In today's edition of our brewer interview series, we're talking to Jesse Friedman and Damian Fagan, the founders of San Francisco-based Almanac Brewing Company. The pair have gotten great responses to their small-batch beers, each brewed seasonally in collaboration with a local farmer, since launching in the summer of 2010. We asked them about their early brew experiences, pairing their beers with food, and what we can expect from their next batches.

Damian Fagan and Jesse Friedman [Photographs: Almanac Brewing Company]

Name: Jesse Friedman & Damian Fagan
Title: Founders, Almanac Beer Company
Location: San Francisco, CA

How and why did you get into brewing?

Damian: I had the chance to try a few Belgian beers back in the early 90s, when I was in college. Up to that point, beer meant light American lagers to me. I suddenly didn't want to drink them anymore. I haven't since. Fast forward twenty years; I decided to move from homebrewing to professional brewing because although American craft beer has come a long way in those twenty years, I thought there was still something missing.

Jesse: My parents always had good beer around the house when I was a kid in Wisconsin—I specifically remember Sprecher's Special Amber was a favorite, and I remember my dad giving me a taste of an IPA he home-brewed when I was 12 or 13 (at the time I found it undrinkably bitter.) Later in college I became more serious about craft beer, and took an introduction to brewing course at UC Davis with Charlie Bamforth—I was hooked almost immediately.

Tell us about your first brewing experience. Was it a success?

Damian: In 1992 in Lansing, Michigan. I was going to school at Michigan State University—there was a DIY shop in town and I bought a homebrew kit. We brewed an English-style amber ale. It was awful. We called it Death Sauce. Nevertheless, it sparked the fire to keep going with it.

Jesse: My first test batch of homebrew was a disaster. We scorched the grain bag and had to strain out all of the loose, burnt malt kernels. When we bottled, we didn't distribute the priming sugar evenly—half the bottles were flat, half were explosive. It's what you'd call a learning experience. Luckily, the beers we brewed afterwards came out much better.

Why did you decide to expand from homebrewing to a larger operation?

Jesse and Damian: We first met through a San Francisco homebrew club. Jesse picked up a bottle with a gorgeous label and asked what brewery it had come from. Damian explained that he was a professional designer, and he had made the label for the homebrew himself. It was brewer-love at first sight. Jesse was writing the Beer & Nosh blog at the time, but both of us were looking for a way to get into beer professionally. We discussed a bunch of ways to start a business together—a bar, a cafe, a homebrew shop. But it was pretty clear after we started talking that we had to start a brewery; one built on the local, sustainable ideals of the Bay Area food community.

Why did you choose to focus your beers on the seasonal and farm-driven?

Jesse and Damian: It was a natural fit for us. Both of us are big foodies, too—we're at the farmer's markets every week, and Almanac beers are very much a reflection of the beers we brew at home—inspired by those same farmer's markets. We also felt that beer often gets short shrift in restaurants. They'll have a great cocktail program and a really interesting wine list, but only a few perfunctory beer choices. We want beer on the dinner table. If you're eating a great meal made with local ingredients, hand selected by the chef from local farms, shouldn't your beer be made the same way?

We collaborate with many of the same farms that our local restaurants do. We love that you can now go into many restaurants in Northern California and have both a beer and a lamb dish made with fennel from the same local farm.

About that fennel...Tell us about this spring's Biere de Mars.

Jesse and Damian: We're really excited about our new beer. A biere de mars is a classic French farmhouse ale. Ours is light copper in color and brewed with dark Belgian candy sugar (a favorite brewing ingredient of Damian's.) The sugar gives the beer a rich caramel backbone and notes of dried fig and stone fruit.

The fennel we included brings a lot to the beer—it gives it an earthy, herbal aroma, a touch of bitterness and a delicate anise finish. It actually comes off a bit like noble hops, making it a surprise favorite with hoppy beer lovers. Baby fennel has a bit more spiciness than mature fennel. Brewing with a vegetable was definitely a balancing act. It took many rounds of test batches to nail the recipe. Fennel has a very particular flavor, so we wanted to make sure that it was balanced and didn't overwhelm the base beer. We're really happy with how it turned out.

Food pairing is a big part of the Almanac Beer philosophy. What do you pair Biere de Mars with?

Jesse and Damian: This beer is almost savory, with an earthy, herbal character that just loves rich cuts of meat. We like it with lamb, or porchetta rubbed with fennel pollen. Its also killer with grilled asparagus. A light char really brings out the dark caramel notes in the beer.

Tell us about some of your past batches. Your favorites? Customer favorites?

Jesse and Damian: Our first batch was very special. We launched the brewery with a Belgian-style golden ale brewed with blackberries from Sebastopol Berry Farm. We aged the beer in used red wine barrels for 11 months. The result was a wonderfully vinous beer with a great acidic bite and blackberry aroma.

Summer is coming right up. Where are you in the creation process for the next Almanac beer? What can we expect?

Jesse and Damian: First we're working with Blossom Bluff Farms to brew a nectarine-infused Gose. It's a nearly extinct style of tart, German wheat beer brewed with salt. We're using tart, yellow nectarines to give it some bright summer flare, and of course, a touch of San Francisco Bay sea salt.

We're also launching a new line of "California Table Beers." These lower alcohol "everyday" beers will be brewed with the same eye on "farm to bottle" brewing using local agriculture as their foundation. We'll have a Table Saison brewed with ginger, honey, and French oak, and our first hop-forward beer; our Table Pale Ale brewed with mandarins and American oak. The Pale Ale will be dry-hopped with Cascade and Columbus hops. In our test batches, you can't tell where the fruit ends and the hops begin.

Do you plan to expand Almanac beyond the Bay Area? How would that affect your relationships with various local farmers?

Jesse and Damian: We're growing right now, and are tackling those logistics head on. We're building out a long-term brew schedule based around different harvests and expanding our network of farms. We may also make more batches of smaller releases, such as our barrel projects, depending on fruit and farm availability. It's really important to us that was grow in a controlled way, one that lets us keep our ideals intact and allows us to continue providing beer to Northern California. This is our backyard and taking care of our home territory is a priority.

When you're not drinking Almanac, what are some of your favorite beers?

Damian: I pretty much love anything from Moonlight or Highwater. North Coast is such a solid brewery—Pranqster and Old Rasputin are easy favorites. Also a big fan of any of Drake's barrel-aged beers, and love Speakeasy's hoppy brews, like Big Daddy. I've also really enjoyed both beers I've tried from the Pac Brew Labs guys, too.

Jesse: I try to drink local when possible. Some favorites right now include the Alpha Session from Drakes, Highwater's Campfire Stout , a s'mores flavored beer made with real graham crackers. I like the session beers from Dying Vines and the hibiscus infused Saison from Pacific Brewing Laboratories.

About the author: Lauren Sloss is a bicoastal food-lover who is based in San Francisco. Some of her favorite things include The Black Keys, goat gouda, and guacamole. You can follow her on Twitter @laurensloss.

Editor's Note: You might have seen this new brand of hard cider on your local store shelves recently and not realized that Angry Orchard Hard Cider comes from the folks behind the Boston Beer Co., which makes Samuel Adams beers. We recently chatted with Angry Orchard cider maker David Sipes about the brand.

Can you tell us a bit about how Angry Orchard came to be?

Angry Orchard was developed over a span of 15 years, as we explored apples and techniques that would produce a cider of highest quality. Our search for ingredients ultimately led to Europe, where we discovered that the pairing of culinary apples from Italy's Alpine foothills and French bittersweet apples from Normandy. These apples provide the ideal combination of sweetness and tartness for our three styles [of cider.] We learned the value of patience during fermentation, and developed a process that is markedly long, including time for wood aging.

How did you get interested in making cider and how did you learn?

I studied at University of California, Davis, and received a Bachelor of Science in Fermentation Science. When I graduated, I had no idea my degree would take me but it's been an exciting journey. I began working on cider recipes 12 years ago when I joined The Boston Beer Company. So, for over a decade, I've traveled the world looking for the best apples to ferment for cider and experimented with too many recipes to count.

What's your relationship with Boston Beer Co.?

Angry Orchard is a subsidiary of The Boston Beer Company, but a critical decision was made early on for Angry Orchard to have its own identity in every aspect from recipe development through packaging. Angry Orchard takes the same craft approach to cider as Boston Beer does to beer.

What makes the Angry Orchard ciders different?

The variety of apples we blend together to create each of these ciders and the years of experimenting until we perfected our process. Angry Orchard Traditional Dry is reminiscent of English draft ciders, with a mouth-puckering dry body that tastes bittersweet with slightly spicy flavors and a bright apple aroma. Our Crisp Apple, on the other hand, balances natural sweetness with a subtle dryness for a crisp and refreshing taste.

Where do you source your apples, and what kind are being used?

The apples in Angry Orchard are not the apples you would buy in a grocery store. Our cider apples are unique to cider making, just like wine grapes are to wine making. Angry Orchard is a blend of Italian culinary apples from the Alpine foothills with French bittersweet apples from Normandy. Unlike ordinary apples, bittersweet apples are described as "angry" because of the tart and tannic characteristics they impart. Culinary apples produce a fruit with a juicy, ripe apple character that, when combined with the bittersweet apples, results in an exceptional blend that contributes to the complex flavor profile of each cider.

Apple orchards at the base of the Alps in Italy.

