Microbrewed Adventures (11 page)

A
N EMPHATIC “YOUR
book, man!” was the reply I received from Gene Muller, the founder of the Flying Fish Brewing Company, when asked how he ever got hooked up with craft beer. Since 1996 at their microbrewery in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, Gene and his 12 employees have been dedicated to the crafting of beers with balance and flavor. Gene says, “It's not about the alcohol and not about the most hops. Though we began with Belgian-style beers we've evolved to beers created for their likeability, flavor, balance and complement to food. We always emphasize that we are local. ‘Why local?' we're often asked. ‘What's so special about local beer?' We like to reply, ‘It's like enjoying fresh local New Jersey tomatoes in August.' People can relate to that. Local beer is fresh all year long.”

Recognizing and always appreciative of his company's roots, Gene quite
often reflects, “Homebrewing is our root. If it weren't for homebrewers I wouldn't have a brewery today.” Every year on National Homebrew Day (the first Saturday in May), the Flying Fish Brewing Company invites local homebrewers to the brewery. “Bring your beer so we can taste what you are brewing and we'll give you yeast” indicates the passion Flying Fish Brewing Company shares with homebrewers.

Gene Muller, founder Flying Fish Brewing Co.
Gene Muller. Courtesy Flying Fish Brewing Co.

“We don't necessarily preach to the converted,” Gene notes. “A lot of the time we focus on quality restaurants and develop great relationships with chefs in the New Jersey, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and Delaware area. We are a hands-on brewery when it comes to service and making and distributing our own beer. What I love about the craft beer business is that everyone has a different approach for success. Right now we are brewing just under 10,000 barrels of beer a year, and we're happy to grow slowly and steadily. I still personally reply to all e-mails and publish a monthly newsletter for our customers and fans.”

I recently had the pleasure of sharing a few beers with Gene at a beer garden in Italy. We were both participating at Slow Food's Salone del Gusto (Great Hall of Taste) and were blessed with some time to enjoy some wonderful Italian microbrewed beers. Gene passionately conveyed the story of his brewery and his courtship with beer and brewing. After about 30 minutes of effervescent recollection, I interrupted his train of thought with the most important question: “Gene, where does the beer take you? I mean, when you really have the opportunity to relax and appreciate what you are involved in?” There was only a brief pause and he was on a roll once again: “Being a brewer is a wonderful job and passion. But it is a lot of work and having a beer is sometimes like taking a vacation. It takes you to places that are what the beer is all about. A particular beer might take me back to memories of sandstone cliffs in New Mexico, or I always seem to reminisce about the desert when enjoying a Belgian Tripel, because these are my experiences.

“One of my most favorite beers is our Flying Fish Farmhouse Summer Ale. It's a 4.4 percent alcohol-by-volume sour mashed beer that's great with
spicy food or sprayed on chicken barbecues. I love the spicy character that Styrian Goldings hops adds to this ale. When the summer comes to an end and the last bottle-conditioned beer leaves the brewery I always feel a sadness and silently reminisce, ‘Good-bye, friend, see you next April.'”

Gene assessed the beer culture in New Jersey: “The laws here regulating the sale of beer are very prohibitive for small business owners. New Jersey and much of the mid-Atlantic area of the United States have always trailed behind the craft beer movement in the western part of the United States.”

I can assure you that Gene is one of many quality-oriented craft brewers in the mid-Atlantic area that are doing all they can to bring great locally brewed fresh, flavorful ales and lagers to beer lovers in the New Jersey area.

Beer in the Big Apple
Brooklyn Brewery

T
HERE HAVE BEEN
several breweries that have come and gone in New York City. The Manhattan Brewing Company and the New Amsterdam Brewing Company were ambitious brewery projects that succeeded only for a brief time. The oldest of the active breweries and brewpubs in the New York City area is the Brooklyn Brewing Company. Founded in 1988, at first it had its beer made exclusively in Utica, in upstate New York, at the F. X. Matt Brewing Company. Stephen Hindy, co-founder and still active CEO and president, made homebrew before leaving his job as an Associated Press Middle East correspondent, taking the plunge into the world of microbreweries.

Based on a pre-Prohibition Brooklyn brewery's all-malt light lager recipe, Brooklyn Lager has become New York City's best-selling draft beer. That's quite an accomplishment. As Steve emphasizes, “New York City beer drinkers want the best and they don't necessarily care where it comes from. That's a tall order. An important element that differentiates Brooklyn Brewery's beers from all the others available in New York City is that we're a local brewery. People really take quite a bit of pride in having the opportunity and choice to enjoy locally made beer.”

