The third interview in the Brewery Highlight Series for Redhook Ales. Click the link for more articles.

In today’s interview we talk with Kim Brusco, Brewing Manager, of Redhook Ale’s. Kim is a lived in a house with some friends and became the house brewer. Who would have known this ex-musician would end up brewing beer for a nation hungry for craft beer!

I’ve cut the interview down to keep it interesting. To hear the full audio version click here.

Kim Brusco: Hey, Mike Kim Brusco, Redhook Brewing.

Mike: Hey Kim, how you doing?

Kim Brusco: It’s been a pretty good day. It’s been a little mellow, we are winding down for the week. So the brews done, cleaning up. We run 24 hours a day so its always a big week.

Mike: Wow. I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to sit down and do this interview with me.

Kim Brusco: Not a problem!

Mike: So what is your role at the Woodinville, WA Redhook Ale Brewery?

Kim Brusco: I’m the brewing manager. So I oversee all brewing, all cellaring and all filtration.

Mike: That’s cool. How long have you been at Redhook or at this type of profession?

Kim Brusco: I’ve been in 4 different breweries in 20 years.

Mike: Wow!

Kim Brusco: I had my first brewing position back in 1990 in a little brewpub in Pioneer Square. I went there to Pike Brewing, I was there 9 years, spent a year in a little brewpub in Tacoma and I’m on my 4th year here at Redhook.

Mike: One of my biggest questions is, did you do any homebrewing before you decided that you wanted to become a brewmaster?

Kim Brusco: Well sure. Absolutely! I was an avid homebrewer.

Mike: Do you still homebrew?

Kim Brusco: No…(laughing) Once you start making beer professionally, even in the small systems, like the first brewery I was head brewer or brewmaster of was a 7 barrel system. That was pretty much my homebrew system.

Mike: Nice!

Kim Brusco: I could always come up with something 7 barrel size that you didn’t have to worry to much about.

Mike: What was your favorite style to brew?

Kim Brusco: That’s tough…I love brewing IPA’s and Stouts. A good bitter or an ESB. I like British styles personally. I do enjoy Tripel’s. Greg really likes doing more of the lager styles.

Mike: How long were you a homebrewer before you started on your professional brewing path?

Kim Brusco: I don’t know, 5 or 6 years. Back in that time period, I had my first head brewing position in like 1990. A lot of homebrewers managed to get into professional brewing if they studied brewing science. They were good at homebrewing. A lot of us would culture yeast, ya know…I had only ever done one extract brew. I was an all grain brewer on my second batch. I did one extract brew and it didn’t cut it. I started brewing all grain. I sort of lived in a shared housing situation and I started brewing all the beer for the household. I was brewing once a week.

Mike: Yeap! So your living in this household with a bunch of friends or just strangers?

Kim Brusco: Friends, yea we were friends.

Mike: So, your the brewmaster of the house and your brewing once a week to provide beer for everyone. At what point did you decide, “Hey, I could do this for a living?”

Kim Brusco: Well, I was a musician during the day. I did pretty well for quite a while. I was in my mid-30′s and that’s what gave me a lot of the time to homebrew everyday. I did gigs 5 nights a week and my gigs would start at 9 o’clock at night. So I could spend the day brewing beer. But the income…I was in my mid-30′s, I was self employed…the life of a musician. You maybe knew where you were going to be playing before the rent was going to come for maybe a month at a time. I thought I may need some options.

I’d become a good homebrewer and I just started applying for jobs.

Mike: So you didn’t have any formal schooling for it?

Kim Brusco: No formal schooling for me.

Mike: At that time…

Kim Brusco: At that time, yea. Then, people getting started at that time would read all the publications, you learned through the trade kind of like an apprentice.

The first job I had was for an outfit. He had a deal going with Bass head brewer. They’d send one of their young brewers over to apprentice with me so these guys could see what it was like to brew beer on a small system. They would work the summer with me. I was there close to 7 or 8 years, 90 thru 97. They’d come over for the summer and I had a couple of them. I’d train them up on the system and before they left they had to design and brew a beer on their own. They had a lot of knowledge. The brewers over there working for Bass, its a whole different thing. So we shared knowledge there.

Mike: It seems there is a lot of competition for anyone that wants to get into the industry and you need to have a bunch of experience.

Kim Brusco: Pretty much now you have to have a lot of experience, quite a few years under your belt and be sort of proven. OR you have to have gone to one of the schools, UC Davis, Siebel and what not.

Mike: That’s cool. It seems like one of those jobs that once you get into it you never want to leave it.