How do the apples get from Italy and Normandy to your cidery?

When we set out on this journey we started by [looking for] the best apples for cider making. We kept being led back to Europe's cider apple orchards, where apples have been bred expressly for cider for centuries. Then we considered the best way to capture the juice at its peak to protect the flavor consistently from batch to batch. To do this, we create a juice concentrate by removing the water, creating a stable, remarkably flavorful and fragrant juice that can be used over time.

Do you see Angry Orchard as joining a cider trend that's on the rise?

I don't know if I can answer for the cider category, but judging by Angry Orchard as a barometer, drinkers seem to be excited to explore cider. I think people are looking for a refreshing change, and have developed more sophisticated palates.

Where do you see the cider industry going in the next few years?

In Europe, cider is a large part of the culture and we look forward to the day that it becomes very much a part of American culture as well. As for what's next, it's a little too early to tell but we are experimenting with a variety of yeasts and aging techniques as we look to develop new cider recipes.

Editor's Note: In today's edition of our brewer interview series, we're chatting with Clay Robinson, one of the brewers and co-owners at Indianapolis' Sun King Brewing Co. Clay and brewer/owner Dave Colt opened Sun King in downtown Indy in July 2009. Last year Sun King made serious waves at GABF when they walked away with eight medals, four of which were gold. Take it away, Clay.

Sun King's Clay Robinson and Dave Colt [Photograph: Sun King Brewing]

Full Name: Clay Robinson
Title: Brewer / Owner / Vice President / Public Relations / Marketing / Media Director / Archivist / Equipment Acquisitions / Delivery Guy / Glorified Janitor / Head of Craft Department at Sun King Brewing Co.
Location: Indianapolis, IN

How and why did you get started in brewing?
Both Dave and I started brewing professionally by happenstance. We both worked in the restaurant business and ended up working at brew pubs in Indy—Dave at Circle V, which closed in 1999, and myself at Rock Bottom. We were given the opportunity to work in the brewery and learn the trade and needless to say, we were immediately hooked!

Did you learn to brew before you worked at Rock Bottom?
I learned on the job. Before my first brewing job, I didn't realize that brewing beer was a job that someone like myself could have.

At what point did you and Dave know you wanted to open your own brewery?
While we were working together at the Ram we started a conversation about what we would do if we could open our own brewery. It was a broad-ranging, long-running, theoretical dialogue about what we both loved and hated about previous jobs, what type of culture we would want to create: beers, art, music and more.

Along the way, we were each approached by business people who thought it would be great to open a brewery, but neither of us saw eye to eye with those individuals. We realized that if we helped them open their brewery that in five years we would be right back in the same position, doing something we loved for some jerk we didn't get along with. So we decided to band together and make our vision a reality.

You all turned a lot of heads last year at GABF when you walked away from the awards ceremony with 8 medals. What was that like?
Overwhelming! So many of the things that have happened to us since we started this journey have been amazing, but 8 GABF medals was ridiculous. We gained a lot of street cred that day and we celebrated like it was our job. It a shame that such a wonderful feeling/celebration was followed by such an intense hangover...

Was canning always part of the Sun King plan?
Dave and I both had can collections as teenagers and knew from our years of conversations/planning that if we ever put our beer in a small package it would be cans. We believe that cans are a superior vessel for transporting craft beer because they lock out sunlight and oxygen, plus there are a lot of environmental factors that make them appealing and they can go places that bottles can't (like big oval race tracks where cars go fast and turn left).

Do you all have plans to expand beyond central Indiana?
Every time that we increase capacity the good people of central Indiana drink it up! Our goal was to be Indianapolis' brewery and we are still working hard to claim that title. We're on track to do 16,000 to 18,000 barrels this year without expanding our distribution footprint. Our motto is Fresh•Local•Beer and we feel like beer is best when fresh, so we would like to sell as much as we can as close to home as possible. One day we might have the capacity to service the entire state or even bleed out to surrounding states, but for the time being we plan to keep doing what we're doing.

What else should we look forward to from Sun King?
We are ramping up our barrel aging and sour programs with several thousand square feet dedicated to both.

How would you describe your brewing style?
When Dave and I started brewing together in 2005, we realized that we saw eye to eye on a lot of things, but I don't really know how to describe our style...We are certainly meticulous and we strive to make our house beers as consistent as possible while indulging our creative sides with a constant array of seasonal/specialty beers.

Where do you find inspiration for new beers?
Sometimes they come out of amusing conversations we have around the brewery. Sometimes they come to Dave in a flash of inspiration. Sometimes they are inspired by a new malt, hop, yeast strain, or local ingredient that we want to experiment with.

If you're not drinking Sun King, what's in your glass?
I have a great affinity for canned beers and we trade beers with other canning breweries quite often. Lately I've been drinking Dale's Pale Ale, Deviant Dale's, and Big Swell (not surprisingly, I like the hops).

About the Author: Jonathan Moxey is a Harlem-based homebrewer, BJCP beer judge, and Cicerone Certified Beer Server. He hosts private beer tastings for Tapped Craft Beer Events.

Editor's Note: In today's edition of our brewer interview series, we're chatting with Jeremy Danner, one of the brewers at Boulevard Brewing Co. in Kansas City, MO. They've got some new collaborations and special beers up their sleeve...Take it away, Jeremy.

[Photographs: Boulevard Brewing]

Full name: Jeremy Danner
Title: Brewer, Boulevard Brewing Co.

Tell us a bit about your career path and how you got to Boulevard.
I had a beer epiphany on my 21st birthday at a local brewpub where a friend of mine was the brewer. Before that day, I'd never really tasted craft beer and didn't think I liked beer at all. I discovered that beer could have this amazing depth of flavor and character. From that moment, I was pretty much hooked. I spent the new few years working in bars and restaurants that focused on beer before landing a bartending job at 75th Street Brewery in the Waldo neighorhood of Kansas City.

I spent a lot of time hanging out with the brewers, probably bothering them, but learning as much as I could about the process. One day one of them left for another job and I was asked to train in the brewhouse. From there I spent some time as a brewer's assistant at the Power Plant Brewery and Restaurant in Parkville, Missouri, before finally ending up at Boulevard. I was originally offered a temporary position on the bottling line. The very next day our Brewmaster, Steven Pauwels, called to tell me that he'd had a brewer give notice and wanted to offer me that job instead.

How would you describe your brewing style?
We make about 30 different beers over the course of a year here at Boulevard, so our brewing style is fairly diverse. Our most recognized beer is definitely our Unfiltered Wheat, but we also brew several Belgian style beers including some that are aged in oak whiskey barrels. We believe that beer should be balanced and drinkable. That's not to say that our beers are brewed timidly. We brew beers that have very strong, bright hop characters, but we temper that with a nice malt backbone.

Which beers and breweries inspire you?
The first beer that inspired me was La Folie from New Belgium. I had just a tiny taste from the bottom of a bottle at the end of a beer festival. Before that puckeringly sour beer hit my tongue, I had no idea that beer could taste that way. I thought I'd learned a lot about beer, but that moment really blew me away and made me realize I had so much to learn about beer and brewing.

What is a typical day like at the Boulevard brewery?
I work in the brewhouse producing the wort that will eventually become beer. We run our brewhouse 24 hours a day during the week and have three brewers that cover shifts around the clock. Right now I'm on the afternoon shift so I come in at noon and usually inherit a brewhouse that has 3 or 4 batches of beer currently in process. I spend my day prepping raw materials, monitoring brewhouse operations, and cleaning and sanitizing the tanks into which I'll be brewing. It's very similar to being a line cook in a restaurant that never closes. Our days are long and fast paced, but incredibly rewarding. Other brewers specialize in cellar work: yeast handling and harvesting, fermentation monitoring, and dry hopping among other duties and we have a filtration team that prepares finished beer for packaging.

What are some of the challenges you face in the job?
Since we heat up our brews with steam, the brewhouse can get very hot, up to the high 90s in the peak of the summer. I'm constantly moving bags of grain that weigh 50 pounds or more. One of our brewers once wore a pedometer to work but took it off midway through his day because he really didn't want to know just how far he ran and walked. Folks think we sit around and drink beer all day—that couldn't be farther from the truth. We definitely have a cold beer when we're done working, though.

Can you tell us about Terra Incognita, your collaboration with Sierra Nevada?
At the base of every collaboration is a common respect for the other brewery and definitely a friendship. The Brewers Association asked us to collaborate with Sierra Nevada for their annual event, SAVOR: An American Craft Beer & Food Experience. The focus of this beer was to combine the strengths of both of our breweries into one (hopefully) amazing beer. Sierra Nevada is known for their deft and judicious use of hops and at Boulevard we've become known for our work with wheat, barrel aging, and Brettanomyces. We both brewed beers at our separate facilities, then aged all of it here at Boulevard in Missouri oak barrels. After fermentation was complete with our half of the collaboration, we held a blending session to merge the two beers into one. Finally we added Brettanomyces at packaging to create a beer that has a nice, earthy funk to it.

What other new stuff will we be seeing from Boulevard in the coming year?
Who knows? We continue to experiment and develop new beers all the time. We have an upcoming collaboration with Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project based out of Massachusetts. We became friends at a beer festival and over some beers later that night decided we should make a beer together. We've taken a somewhat unexpected route and are brewing a unique style.

