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The Realities Of Opening A Brewery

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henhouse
Collin McDonnell, the brewmaster of Petaluma’s new HenHouse Brewing has a wake up call for anybody considering becoming a brewer. His piece on Serious Eats, So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery…, is chock full of the unglamorous, ugly realities of daily life in the average brewery.

You can sum up his advice with one word. Imagine you’re Ben Braddock (as played by Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate). Imagine further that you just graduated from college, and are convinced you want to become a brewer. You’re at a cocktail party. You’re chatting with an older, more experienced, seasoned brewer. You let drop that you, too, want to join the glamorous world of brewing. Here’s what he tells you.

A Brewer: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
A Brewer: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
A Brewer: Cleaning.
Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?

Cleaning.

That and the soul-crushing act of cold calling on places to sell the beer. I worked retail for years, in a variety of worlds — records (what the kids call music these days), video, comic books and yes, beer — and wouldn’t wish that job on a dog. There are people whose personalities are well-suited to that life, thank goodness, but I am not one of them.

I have the utmost respect for brewers. Having visited more than my fair share of breweries (while I’ve never been a ticker, I can safely guess the number is well north of 1,000), it wasn’t hard to realize it wasn’t for me. I’m lazy, for starters, and have never been overly fastidious in my approach to cleanliness. Plus there’s a lot of backbreaking physical activity, and I’m much more at home being sedentary. Sitting in front of a laptop all day is much more to my liking. Also, most brewers start early, around the time they make the doughnuts. I am not a morning person. In the words of the great Bill Murray, channeling a jazz musician being interviewed by Mr. Rogers, “you should sleep late; it’s much easier on your constitution.” So I greatly admire that there are people enough unlike me that they can get off their ass and actually do what’s necessary to make beer for me to drink (and write about) each and every day.

With every sip of beer I take, I thank people like Collin and the countless other professional brewers working today in a — mostly — thankless job. So give Collin’s article a read, especially if you’re thinking about opening a brewery. I posted the motivational poster below a few years back, but it seems pretty relevant to today’s discussion about the difference between the perception of what a brewer does and the reality of a brewer’s workday.

what-brewers-do

Beer In Film #69: How It’s Made — Beer

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brookston-film
Today’s beer video is from the documentary series How It’s Made that runs on the Discovery Channel in Canada and Great Britain, and on the Science Channel in the U.S. How It’s Made has been running for 22 seasons, having debuted in 2001. Each half-hour show features around four roughly five-minute segments, so they’ve covered a lot over the course of 286 episodes so far. This show, about Beer, was the third segment in episode 3, the 3rd episode in Season 1.

Beer In Ads #1125: Helps You To Face Life’s Little Snags

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Sunday’s ad is for Ansells — The Better Beer — originally from Birmingham, England. They were one of the breweries that merged together in 1961 to create Allied Breweries. The ad is from 1926. You’re on the tee and you knock your ball into a tree lining the fairway, where it comes to land in a bird’s nest just as the surprised Mama bird is coming in for a landing. I think she looks surprised because she’s just noticed a new dimpled egg. So what’s a golfer to do? Time for a beer, of course. That should fix it, or at least help you to face life’s little snags.” I love the tagline at the bottom of the ad: “See the name Ansell on every hop.”

Ansells - the better beer - advert for Ansell's Brewery, Birmingham, 1926

Beer In Film #68: How It’s Made — Beer Steins

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brookston-film
Today’s beer video is from the documentary series How It’s Made that runs on the Discovery Channel in Canada and Great Britain, and on the Science Channel in the U.S. How It’s Made has been running for 21 seasons, having debuted in 2001. Each half-hour show features around four roughly five-minute segments, so they’ve covered a lot over the course of 286 episodes so far. This show, about Beer Steins, was the fourth segment in episode 137, the 7th episode in Season 11.

