I met said was, ‘You need to start making beer over here. The beer is crap.’ ” Mass-produced lagers, including Tsingtao and Snow, had flooded the Chinese market, plus Belgian imports such as Chimay and Westmalle. “That’s what we were surviving on when we first got over here.”
Selby never intended to work a nine-to-five in China. The former HR specialist wanted to keep the home fires burning, “but I didn’t want to stagnate. That’s why I took on real serious brewing. I thought, Let me tackle this as a research project where I can get as much intellectually developed while I have the freedom and opportunity to do that, then be prepared to come back and have my feet underneath me.”
He launched Zanolious Brewing in his garage, outfitted with convenience store–style refrigerators and a 20-gallon brew system. (The name is made up; he wanted a Z for a logo.) Glass carboys proved prohibitively expensive, so he built his fermentation system around dirt-cheap five-gallon stainless steel kegs. “I figured out I could ferment in corny kegs,” he says of the vessels traditionally used by the soda industry to dispense drinks.
FUN FACT
Snow, a lager sold mainly in China, is the world’s bestselling beer.
His brewing repertoire encompasses a California common, Oktoberfest-ready Märzen, kölsch, and an imperial lager hit with New Zealand hops. An average month features two or three 20-gallon batches. He bottles most of his production, selling beer to expats clandestinely via social media and distributing kegs to a local bar where he has a dedicated line. He doesn’t have a government license, but that’s a bit of a gray area in Suzhou—and much of China—where street vendors often sling noodles and lamb skewers without permits. “It’s the Wild West over here. It’s a developing country to some extent, and this is not on the radar yet.”
Homebrewing in China has its challenges, though, most prominently the language barrier. “I had some welding done for me basically through charades and sharing an iPhone,” says Selby, who is taking Mandarin lessons. He brought brewing parts from America, including a plate chiller and carbon dioxide regulators and gauges . . . only to discover that China threads its equipment differently. “I’d have four different fittings to get from the American thread to what I needed to attach to the Chinese part.”
Sourcing ingredients also poses a struggle in Suzhou, where the local homebrew shop leaves open bags of hops sitting on room-temperature shelves. Word of mouth led Selby to a Shanghai local who imports hops, grains, and yeasts and then sells them from his house. That convenience comes with a 200 to 250 percent markup. Selby mitigates his costs by buying Chinese grains and smuggling. “I probably have homebrew ingredients shipped to a couple dozen different addresses in the U.S., and people that are back for business just fill up a suitcase and bring it back to me.”
The family plans to return to Indiana after Darcy’s contract expires in 2018. There, Selby wants to open a fully licensed brick-and-mortar Zanolious. Until then, he keeps brewing in his garage, inviting neighbors for tastes from his taps and unfiltered criticism. “I’m in an expat community that capably represents the world.” Czechs critique his pilsners, Belgians weigh in on his Westvleteren clone, and Germans assess his Märzen. “The Germans, they are not restrained in their feedback,” he says, laughing.
Each critique helps Selby fine-tune his skillset, putting him closer to a professional career years in the making. “If we were going to start a brewery back in 2011, when I had made something like 17 batches of imperial IPA . . . I was woefully underprepared.”
ADVICE
“Bell’s Hopslam really turned me on. That’s a sit-down experience, especially if you’re a novice and are attracted to hoppy beers. We had that and thought, This is, like, $19 a six-pack. If we make a 50-bottle batch and get it right, we can save lots of money and be proud of ourselves. We were chasing the Hopslam dream. You can get anybody interested in drinking big imperial IPAs, but it’s not a training-wheels beer. You need to cut your teeth on something more petite and graduate people into that style.”