What's next for craft beer, overall? Where do you see the industry heading?
I see a trend towards breweries making more sessionable, easy drinking beers. I don't think the "extreme brewers" have found their outer limits by any means, but I'm really seeing a recent shift to beers that have big, bright flavor, but with fairly low alcohol by volume. We always joke that we'd drink beer even if it didn't have alcohol, but the buzz sure is a nice side effect. People who are true beer lovers are beginning to seek out beers that they can have more than a couple pints of. I dig the crazy, gnarly hoppy barleywines, but sometimes it's really nice to sit and drink a beer that doesn't require much thought or attention.

Editor's Note: In today's edition of our brewer interview series, we're checking in with Wayne Wambles of Cigar City Brewing in Tampa, Florida. He has some exciting new beers and collaborations in the works, so let's join him for a pint.

[Photos: Cigar City]

Full name: Wayne Wambles
Title: Head Brewer, Cigar City Brewing

Tell us a bit about your career path and how you got to Cigar City.

I worked in the food service industry for many years. I started when I was 15 or 16 years old and worked just about every position in a restaurant, including bartender and wait staff. I became fascinated with cooking over time and that was my first step towards brewing.

I realized that brewing was cooking with chemistry and that every step of the process determines the final outcome. I was intrigued with it and started homebrewing, becoming quickly obsessed with it. Over time, I began to accumulate ribbons from entering and winning local and regional competitions.

There was a brewpub that was about 30 miles away from my home town. With the aid of another commercial brewer, I was able to apprentice under the brewer there until I took the helm after about six months. Another six months passes and I get a call from my mentor. He is opening up a chain of brewpubs in the Southeast and is looking for brewing staff. I take the job and work for this chain (Buckhead Brewery & Grill) for 5.5 years, ultimately leaving the company to move back home and work on another startup there. I get the doors to the startup brewery open and have beer flowing, but it is short lived.

I decide that I have to keep my resume up to date and want to continue to work in the industry that I love. Fortunately, Foothills Brewing in Winston-Salem, North Carolina hires me as a brewer. I worked there for about 15 months until I came across a job post for the head brewing position at Cigar City Brewing. I reported to work for the first time on March 24, 2008, and never looked back.

How would you describe your brewing style?

An infusion of culinary with zymurgy. Taking food ideas and turning them into liquid. That approach is very challenging and extremely entertaining.

I also enjoy making traditional styles and this can be observed in the way that we approach most of our lagers. I approach ales differently and usually push the limits of many ale styles that we create. Higher alcohol, more hops, and more complex malt character are just a few examples of the way that I tend to approach ales. No matter how far I'm pushing the limits, I strive to achieve balance as well.

What is a typical day like at the Cigar City brewery?

Multiple things going on at once in the midst of expansion. It's controlled chaos on most days, but sometimes it gets a little out of hand. There are times in the past when I have wondered if it could get much worse and then something else in the brewery would break. But overall, it's great. I love it. I'm also blessed to have such a great staff. Without all my staff doing their job so well, we wouldn't be able to execute many of the beers that we produce.

Can you tell us about your new Cucumber Saison? How is it made?

It is a sessionable Saison at 4.5%ABV that has a refreshing cucumber character in the aroma and flavor. It will be around for a short period of time as a Summer seasonal this year. We hop it with Citra and Sorachi Ace. We make it by infusing cucumber essence into a low gravity Saison. Essence works incredibly well since it contains no alcohol. It is pure distillate from real cucumbers and it adds a wonderful crispness to the beer.

What other new beers will we be seeing from Cigar City in the coming year?

There are several collaborations that we are in the process of putting together. Mikeller, B Nektar, Blue Jacket, and Funky Buddha are a few of the players. I will leave this simply as a teaser...

Jean Ribault will be draft only and should be coming out soon. It is a French Pale ale with Calypso and Nelson Sauvin hops that is fermented with a French Saison yeast.

We have restructured our seasonal offerings. Some of the releases have been moved to different parts of the year with some of our year rounds transforming into seasonals. The new 110K is scheduled for production in early May. We will brew a one of a kind Humidor series this year.

There is a great deal of exclusive and small scale barrel aged beer that we will leak into the market over the course of the year. I don't want to get into too much detail. All I can really give you is the skeleton right now. I prefer to save the epidermis until a later date but it will be a pleasant surprise...

What beers and breweries inspire you?

Short's Brewing for their culinary-oriented beers. Firestone Walker is just great across the board but I also enjoy their barrel aged beers specifically. Founders makes very solid beers. I don't think that I have ever had a mediocre bottle of beer from Founders. Hill Farmstead with Shaun Hill at the mast is making great beers. He has moved quickly on to the beer geek radar and that is well deserved.

How would you describe the craft beer scene in Florida? Has it changed in recent years?

The Florida beer scene has definitely changed in the last few years. Florida breweries have stepped up the quality of their craft beer. We make beer on a different scale than we did anytime prior to 2010 or so. In addition to that, there are so many craft breweries either opening or scheduled to open soon in Florida.

What's next for craft beer, overall? Where do you see the industry heading?

I am worried that the industry won't be able to support all of the new craft breweries that are in process of opening or recently opened. The issue isn't that there aren't enough consumers of beer or demand but rather raw material supply. We are already allocating for hops years in advance in order to make sure that we can continue to produce our core brands. Word on the street is that the same might happen soon with grain supply.

I think that an even better industry to get involved in right now would be barley (or any other grain used in the manufacture of beer) farming or hop growing. That would insure a concrete pipeline over time as the craft brewing segment continues to exponentially expand. As long as we have a concrete raw material pipeline, the possibilities for craft beer are unlimited and stretch the boundaries of the imagination with their future potential.

Editor's Note: In this series, we talk beer with brewers and brewery owners from around the country. This week, we're happy to welcome Justin McCarthy, the head brewer at Magic Hat.

[Photos: Magic Hat]

Name: Justin McCarthy
Location: South Burlington, VT
Occupation: Head Brewer, Magic Hat Brewing Company

How did you get interested in brewing? Tell us a bit about your career path.

I never had any aspiration to be a brewer or even work with beer. I started at Magic Hat at the ripe old age of 19. I was simply looking for employment—I had just moved to Burlington and was actively seeking a paycheck.

I had applied to many different businesses, from restaurants to a flower shop. I returned home one afternoon and was given a message from my roommate that "John at Magic Hat called and asked me to come in for an interview." I wrote down the address and planned on an interview the following morning. The address was different than where I knew the brewery to be but I figured the offices must be off site. After arriving at the interview, I began filling out paperwork. Something seemed wrong so I asked the gentleman at the front desk about the position for which I was applying.

He responded by explaining they sold vacuums door to door.

I then went to the brewery where I asked for John. John came out of the back and explained that he never called me, but that he did in fact have an opening. He showed me the bottling line where the crew was hand packing cases and loading bottles. I confirmed that I could handle the job and lo and behold my brewing career began—by accident.

Magic Hat has always been filled with great people who wanted to share their knowledge and passion for beer. I was able to ask questions and my interest was piqued. I realized that beer was not only fun for obvious reasons, but also because of the science and history behind it. After seeing the brewery in action, I was hooked. It helped that the brewery was a small close knit group that liked to have fun and enjoy life.

I spent two years working on the bottling line which culminated in learning to operate the filler and labeler. I volunteered for other jobs in the brewery like washing kegs. Eventually, it translated into one shift a week in the fermentation room. After two years, I transitioned full time to the cellar, and I was also trained to operate the DE (diatomaceous earth) filter and to transfer beer.

Shortly after joining the brew staff, I was given the ultimate opportunity: to learn to brew. I spent the next year brewing on various shifts as well as working in the cellar. At this point, I was 23 and I had an opportunity to travel cross country in a used RV with some good friends. I spent the next year and a half traveling and ski bumming in Montana. After a winter in Montana, we set out for Oregon where I secured a job at Rogue Ales.

I spent the following 6 months operating their bottling line as well as the DE filter. But I missed Vermont and decided to return. Upon my return, I would stop by the brewery from time to time to say hello and share some beers. The following spring I received a call to swing by the brewery; they had to ask me something. I stopped by to discover they wanted to offer me my job back. It didn't take too much time to say yes. In 2009, I was promoted to lead brewer and became responsible for day to day brew house operations. In the fall of 2010, I was promoted to head brewer and became responsible for all aspects of the brewing process.

How has the beer industry changed since you started out?

What I have seen is an increased attention to quality. In the mid to late 1990s many people were making beer, but it wasn't all good. This turned off many potential consumers. Today [high quality] is absolutely necessary because the consumer is much more beer educated. More and more people are developing a palate and a passion for better beer. Having an educated customer base allows a brewer to experiment in ways that isn't possible if the consumer doesn't "get it."

One of the more interesting changes has more to do with people's tastes and palates. In the early 2000s, it seemed that beers pushed the limit at 50 to 60 IBUs. Anything above that was seen and thought of as almost undrinkable. Today a 50 IBU beer is considered an easygoing pale ale. This can be troublesome at times because people will often overlook a well made beer with less shock value for the 1000 IBU monster of a beer. Don't get me wrong, I love my IPAs, but some of the best beers are on the tamer side of the analytical spectrum.