Genome Sequence of Saccharomyces Carlsbergensis

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yeast-cell
Here’s an interesting journal article for the yeast wrangler in you to geek out on. Genome Sequence of Saccharomyces carlsbergensis, the World’s First Pure Culture Lager Yeast details the efforts of Andrea Walther, Ana Hesselbart and Jürgen Wendland from the Carlsberg Laboratory to get a handle on the origins of modern lager yeast using more modern gene sequencing tools. Here’s the wonderfully obtuse explanation from the Abstract:

Lager yeast beer production was revolutionized by the introduction of pure culture strains. The first established lager yeast strain is known as the bottom fermenting Saccharomyces carlsbergensis, which was originally termed Unterhefe No.1 by Emil Chr. Hansen and used in production in since 1883. S. carlsbergensis belongs to group I/Saaz-type lager yeast strains and is better adapted to cold growth conditions than group II/Frohberg-type lager yeasts, e.g. the Weihenstephan strain WS34/70. Here, we sequenced S. carlsbergensis using next generation sequencing technologies. Lager yeasts are descendants from hybrids formed between a Saccharomyces cerevisiae parent and a parent similar to Saccharomyces eubayanus. Accordingly, the S. carlsbergensis 19.5 Mb genome is substantially larger than the 12 Mb S. cerevisiae genome. Based on the sequence scaffolds, synteny to the S. cerevisae genome, and by using directed PCRs for gap closure we generated a chromosomal map of S. carlsbergensis consisting of 29 unique chromosomes. We present evidence for genome and chromosome evolution within S. carlsbergensis via chromosome loss and loss of heterozygosity specifically of parts derived from the S. cerevisiae parent. Based on our sequence data and via FACS analysis we determined the ploidy of S. carlsbergensis. This inferred that this strain is basically triploid with a diploid S. eubayanus and haploid S. cerevisiae genome content. In contrast the Weihenstephan strain, which we re-sequenced, is essentially tetraploid composed of two diploid S. cerevisiae and S. eubayanus genomes. Based on conserved translocations between the parental genomes in S. carlsbergensis and the Weihenstephan strain we propose a joint evolutionary ancestry for lager yeast strains.

If that made your head spin, try the full article, which was released in full online at the end of February. It will be published in the journal G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics in a future issue. It’s fascinating reading.

emilchrhansen1908
Emil Christian Hansen, taken in 1908. Hansen was the scientist at the Carlsberg Brewery responsible for isolating the lager yeast in 1883.

Beer In Ads #1123: Beer Of England III

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Friday’s ad is a third one for Wells Bombardier, from 2009. So this one’s not exactly old, but as I love heraldry, it has a retro feel to it. It’s the third of three ads that Kindred did for Wells & Young in an attempt to link the Bombardier beer with English pride and nationalism. I love the detail in the faux coat of arms. Everywhere you look, there are symbols of England, or at least things that might remind one of Great Britain.

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Beer In Film #66: Beer The Musical

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brookston-film
Today’s beer video is the trailer for Beer: The Musical, which is apparently a 30-minute animated musical that was created by Marshall Slayton in 2008. Here’s the description from YouTube. “Two friends locked in an epic struggle to fight the evil powers that seek to over tax their sole source of solace…beer. Oh yeah… there are songs too…” ANother sourcs says it’s “about two friends who are fighting against a corporate slum-bag’s attempt to overtax alcohol and bring their favorite pastime (drinking) to an end.” Ever heard of it? Me neither.

Thirst Emporiums Of Yesteryear

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beer-word
Brian Stechschulte, who by day is the executive director of the San Francisco Brewers Guild, by night wears many hats: photographer, blogger and more recently, historian. In addition to his All Over Beer website, he’s launched Bygone Beer, a beautiful look at beer history and breweriana.

In a blog post yesterday, Steam vs. Lager, he unearthed an interesting newspaper article from 1910 about the tensions between steam beer brewers and lager brewers in local bars in San Francisco. But toward the end of the old clipping, in the last paragraph, was a delicious old term for a bar or tavern that’s fallen out of favor in modern times: a “thirst emporium.” Now that’s a great term I’d love to see revived.

A quick search for the phrase reveals that it pretty much only shows up in old newspaper articles, and not that many of them, so that even in its heyday it was probably never too popular. I did turn up one print ad for a soft drink, or soda, further suggesting that it could also be applied to non-alcoholic establishments. Still, let’s start working that into conversations and writing. Bring back the “thirst emporium!”