Steve, like most every other microbrewer in America, was inspired by his homebrewing hobby and the popularity of his beers. He says, “Good dark beer seemed easier to make at home than lighter beer and in the beginning I really took a liking to roasted barley and chocolate and black malt. My choco
late stout quickly became my résumé. Once I brought a case of what I thought was our Brooklyn Lager to a beer tasting and by mistake I had 12 bottles of my own homebrewed chocolate stout in the box. The stout was all that anyone wanted to talk about.” Steve is quick to give his brewmaster, Garrett Oliver, all the credit for the success enjoyed by the brewery-versioned Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout.

Steve Hindy, Brooklyn Beer
Steve Hindy. Courtesy of Brooklyn Brewing Co.

When Steve has time to relax and enjoy a beer, he reflects “on the days when I would come home from selling beer and crack open my own homebrew. We're extremely proud that the Brooklyn Brewery is a part of New York City's community. It warms my heart whenever I see one of our trucks rumbling down a Manhattan avenue.”

The beer's success, along with the establishment of a craft beer distributing company, allows Steve and Garrett to pursue their passion for making several unique styles of beer. Their seemingly slow and deliberate growth has provided a means to offer consumers diversity and flavor, especially with skillfully brewed beers such as Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout, English-American-style Brooklyn East India Pale Ale, German-style Brooklyner
Weisse and Belgian-inspired Saison de Brooklyn and Blanche de Brooklyn, as well as seasonal brown ales, Oktoberfest lagers and Monster Mash Barley wine ales.

In the fall of 1994 on a trip to East Coast, Steve and I sat down to discuss specialty beers and beer distributors. We had concluded with disappointment that most beer distributors have little knowledge about providing beer drinkers access to microbrewery beers. This was a time when several microbrewers in America were beginning to grow quite rapidly. Most mainstream beer businesspeople perceived the growing phenomenon and popularity of microbrewed beers as an overnight success.

As we enjoyed our Brooklyn beers, we both agreed that it takes a lot of time and patience to be perceived as successful. No one is really that interested in all the hard work and failures that come before success. Admired for his product, passion and creativity, Steve was once told by a very successful Coca-Cola ad manager, “If you stick with this for ten years, with a little luck you'll become an overnight success.” Big-beer businesspeople are really only interested in trying to establish models based upon apparent success in order to apply those models to their own future growth for growth's sake. They have never figured out that
there is no model to be built
, except for the ones of individual persistence, dedication and enthusiasm for beer quality and diversity. True and successful microbrewers have always put quality, diversity and the people who will enjoy their beer first on their list of priorities. Sales are essential for a brewery, but selling beer for the simple sake of selling beer usually dooms a dispassionate brewer. I've seen this happen over and over again.

Psychographic Resonations
The Magic Hat Brewing Company

W
HILE SOME BREWERIES
don't like to paint themselves into a corner nor put themselves into a box, there is at least one brewery that you might say presents themselves as
the
box. But they'll let you determine what's inside. As if reaching into a magic hat, you'll take out surprises, delights and joys with every plunge, every adventure, every indulgence and every pleasure. “We believe that the people who enjoy our beer don't really need to be told ‘what's in the box,'” explains Alan Newman, the full-bearded, energetic founder of the Magic Hat Brewing Company.

“So who is the poet, the artist, the contrarian, the joker, the gamesman at Magic Hat?” I ask Alan after taking a step inside their virtual address at www.magichat.net. Without any hesitation whatsoever, Alan shoots back, “I am!”

Taking a cruise with the brews of Magic Hat, one is taken on a journey, swirling, turning, breaking out, double-taking and becoming entranced. “You get to choose the level of involvement you have with Magic Hat. It could be the messages under our bottle caps, the beer, the label, a pilgrimage to the magic brewery, the website, our community,” explains Alan, the grand wizard.

“The fact that we are in Burlington, Vermont, is really not that relevant to Magic Hat. The community we want to embrace and reach out to is not geographic, it's a psychographic community we are trying to resonate with,” Alan continues, knowing exactly what direction he is taking the beers that seem to be mystically brewed at the Magic Hat Brewery. “We are not Burlington. We are not northern Vermont. We are not about New England.”

He explains that in a sense they and the people who enjoy Magic Hat beer are night people, grown adults; of the stars and the moon. Magic Hat beers are an adult beverage for an adult community. Like the Nike “swoosh,” Magic Hat has its little crescent moon embedded in a bursting magical eight-pointed star.