From a business perspective, the changes to the raw material markets create a much different environment for brewers. The hop "crisis" several years ago showed us that we needed a more sustainable model for our agricultural products. Contracts needed to be signed and arranged prior to growing seasons to ensure everyone got a fair shake from a price perspective. This situation is also being seen in the barley markets. As more land is used for crops that produce larger yields and higher margins, brewers and malt houses must provide assurances to farmers that their crops will provide for their families and farms.

Who are your beer heroes?

Michael Jackson: I watched his Beer Hunter video series shortly after starting at Magic Hat. His knowledge of world breweries was beyond comparison.

Fritz Maytag: I was impressed by his desire to save this little brewery because he liked to drink the beer. The story of Anchor Christmas Ale as presented by Michael Jackson and Fritz Maytag will inspire anyone to brew a batch of beer.

Greg Noonan: I didn't know Greg personally, but he made it possible for all of us who brew beer in Vermont. Without his work, Vermont wouldn't be able to boast the most breweries per capita. Greg's book New Brewing Lager Beer was the first brewing book I ever read. Heady stuff for a novice brewer with no true science background other than high school chemistry and a couple of college classes.

Todd Haire: He was brewmaster at Magic Hat for many years. I owe him a lot for teaching me about beer.

What is a regular day like for you at Magic Hat?

Upon arrival at work, I will check my e-mail, then make the rounds. I will check in with the brewer on shift to see how the overnight brews went and receive an update on the schedule. At this point, I may help troubleshoot an issue or I will continue on to the fermentation room. Here I am monitoring the progress of our fermentation and check to see which tanks are ready for transfer or cooling. Then I hit the cellar for a schedule check. I will also take a look at the previous night's packaging and filtering numbers to be sure we are accomplishing our schedule goals. This is also a good time to visit with people and shoot the breeze a bit.

I'll also wander around the cellar to determine what may need cleaning or fixing. This may also be a time to sample the previous night's filter run or the current day's bottles. After making the rounds, i usually head back to the computer for a bit before our 9 a.m. check in.

At 9, the brewery manager will run down the day's priorities as well as discuss any issues that we can foresee. From there, I may check inventory numbers, payroll, or the newest recipe in development. I will review quality checks imputed by our lab. I may also use this time to research new beer ideas or raw materials. It can also be spent fulfilling requests from the marketing and sales team for information on our beers.

At 11 a.m., I head to our taste panel where we sample our brewing water as well as all packaged product from the most recent packaging runs. We will also taste aged product to determine its longevity. Then I make a round through the cellar to check in on how the day is progressing. After lunch, I can be found in a meeting, on a conference call, or working at my computer or on the floor. Each day consists of similar routines, but each day presents its own challenges.

Can you tell us a little about the Humdinger series and 'Over the Pils'?

The Humdinger Series is a way for us as brewers to experiment with some bigger styles, like an imperial pilsner. The idea behind Over the Pils was to create a bigger, bolder, stronger version of the traditional pilsner style beers of Germany and the Czech Republic. We wanted it to possess all the great qualities of this fantastic style but with a little more oomph!

Pilsners are known for their clean malt body and smooth crisp finish with the perfect amount of hops to be flavorful and balanced. We accomplished this in Over the Pils by utilizing pilsner malt and a combination of Apollo, Brewer's Gold and Crystal hops. The pilsner malt provides the smooth malty mouthfeel and just a hint of sweetness. The blend of hops lends floral aromas and flavors to this beer. The beer was fermented very slowly at cold temperatures to ensure a smooth, clean and crisp flavor.

What do you drink when you're not drinking Magic Hat?

Every beer has a time and a place. I enjoy Sierra Nevada beer especially the Torpedo, the Pale Ale and Celebration. Victory Fest Beer is one of the best beers in the world. Allagash is making some great beers right now. Cantillon speaks for itself. I have been enjoying Vermont Pub and Brewery's experimental beers over the past year. Gabe Fletcher at Anchorage Brewing is creating some wonderful barrel aged beers. Pretty much anything brewed in Vermont. The beer scene in Vermont is exploding with tons of great beers made right here.

The Lost Abbey is giving their Saints and Sinners ethos a rock star spin. Each month this year, the brewery is releasing a new beer that calls back on the imagery of heaven and hell in classic rock anthems. The only catch: if you want to try the beers, you have to go to the brewery. Every bottle sold is opened and poured for you in the tasting room.

My wife and I happened to be in California visiting friends when they released Track #2, so we braved President's Day weekend traffic and drove down to the brewery. (There's not much quite as hard rock as sitting in bumper-to-bumper Southern California traffic in a Prius, right?)

For Track #2, inspired by Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," the brewers dug into their back catalog of barrels and blended Bourbon barrel-aged versions of The Angel's Share and Cuvee de Tomme along with their spontaneously fermented Project X and threw in a load of peaches and sour cherries for good measure. The resulting murky, dark mahogany concoction clocked in at 12.5% and came on strong with bourbon barrel and cherry in the aroma. Dark, vinous fruit followed along with vanilla and a vinegar note. Sweet peach and caramel backed up a balanced sourness. It ended a bit leathery, with a well-masked level of alcohol. Overall, it was a complex beer worthy of its namesake.

Last Saturday Lost Abbey released Track #3. Inspired by the AC/DC screamer "Hell's Bells," Track #3 is a pale sour blend that includes Phunky Duck, the base beer for the brewery's award-winning Duck-Duck-Gooze.

Tomme Arthur, co-founder and director of brewery operations at Lost Abbey & Port Brewing, took time earlier this month to give us the back story on their Ultimate Box Set.

How'd you come up with the idea for the Ultimate Box Set?

Over the summer of 2011, I found myself driving home with the windows rolled down and stereo cranked. The iPod was set to shuffle a bunch of rock anthems. It hit me that these songs were perfect vehicles for inspiration and the thematic concerns of our brewery. If you've ever seen VH1 Behind the Music, you know that those guys partied their asses off and in many ways empowered a lifestyle that was WAY more Sinner then Saint. So it made sense to me to use their music as inspiration for beers. In keeping with the notion of music, the release really tied into a box set as a way of showcasing classic riffs and new spins on things we've done over the years.

When did you start creating these beers?

I think last August I sat down with Mike Rodriguez, our head brewer, and laid out the road map for how we could attack this. There were already many experimental barrels in the programs so it was easy to look into the crystal ball and imagine some things going on. We were getting ready to put some Cabernet Sauvignon grapes in barrels, so that became Track #1.

What came first, the ideas for the beers or their matching songs?

The list of 12 songs was developed and then some of the beers directly corresponded to the music and others are just part of the set. For example, we'll have a beer later this fall inspired by "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." This will be a barleywine aged in bourbon barrels with peaches and black tea.

Have you planned out all of the beers in the set, or are some still in development?

Loosely, I think we have defined about 8 to 9 of the total beers. We have a running list of things in our head that we "can" imagine doing. It really all depends on how the barrels taste and whisper to us. We are set through Track #6 at this point and we're moving to secure the beers for 7 through 9, which is always where we knew there was some opportunity to monkey around even more.

The Track #2 blend included a wild beer called Project X, can you tell us a little more about that?

Project X barrels are spontaneously fermented barrels, meaning that we have not added any cultures to the barrels. It's a bit of wild card in terms of what we get. For Track #2 the blend needed some acid to bring out the fruit notes and keep the beer from being too one dimensional I think the addition of the X factor was justly needed and rewarding in the beer.

Are all of the Box Set Tracks going to be barrel-aged beers with Brett?

The early tracks will all feature wild yeasts and bugs. We felt they would age nicely as the summer went on and not deviate from the original monthly tastings that our consumers are getting a glimpse at each month. Later in the sequence, we'll start to see some non-bugged barrels and blends appear as well.

What's the plan once all 12 Tracks have been released?

There will be a release day in the fall. We haven't confirmed that date yet, but we expect a great turnout. We will be releasing 450 complete sets and, for the first time, the consumer will have a chance to open a bottle of these beers away from our brewery. It's a very long process this year that involves lotteries each quarter based upon consumption at the brewery during each of the releases. Needless to say, we anticipate the box sets to be in high demand when they are finally unleashed.

What else do you have in the pipeline? What can we look forward to this year from Lost Abbey?

Red Poppy is on the bottling line today. We expect 1,200 cases of this year's batch with only a smattering of draft for Southern California. We acquired some cognac barrels last fall and have a new beer slumbering in these as well with high hopes for sure. Framboise de Amorosa and Hop 15 make their comeback along with Hot Rocks in April. It's a busy time of year around here for sure.

About the Author: Jonathan Moxey is a Harlem-based homebrewer, BJCP beer judge, and Cicerone Certified Beer Server. He hosts private beer tastings for Tapped Craft Beer Events.

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[Photographs: Ezra Johnson-Greenough]

You may have heard of oyster stout, but do you know anyone brewing other beers with the liquor from oysters? Jason McAdam of Burnside Brewing Company recently released an oyster-enhanced strong ale. We caught up with him to get the whole story on his Neptune's Wrath and the brewery in general.

Name: Jason McAdam
Location: Portland, Oregon
Occupation: Brewer/Owner, Burnside Brewing Company

How did you get interested in beer and how did you learn to brew? Have you had any great beer mentors?

When I was about 18, one of my long time buddies had an older brother who was cooler than all of us and worked at Portland Brewing. That first taste of MacTarnahans sealed the deal. Of course, just like the majority of professional brewers, I needed to replicate what I was experiencing so I picked up homebrewing, and after some serious practice with my crew we started to make some pretty tasty beer. As for great beer mentors, John Richen and Torin Sandoval [of McMenamins] were basically the building blocks of my career as a professional brewer.

Tell us a bit of the story of Burnside Brewing.

Basically, three guys with three different skill sets and the love for good beer and food got together. The idea was to create well balanced beer that pairs well with all types of foods and also to make a variety of innovative food dishes that pair up perfectly with all types of beer.

How would you describe your brewing style?

The way I approach making beer is to ask: 1) Has it been done yet? and 2) Can it be done? With classic beer styles I generally try to create outside the style guidelines.

What inspires your beer recipes?

Food and spices and the combinations I've experienced, along with existing and extinct beer styles.

You recently released Neptune's Wrath, a strong ale brewed with 18 gallons of Hama Hama oyster liquor and 4 pounds of lemon peel. Can you tell us a little bit more about the brewing process for this beer and how this beer came about?

We were invited to an oyster festival at EaT: An Oyster Bar along with three other breweries who were working on brewing oyster stouts. So instead of adding another oyster stout, we came up with a recipe based on an oyster shooter that would showcase the brininess of the oyster and the tartness of the lemon without the battle of the roast or malt that a stout brings.

We added the oyster liquor and lemon peel ten minutes before shutting the kettle off. Half of this beer was aged in pinot noir barrels for six months, then blended back with the unaged version to balance the wood and wine notes from the barrel aged half.

What's your favorite food and beer pairing?

Ba m' Ba 33 Export with Vietnamese food, Harar with Ethiopian, Red Stripe with Caribbean, Negro Modelo with Mexican. Get my drift?

How would you describe the craft beer scene in Portland right now? What has changed over the last decade or so?

The Portland craft beer scene is always growing and evolving and with all the brewers and breweries in this city, it's pushing standard brewing techniques so each of us can find our home here. Over the last decade the brewing trends are definitely leaning into innovative styles and breweries pushing the style guideline parameters. The Pacific Northwest is creating its own style of beer making for sure.

What do you drink when you're not drinking Burnside beers?

Whatever is sitting in front of me at the time :0

[Photos: Maui Brewing Co.]

Garrett Marrero has a good thing going at Maui Brewing Co. We're wild about Maui's Big Swell IPA and the deliciously dessert-appropriate Coconut Porter. Today, we welcome Garrett for a chat about brewing beer in paradise.

Who: Garrett Marrero, Owner, Maui Brewing Co.
Where: Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii

How did you get started in the beer industry, and why did you choose to open a brewery on Maui?

Pretty simple story—I loved good beer. I was an investment consultant in California, and came to Maui on a vacation and fell in love with the spirit of the island. From there it was figuring out how to be here without sacrificing my drive and need to create. Being that there was nothing like Maui Brewing Co. in the state, we saw an opportunity. Growing up, microbrews were always in the house, we weren't a BMC family. So being exposed to good beer early on definitely created my thirst for quality.

What are some of the challenges of brewing in such a remote location?

Shipping. With the fuel prices constantly on the rise, it gets very expensive. Utilities, insurance, labor, and taxes are all substantially higher than anywhere else besides maybe Alaska. Our friends at Alaskan and other great Alaska breweries can echo these same pains.

Is there a homebrewing scene in Hawaii?

Yes, a fairly limited one. We started selling homebrew supplies about a year ago to encourage homebrewing on Maui. We sell just above cost, basically cost plus a small margin to cover the vacuum seal bags and labor to package it all. Homebrewing really gives birth to a lot of the innovation and creativity in craft beer. We want the public to be involved so they can learn about what beer is and what beer can be.

Why did you choose cans instead of bottles?

Several reasons. A big one is that we believe that the can is a better vessel to protect the beverage. It's not that canned beer is automatically better—the bottle, can, or keg, are merely vessels to transport the beverage. A poorly brewed beer is not going to get better by being in any one of those packages. But a can will protect high-quality beers better than a bottle. A can helps to protect a beer from light and oxygen, thereby keeping a beer fresher than in bottles.

We also are able to source cans locally, there is a Ball plant here in Hawaii which produces all of our cans. As we are big supporters of buying local and supporting local labor this is an important factor.

Do you think people still associate cans with cheap mass-produced lager? Or has that changed now that there's so much good craft beer in cans?

It hasn't changed completely yet, but it is starting to. It really is a big effort for us and other canning craft brewers to educate the population. The fact remains that for quite a long time good beer was in bottles and "junk" (mass-produced fizzy yellow) beer was in cans as well as bottles and every other package the large domestics would convince the market they "had to have".

It's a pretty simple educational process, when it comes down to convincing someone its easy. Open a can, pour it in a glass and sample them on the beers. I think for this reason we focus a great deal on tastings as a method of promotion. We don't buy advertising, we let the consumers taste.

Your beers are distributed in Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Colorado, Nevada, and Texas, plus Japan, Scotland, and Denmark. Any plans to expand your reach further?

Yes, absolutely. We plan to add two more states this year as well as at least one more international market. The sky is the limit at this point—we are still small relative to the market. We are also working on an east coast hub for distribution, not for brewing, so we can send our beer to a centralized facility and reach out on a limited basis to the east coast markets. We don¹t plan to be enormous but are looking for good distribution coverage in markets that are a good fit for us.

What do you drink when you're not drinking Maui Brewing Co beers? What other breweries do you find inspirational?

Too many to list. I'd say Pizza Port, Allagash, Dogfish, Avery, Oskar Blues, HUB, the Bruery. That's a hard question for anyone in the biz I would think. Suffice it to say I have a great deal of fun in my research!

Meet More Craft Brewers

Mark Carpenter, Anchor Brewing »
Tomme Arthur, Port Brewing & Lost Abbey »
Matthew Brynildson, Firestone Walker »
Jim Koch, Samuel Adams »
Dave Yarrington, Smuttynose Brewing »
Todd Haug, Surly »

[Photograph: Flying Dog Brewery]

I was first introduced to Flying Dog Brewery when they rolled out Gonzo Imperial Porter, their tribute to the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. The attitude and their beer—especially their Raging Bitch Belgian IPA, and Dog Schwarz, their Schwarzbier/Rauchbier hybrid—has kept me a fan ever since. I'm excited to have Brewmaster Matt Brophy take some time to tell us about what Flying Dog has been working on lately, the brewery's history with the Good Doctor and artist Ralph Steadman, and their recent fight for freedom of expression.

Who: Matt Brophy
What: Brewmaster and COO, Flying Dog Brewery
Where: Frederick, Maryland

How did you get into brewing? How did you learn?

I discovered homebrewing as a teenager and was captivated by the combination of art, science, and agriculture that is the craft of brewing.

What was your brewing experience before you started at Flying Dog?

I had worked at a small New Jersey brewery before moving to Colorado, working at Great Divide for five years.

Was there one beer that turned you on to craft beer?
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

What's in your glass if you're not drinking Flying Dog?

Something hoppy or something Belgian. Maybe Avery IPA or Westmalle Tripel.

How would you describe your brewing style?

Adventurous but not ridiculous.

Where do you look for inspiration when you're creating a new recipe?

Sampling other brewers' beers is a great source of inspiration when crafting a new recipe. In some cases the beer I intend to create is unlike any other. In such a case I will create a mental picture of the beer's profile and work backwards, putting the raw materials and process together to achieve the intended goal.

Ralph Steadman's art has made Flying Dog's labels some of the most recognizable packaging in American beer. What's the brewery's relationship with Ralph?

Ralph Steadman is a dear friend of Flying Dog brewery. George Stranahan, our founder and owner, lived in Woody Creek, Colo., for years on the Flying Dog Ranch. Adjacent to the ranch he owned a separate farm, the Owl Farm. The Owl Farm would become Hunter S. Thompson's home and "Gonzo Ground-Zero" after George invited Hunter to live on the farm. Over the years, Ralph would visit Woody Creek, and shortly after Flying Dog Brewery was founded it became the natural order of things for Ralph to draw our labels.

Tell us a bit about Backyard Ale, the smoked amber ale Flying Dog created in collaboration with Chef Bryan Voltaggio and his restaurant, Volt. How did you come to work with Bryan?

We thought the idea of working with a chef to come up with a beer recipe would be interesting on so many levels. Bryan is a good friend of the brewery, and of course we love his restaurant. It came up in conversation as something we both thought would be cool, so we went for it. The purpose of a collaboration is to learn new insights or ideas from whoever you are working with, and I think Bryan and I both learned a lot throughout the process.

What's your favorite food to pair with Flying Dog beer?

Ridiculously hard question. Gonzo and chocolate? Snake Dog and spicy Indian food? Road Dog and a portobello sandwich? This question truly depends on the time of year, what you're up to, and what you feel like getting into.

Any new releases coming up in The Wild Dog series?

The Wild Dog series serves as a developmental portfolio...Wild Dog represents to us the ability to have fun crafting new beer as well as offer our kick ass fans something new and different to taste. Some of the small batch beers that you will see rolling out of our brewery in the near future include the Backyard Ale collaboration with Bryan Voltaggio we discussed earlier, the continuation of our Imperial IPA series that has thus far been a single-hop beer using El Dorado, as well as our newest batch of Simcoe.

Beyond that we'll keep rocking things like Barrel Aged Gonzo, locally roasted Coffee Stout, Farmhouse IPA, and Dog Schwarz to name a quick few of the recent releases. It is worth noting that both Double Dog and Raging Bitch came up through the Wild Dog Series "circuit."

Flying Dog sued the Michigan Liquor Control Commission after the commission banned the sale of "Raging Bitch" in the state. What's the response been from the craft beer community?

The craft beer community, as well as the wider community of journalists worldwide have been incredibly supportive of Flying Dog challenging a system that is wrongly set in place to control the free expression of ideas. We find that it's a simple and basic constitutional and freedom of expression issue and it seems the community as a whole agrees.

[Photo: Anchor Brewing]

San Francisco's Anchor Brewing was one of the pioneers of the modern microbrewery movement. We're thrilled to welcome Anchor's longtime brewmaster, Mark Carpenter, to Serious Eats for a chat about Anchor's history and future, the challenges of being a brewmaster, and the super-secret Christmas Ale recipe.

How did you learn to brew? When did you know you wanted to brew professionally?

I started at Anchor in 1971, and there were only five people working at the brewery at the time. We weren't selling much beer, maybe 1000 barrels the first year. We were brewing every other week, and it was the perfect environment for learning. Fritz Maytag sent us to brewing school. You know, as far as when I figured out that I wanted to brew professionally—it was 1971...The late sixties was an amazing time to be in San Francisco, with the antiwar scene and the music scene, and many people were looking for a lifestyle change. I guess that had its affect on me. I was working for a phone company and I wasn't happy. I took a tour of Anchor, and then took a temporary job; now it's my 40th anniversary with the brewery. Time flies and it feels like days.

What is your day-to-day life like at the brewery?

Around 6 am, I get in and start up the filtering for the day. I check out everything that's going on in the brewery, and that wakes me up a bit, and then other people take over everything. By 7 am, I'm figuring out if everything is working, making sure a few ongoing projects are going well, and then, well, I just wait for things to go wrong. As a brewmaster, you go to what's needed; you'll never be bored. Little things come up; somebody has to leave, the bottles that were supposed to come haven't arrived. Or sometimes, infrequently, it's something bigger; a breakdown in the crowning machine means a more major setback.

What's the most exciting part about brewing at Anchor?

The most exciting thing was working for Fritz Maytag. He recently sold the company and retired, but I'm still here. When I started at Anchor, we only made Anchor Steam. Fritz was so creative, he wanted to be known for more. So he thought a lot about what to do next; what other beers to make. First, there was Anchor Porter. There weren't really other porters in the US at that time. Then we created Liberty Ale, which was the first dry hopped pale ale; probably one of the most widely copied beers in the country. That whole Northern California style of beer, with Cascade hops, started with Liberty.

Then we added the Old Foghorn barleywine, and the summer wheat beer. Then Fritz wanted to get into distilling, so in the 90s we started with gin and whiskey. Of course, there were projects that never really went anywhere. We looked into making hard cider years ago, but it just wasn't for us.

What are the biggest challenges in the job?

One of the big challenges is to maintain creativity after all these years; it falls on me to keep the ideas coming. I have a great crew to help; but it's tricky to come up with ideas for beers that aren't just unusual, but also really good. It wouldn't be hard to come up with a trendy high alcohol and high hop beer, but I'm really aiming for a beer you can enjoy a 20-ounce pint of, like in England. You can't enjoy the quantity you want with a really high alcohol beer.

We've just released Brekle's Brown in California. It really hits the spot; it's gotten a really good reaction here. It's 6% ABV, and has a very interesting citrusy hop aroma from Citra hops.

Anchor sold last year to Tony Foglio and Keith Greggor. So far, what has that meant for company?

It's been pretty seamless; we're focused on making our beer and staying creative. We have an all new accounting system, and so the office manager Linda Rowe is working really hard on that, and deserves a lot of credit. The new owners were happy with my idea of the Brekles Brown, so we can pretty much continue doing what we think will work.

Can we anticipate any new brews from the Anchor crew in the coming year? Will the Brekles make it out to the East Coast?

The Brekles is draft only, and only in Northern California. We did about 300 barrels of it. But that doesn't mean that other new brews will be so small. If a new beer is really popular, we might move it into a bottle form.

What's your favorite beer that you brew at Anchor?

That's easy for me to answer. When I came here, we only made Steam beer. And it's still about 80% of the beer that I drink.

Tell us a bit about the brewing of Anchor's annual Christmas ale. How much does the recipe actually change each year?

The Christmas beer started in 1975 as a pale ale. We did a special brew for the bicentennial of Paul Revere's ride, called Liberty Ale. Christmas 1975 through '83 saw the evolution of Liberty Ale, but then we decided it was great, and we wanted to brew that recipe full time, not as a seasonal any more.

So then we made a Christmas ale based on a brown ale, which evolved, and then we moved toward more of a Wassail model. We didn't necessarily think we'd keep it going, but we kept changing it, removing spices, putting in spices. We've tried to see it as an evolution process; we're not just changing the Christmas Ale for change's sake. We want the new additions and the revisions to add something. Over the years, it's become really wonderful, and much more drinkable. I usually sit down with my first bottle at Thanksgiving, and that's so nice.

It's fun to keep the recipe secret. Everyone wants to guess; and I can't confirm or deny what's in it, except that it has never contained allspice. Everyone who works in the brewery; even part time employees or students, get to know what's in it. It's not a secret from them. But we always tell them, having the secret makes it more fun, and ask them not to reveal it (under pain of death.) The secret's not out; you rarely see someone get it right on the internet.

How do you define "craft beer"? What do you think is the future of American beer?

Oh, for me, it's what you see at Anchor. When I look at a brewery, I hope to see a traditional copper brewhouse and hands-on brewing. Craft beer is using whole hop flowers. It's handmade beer, made by people who are really involved in lending their best effort and best ideas to the beer.

There will always be light beers; there's a huge market for that, and the macro breweries have great success with light beers. But the craft segment for all other beers is going to keep growing. Look at what's happened in coffee; people just got used to fancier coffee and now demand it everywhere they go. The taste for real beer is growing; and that taste cannot be satisfied by industrial yellow beer. People are getting used to flavorful beer, and they won't go back. Still, even if those big industrial breweries lost only a tiny percentage of their sales, that would be a huge number of bottles for us.

We've been fans of Firestone Walker beers for a long time now, from their easy-drinking Double Barrel Ale to their wonderful summer Belgo-Bavarian Zwickle Saison Solace to the lush, chocolaty Parabola. So we're thrilled to welcome Firestone Walker's Brewmaster, Matthew Brynildson, to join us for a pint and some conversation.

Who: Matthew Brynildson
What: Brewmaster and Partner, Firestone Walker Brewery
Where: Paso Robles, California

How did you learn to brew? When did you know you wanted to brew professionally?

I started homebrewing while I was an undergraduate at Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo MI. I spent some time in Europe as part of the coursework and was really turned on to better beer and classic brewing styles through my travels. Back home, the local craft brewer was Larry Bell of the Bell's Brewery, who also ran the home brew shop in town. Larry started his brewery in 1985 and has always been well ahead of his time. I learned a lot from drinking Larry's beers and hanging around the brewery. I was studying chemistry in school and I had the opportunity to work at KALSEC (Kalamazoo Spice Extract Company). I was fortuitously placed in their hops division doing work with hop extracts and exploring hop chemistry. I found myself working in the brewing industry in a highly specialized lab, homebrewing in my off time and drinking Larry's beer in the early stages of the craft beer revolution. The forces were unstoppable.

We were very close to Chicago and so I was able to spend some time at the Siebel Instituteand thus gain some formal brewing education. Shortly there after I took a position with Goose Island Brewing in Chicago, working for John and Greg Hall. It was a time of intense learning and experimentation. Siebel and all their great instructors where right there to answer our questions. It was a real epicenter of learning, and brewers from all around the country were spending time in Chicago to attend Siebel at the time. It was an amazing time to get into the business and an amazing place in the country to learn how to brew. I later moved out to the west coast thinking at the time that I was moving to the big leagues of craft brewing, but I often think back and realize that there was some very awesome things already happening in the Chicago brew scene in the late 1990s.

What is your day-to-day life like at the brewery?

No two days are ever the same. My position requires that I interface with all of our brewery's departments from the brewhouse all the way to the warehouse. Some days are all about troubleshooting while other days are about creating new flavors. I often talk about being a brewmaster as something closely akin to being a professional sports team coach. You need to bring a talented group of people together who are passionate about making beer and direct traffic within that team and the production facility. There is a lot of listening and communication. I might formulate the recipe that we are following, but the team executes the brew and makes the magic happen. There is a lot of moving parts and people in the brewing process and I get a lot of satisfaction out of watching and fine-tuning that process.

What's the most exciting part about brewing at Firestone?

There are a lot of exciting things about our organization: brewing our beers in oak barrels, the amazing raw materials that we have to work with, and our amazing brewing team to name a few. I guess the thing I get most excited about is that we purposefully try to keep the hype down and the quality up. We make all of our decisions internally, based on quality. This doesn't create a lot of growth and excitement at first, but it makes great beer. After years of brewing beer for the Central Coast we are starting to be recognized as a quality regional craft brewery. We are gaining the respect of beer lovers in Oregon, Washington, Arizona and more recently in my home town of Chicago! It's not about hype, but about the beer, and that is pretty exciting.

How would you describe the Firestone brewing style? Would you say your focus has broadened over recent years?

We have for years followed the motto that we brew very few beers very well. Our program has always centered on balance and drinkability—it is a defining part of our DNA as a brewery. The brewery has followed a very classical approach of not having a huge portfolio and really concentration on a core few beers, which for us has been Pale Ales. We always experimented with other styles, but they were never a part of our greater distribution program. More recently we have taken the governor off a little and brought out the Proprietor's Reserve series of beers.

What are your favorite brewing ingredients?

I could write a dissertation on this subject. I started as a hop chemist and I will always be a hophead. Hops are what separate real beer from every other beverage and food in the world. There is an incredible world of flavors and aromas that hops can provide and the longer I brew the more humbled I have become relative to this amazing ingredient's potential and what I think I understand about it. Like most things, more is not always better. The best brewers learn how to use the hop to create depth, illusion, euphoria and love. I like barrels too, but that's another subject.

What are the biggest challenges in the job? Have you had any brewhouse disasters or disappointments? Or experiments that really paid off?

I could write a book about the mishaps that occur in a brewery on a regular basis and another about all of the mistakes that turned into winning beers. We manage to learn every lesson the hard way, but I think that brewing has the same challenges as any profession. People are the most unpredictable ingredient in the equation, without a doubt. Beyond that, mother nature is in control and the farmer is the conduit through which we receive our raw materials. The closer the brewer is to the farmer, the better we are able to deal with the inconsistencies that are innate in a natural product. Water, malt, hops and yeast—each have variability. The biggest challenge is dealing with the unexpected and still producing a consistent product.

How do you come up with new recipes for Firestone beers?

We are constantly brainstorming about might fit into the Firestone Walker lineup, but as I said before, it is rare if we are able to bring a new product to trade. When we release something, we want it to be perfect. We are fanatical about it. When I travel I am constantly on the lookout for new ideas and new flavor hooks. We don't have a true pilot brewery or test facility, so once we make a commitment to trying something out, we simply go for it on the 50bbl system. Our barrel program has allowed us to brew a lot of experimental beers and then lay them down in oak in hopes that they will make the cut in our anniversary program. Once they graduate from that program, there is a chance that they will see the light of day on their own. Parabola is a good example of that. We brewed that beer for 5 years in the blending program before we released it in its own package. We were able to get a lot of practice in before the big day.

What new brews can we look forward to in the coming months? Can you tell us a bit about the brewing process for Abacus?

Abacus is the next release. It a beer from our barrel aging program that is more than 5 years in the making. We are trying to create something with this release that bridges the gaps between wine, spirits and beer. I think about tasting a lost barelywine aged in an old port wine barrel or spirits barrel in some forgotten cave and it conjures up all sorts of wonderful flavors in my mind. I like barrel aged beers that don't have the classic sherry, overripe dry fruit oxidation notes. I like relatively lean beers that express assertive barrel characteristics and I think Abacus showcases this. Our brewery is in the middle of wine country and we have learned a lot from our neighbors. Wine makers have a wealth of information that brewers can draw from and apply to beer. I think Abacus is one of those beers that really demonstrates what we have learned about barrels over the years.

What beers have been inspirational to you over the years?

Timothy Taylor Landlord Bitter and Marston's Pedigree on cask, Herren Pils, Duvel, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Bell's Expedition Stout, Porter, and Two Hearted Ale, Goose Island IPA and Bourbon County Stout, Birrificio Italiano Tipo-pils, and anything Vinnie makes...I could go on and on.

Firestone beers are remarkably food friendly; do you have a favorite food and beer pairing?

We are always playing with new pairings. Jamie Smith recently discovered that both cayenne and habanero-infused citrus chocolate with Union Jack IPA is amazing, and it's even better with Double Jack DIPA. I feel the same about Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog and a light wheat beer like our Solace or our Hefeweizen. It's a homerun every time.

Sean Paxton has created a signature dish with us that has some great flavor hooks: Union Barrel Smoked Sea Scallops served on a Roasted Fennel-Celery Root Purée with a DBA Demi-Glaze served with 100% Unfiltered Double Barrel Ale. We serve DBA straight from the oak barrel in our tasting rooms, which really showcases what oak can do to the flavor profile of a beer. Sean breaks down a used union barrel that has been used to ferment DBA and smokes scallops with the wood. He then incorporates DBA in the sauce. It is absolutely perfect.

Meet More Brewers »

[Photographs: Liz Clayton]

Mutual admiration can inspire both sides to push each other further, and in the case of top-dog US craft brewer Samuel Adams and old world pillar Weihenstephan, both sides are hoping their new collaboration beer, Infinium, is a cause for celebration.

Working together for the past three years to invent a "new beer style" within Germany's Reinheitsgebot (beer purity laws), both breweries riffed over intercontinental distance to create a, well, champagne of beers, if you will. Infinium delivers a dryly fruity sweetness—deceptively light yet warm, apricotty, with notes of orange and lemon rind. It's more comparable to a sparkling wine than a 10% beer. The subtle yeastiness comes across like a honey-wheat sandwich bread, the beer opening up gradually, much like the celebrations it's meant to evoke and adorn.

So Serious Eats sat down with Samuel Adams' founder and brewer Jim Koch to talk, taste, and think about Infinium...and much more.

Let's talk about collaborations—how long have you wanted to do something like this? Has Sam Adams done collaborative brewing before?

For me, I didn't want to do just a sort of collaboration with another brewery where we just get together and throw some new things in the brew kettle. For me, if I did a collaboration, I wanted it to be important. Something that was groundbreaking. And, that I didn't want to collaborate with anybody unless they could add value to what we've been doing. Sam Adams has been arguably the most innovative brewer in the US for the last 20 years, so we've been doing just fine creating new beer styles, new brewing practices on our own. That changed when I got a call from Weihenstephan, because they are arguably the most significant brewer in the old world. So when they called and said that they wanted to collaborate on a new beer style, I was amazed, because I kind of viewed them the way I viewed Sam Adams. They have the most technical capabilities of any brewery in the world, why do they need somebody else? And essentially they felt like they—despite all those technical capabilities—they needed the creativity and innovation that has always characterized Sam Adams. To me, the opportunity to work with one of the greatest breweries in the world was very exciting, and they felt the same way. and I was thinking, I was making this in my kitchen 26 years ago, and you guys have been at this for 1000 years!

We wanted to brew something new, while still remaining within the boundaries of the Reinheitsgebot, which created its own challenges, because the law has been enforced for 500 years, and for 500 years thousands of breweries have been brewing. At first it seemed like everything that was doable had already been done, but I saw a white space within the purity law, and that white space was a champagne-like beer that was dry, and that would have the sort of fresh elegant fruitiness of Champagne, but without being thin and sharp. We set the bar very high, thinking that the results should be worthy of the history of these two breweries. And we had to reinvent the malting process and the brewing process to do things that had never been done before. We can all throw Chinese gooseberries or Buddha's hand into the brew kettle, but I wanted something that was a breakthrough, that had never been imagined before.

What did you change in the malting and brewing process?

Basically we changed the malting process to be much much longer, and at much lower temperatures, to create a stable malt that still included almost all of the enzymes that are original to the barley itself. It's not just another day or two, it's a multiple. You could think of it as three or four times as long, it's not quite that simple, but that's a good way to think about it. In the brewing process, we took part of the mash at a certain stage in its development, and put it in the fermenter. and again, allowed it to remain active for several weeks, rather than the normal one hour or so that you have in the brewhouse. So we took apart malting and took apart what you are doing in the brewery. We had a lot of dead ends. In retrospect it's really quite simple, but it's not where we started.

While you were working on this beer, did you ever disagree?

No, because we knew what we wanted to do, and it turned out we were only able to find one way to do it.

So...this is a loaded question, but what do you think about the term "Craft Beer"? Is it really useful anymore? Where does your company fit in alongside genuinely tiny brewers, and is it unfair that we're making these flavor distinctions based on commercial terms?

I can tell you, because I'm in the Brewers Association, this is something that we went through several years ago, and we felt that it was important for consumers to be able to distinguish between beers from Sam Adams, or the local brewpub (and everything in between) from the brands that actually came from big brewers, but were not marketed as such—brands that were meant to mimic true craft beers. We felt like we needed to separate those two for consumers who are looking for something that comes out of the passion and energy of a small brewer, versus somebody whose main business is mass-produced, mass-marketed beers. We thought that was a useful distinction.

The big ones are still so big. AB InBev is still 175 times our size, and SAB Miller Coors is about 100 times our size. That was our point: we're all small compared to the big guys, whether you're Sam Adams or you're a nano-brewery in a garage. We all felt like we basically have the same concerns, which are different than the big guys.

That was the motivation, to say here's who we are, we're small, we're independent, we're traditional, all we do is make more flavorful, craft beers. And the big guys? Their main business is making large quantities of very drinkable lighter beers. Of course, once our beers leave the brewery, we are in a distribution system that is largely controlled by the big guys. So that was part of the concern: we're at a disadvantage in the marketplace, so if consumers don't value what we bring, there will be ultimately no craft industry. I was particularly adamant about it because my father was a brewmaster and I watched the big guys slowly put all the little guys out of business fifty years ago.

How do you maintain quality as you grow?

I can tell you my experience: I think the other brewers who've been around for awhile will say the same thing: as you grow your quality improves, and the variety of the beers that you make improves, and as you grow, you should be able to use that growth to make your beer better, and to make a wider variety of more interesting beers.

I mean, when we started, like everybody, we were the smallest brewery in America, and we made one beer. Now we make in the course of the year, around 40. The challenge that I've always enjoyed is as we've grown, we've used that growth to improve the quality of our beer, like the Boston Lager, by getting better ingredients, better equipment, better control over the brewing process...and we've used that growth as a base to continually be experimenting and pushing the brewing envelope. When you're small, you can't always do those things.

Can I ask you about your own tastes? What are your favorite beers when you're not on the job?

It just depends, my life is sort of kaleidoscopic, like last night got everything done at 9:00 or something, and I had a Boston Lager in my room and I was just looking forward to that. The original Sam Adams Boston Lager is still my favorite of all the beers that I make, because I drink beer all the time. And when you drink beer all the time like I do, you need a go-to beer that you just know you're going to get a great sensory experience.
I mean, I've had thousands and thousands and thousands of beers in my life, so there's not really a lot that I need to continue to taste. Every once in awhile there's something new, but not regularly. So I'm done with experimenting by and large, and when I drink a beer, I want to enjoy it, and Boston Lager is still the most reliably rewarding beer that I know of. I've been drinking it pretty much every day of my life, and I still haven't gotten tired of it.

Thanks for the talk and for sharing this beer! It's interesting that Infinium is often called wine-like. Do you think that changes the conversation people are having about what this beer tastes like?

Yes. People expect more from wine than they do beers, but in a lot of ways beer delivers so much more, and when you're in the frame of mind to receive that, you get a lot more out of the beer.

[Photographs: Smuttynose Brewing Co.]

For many of us on the East Coast, Smuttynose beer is a standby. Dave Yarrington and his crew make dependably delicious beers in a number of different styles. I'm thrilled to welcome Dave to Serious Eats—he's got some wise things to say about craft beer and some exciting news about some possible new large-format beer releases!

Name: Dave Yarrington
Location: Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Occupation: Director of Brewing Operations, Smuttynose Brewing Co.

What was the first beer you ever tasted? When did you start drinking craft beer? I'm not sure what the first beer I tried might have been, but I do remember that whenever Pop brought Michelob home you knew the folks were celebrating—Michelob being obviously synonymous with quality because it was made with imported hops.

I started drinking craft beer—or to be historically accurate, microbrewed beer (seems so antiquated when you see that term used now, eh?)—as an undergraduate in Maine. I went to Colby College and we used to drink Geary's Pale Ale and Porter a bit. It wasn't until a cross-country trip in 1991 when we toured several small breweries, including Anchor Brewing, that I really started to enjoy and understand the glory that is fresh, well-made beer.

How did you learn to brew? When did you know you wanted to make beer professionally? I ended up home brewing the last couple years of college but it wasn't until I started working at the Twenty Tank Brewery in San Francisco that I really figured out what I was doing. I think the fact that we started our brew day around 10 a.m. and then headed to the bar for a post-mash-in pint, that my fate as a professional brewer was sealed. I mean, come on! Sign me up, right?

How would you describe your brewing style? If you had to pick a favorite Smuttynose beer, which would it be? I lived in Japan for a while and one of the great aspects of Japanese culture is the idea of Wabi Sabi, which I think encompasses my brewing style quite well. Here's a definition lifted right from Wikipedia:

if an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then that object could be said to be wabi-sabi...[Wabi-sabi] nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.

I guess you could translate it as New England Rustic: solid and well-made but a bit rough around the edges. With that in mind, my favorite Smuttynose beers are the ones that work despite some aspect being out of balance, some flavor component being skewed. I love the way the crystal and caramel malts in the Shoals Pale Ale play off of each other. It creates a unique, almost tea-like quality. I like the hopping in the Robust Porter as it brings a strange harmony to a gorgeous black beer. I really like the subtle malt character in the IPA. It's almost not enough and that makes that beer so damn drinkable.

Can you tell us a bit about the Short Batch series? What sorts of beers are you experimenting with? The Short Batch Series are draft-only releases that allow us to offer one-off beers that don't require the full range of packaging accoutrement. It allows us the freedom to play with recipes, ingredients and techniques without the need for repeatability or, in some cases, even the need for commercial viability.

What Big Beers will we see in late 2010 and early 2011? The next few Big Beers will be S'Muttonator, Baltic Porter, and then Wheat Wine.

What are your favorite Smuttynose beer and food pairings? I've been really enamored with beer and cheese pairings. One of my favorite being our Barleywine matched with a blue cheese so stinky it'll peel your eyebrows clear off. Beautiful. (The pairing, not the loss of eyebrows.)

What are your favorite non-Smuttynose brews? If I'm not drinking Smuttynose I'm probably living the High Life.

What's coming up for Smuttynose? What will we see in the coming months and over the next year? We're looking into releasing some of our Short Batch Series and barrel-aged beers into cork-finished 750ml bottles. Also, look for more kettle-soured beers like the Rouge d'Shire.

What do you think is the future of craft beer in the US? I think you need to look at the larger trend of local, fresh foods and products. Will we stop eating warm crusty bread baked each morning at the corner shop and start picking up more loaves of Wonder Bread? Will we stop heading to the local coffee shop because we really crave Maxwell House? I guess some people will. I mostly feel like we're moving past the "As Seen on TV" phase of purchasing trends and buying items that resonate on a more personal and tangible level. If I'm correct, then craft beer has a great future. If not, it's at least been a hell of a ride.

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Todd building a work platform for a new wort-spinning whirlpool. [Photographs: Surly Brewing Co.]

I've been a fan of Surly Brewing Co. ever since my friend Lee of Hoptopia gave me one of his precious cans of Furious, an intensely brisk IPA with some rich Scottish malt thrown into the mix. (Thanks, Lee.) Who's behind this awesome Minnesota beer? A rock star. Literally.

Name: Todd Haug
Location: Brooklyn Center, Minnesota
Occupation: Head Brewer, Surly Brewing Co.

What's the Minnesota beer scene like? How does Surly fit into it? How has it changed in recent years? The MN beer scene has exploded in the last four years. Everybody wants to take credit for it but I think it is a result of everything coming together at the same time. Surly sells all of our production in MN, so people are pretty excited about our beers. With no end in sight, out of state brands will continue to come and go, but clean local/fresh beer will never go away!

Todd, the young rocker.

How did you learn to brew? When did you know you wanted to make beer professionally? I became interested in local/fresh beer when I was touring the US in the metal band Powermad at the age of 19. During home stints I started homebrewing and soon was brewing 2-3 times a week. As music stopped paying the bills, brewery work started to. I picked up a part time job at Summit and really discovered what professional brewery work entailed. I was hooked and after a year of part-time work I started shift brewing. The good part: I developed my brewing/mechanical aptitude and met my future wife while employed at Summit. The bad: I was not creating new beer flavors. So I moved on, tried to get a paying music gig to no avail, and got a job at a local brewpub called Rock Bottom. Rock Bottom was the perfect place for me to create new and unique beer, so I took advantage of the opportunity for ten years. I left Rock Bottom four years and ten months ago to work for Omar and put Surly's brewery together.

How would you describe your brewing style? You make some seriously intense beers, like Furious, but also some sessionable beers...what do they all have in common? Regardless of ABV or IBUs, I always strive for over-the-top flavors and body, which come from high quality/unique raw materials, not filtering, and careful beer processing.

How do you develop recipes for Surly's latest creations? How do you get inspired? I have a knack for creating flavor combinations in my head, it's like writing music—hearing it in my head before picking up the guitar is the best example I have.

From left to right: Ben, Sarah, and Todd on the canning line.

Why did Surly go with cans instead of bottles for most of the lineup? I've been a fan of beer in cans forever; Omar was receptive to my idea eventually. My wife Linda contributed the 16-ounce size idea. We brew with a high percentage of finishing hops and cans do not allow any light-struck off flavors to develop.

What's your favorite Surly beer to drink on a hot day? Bitter Brewer, which is our 4% ABV Americanized English Style Ordinary Bitter.

What are your favorite Surly beer and food pairings? [I like] Hell with sushi, Furious with anything blue cheese, Cynic and charcuterie, Smoke with pork and adobo from my wife's restaurant Cafe Twenty-Eight, Coffee Bender with French toast and bacon.

If you could only take five kinds of beer (and only one Surly) with you to a desert island, what would they be? Surly Bender, Fantome Saison, 3Floyds Topless Wytch, Piece Golden Arm Kolsch, and Russian River Blind Pig IPA.

Surly-loving volunteers are making an effort to do something good in a series of Surly-organized public service projects. How did this come about? What sort of good work are you doing? Omar started that. He and Mary Selke run the whole thing. Omar saw the huge potential our beer event volunteer base had for public service, and it has been a big success. Blood Drive at the brewery, Minneapolis Bicycle Greenway Cleanup, and food drives are just some of the ongoing efforts.

What's coming up for Surly? What will we see in the coming months and over the next year? We have some big process/material handling projects at the brewery this year: spent grain pump, malt handling system with new malt mill, can date coder, whirlpool install, new FV's installed, and maybe a new fall bottled/canned beer?

Any chance you're going to expand your distribution? Not in the near future.

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