Kim Brusco: Yea, you gotta like it. It’s free beer ya know!

(Laughing)

Kim Brusco: I’ve never met a brewer that didn’t enjoy what he was doing. It’s hard work, especially in the smaller breweries. Your digging the mash out, filling kegs one at a time, it’s definitely a job filled with passion.

Mike: I was actually sent a bottle of your Expedition 8-4-1. Could you tell me a little about that? I think its an interesting concept. Eight brewers, 4 teams of 2, to make 1 beer.

Kim Brusco: It was fun! Greg the brewmaster comes to me and says, “We’ve got to come up with a Spring limited release.” A year ago it was are award winning tripel. We got a gold medal for that beer 2 years in a row at the NABA, the tripel we do here. We decided to do something different. “We need a recipe for the limited release. I want you to get all the brewers you can.” I jokingly said, “All just have them all write a recipe and we’ll put them together.” It was just fun. Greg and I were in the office we started just laughing and decided to do some brainstorming about it and we came up with the concept that that wasn’t such a bad idea. We figured out some parameters because we couldn’t have it be a free for all, we had to actually produce a beer. The concept was we had 8 brewers, and myself and I of the brewers formed a team, and Greg and one of the brewers formed a team. Everybody was involved, we wrote, each two brewers wrote and named a recipe.

It had to be between 30-35 color. It had to be between 40 and 60 BU’s. It had to be 9.5% ABV. It had to use one special ingredient or one special process. Those were the parameters. The 4 teams wrote their recipes and submitted them all to Greg. We used exact percentages of every ingredient and every process was used in the beer and the percentages they were on the original recipes. So everyone hit their parameters and we brewed this thing up. We had three different kinds of sugar in it, belgian candi sugar, brown sugar and honey. The special process was that we aged it on oak. It was just a lot of fun.

Mike: Yea! Sounds like it!

Kim Brusco: And it turned out really good.

Mike: I haven’t tried it yet. I’m kind of excited.

Kim Brusco: Oh, you should try it!

Mike: What can I expect out of it?

Kim Brusco: It’s definitely a Strong Ale. Leaning toward Imperial Brown, only but not really. For one, its got pretty good hops in it with a solid 52 BU. I personally categorize it as a Strong Ale. The oak comes through real nice. Its got heat from the high alcohol. Its not high fusels, its not bad alcohol. It’s just that you can taste it. It’s strong. It’s got a very complex flavor.

Mike: Excellent!

Mike: So the Redhook ESB is the signature beer of Redhook isn’t it?

Kim Brusco: That’s the flagship. We got a gold medal at GABF for that beer this past year.

Mike: I saw that. Were there any other awards at the GABF for you guys?

Kim Brusco: We got a silver for Treblehook, Redhook’s Barley Wine which was actually formulated by the brewers in Portsmouth. It won a gold the year before. Then we brewed it out in Woodinville this year. That was our last fall release. We sent it to the GABF again and it got a silver the second year. We got gold one year, silver the second year. I think the only reason we didn’t get a gold two years in a row is because it wasn’t quite timed right. It was still drinking like a really strong Imperial IPA, we hopped the hell out of it. It hadn’t quite enough oxidation yet. The Treblehook got a Silver medal, it was damn good, but it was a bit fresh still.

Mike: A little young yet?

Kim Brusco: Yea, the hops were still quite assertive.

Mike: Is there anything about Redhook, that in your experience, is different or signature to Redhook versus any of the other breweries out there?

Kim Brusco: The one thing about Redhook, and a lot of smaller brewers out there think larger brewers cheapen the process or something. But at Redhook we age our beer. We don’t send young beer out the door. I’ve worked in many breweries and Redhook has a lot of integrity. We really jump through the hoops, and a lot of big breweries do to, like Sierra Nevada and Deschutes. You gotta have a lab. If your going to put the beer out there in bottles and send it to Montana, you gotta spend the money. You gotta go through the process to make sure the consumer is going to get best product. So, that’s not really unique. You know, we have a proprietary yeast strain and we have some special processes that I can’t really just share.

Mike: That’s ok.

Kim Brusco: Keeps the beer unique. The other thing we do here is that we brew a well attenuated beer. Even our Imperial IPA. It won’t knock you over with sweetness. It’s well attenuated. We’ve got yeast, we’ve got processes that when beers start at 18 Plato, it going to finish at 3 instead of at like 5 or 6. I don’t know if you’ve tasted some of the Imperials, some of the big IPA’s, they have so much residual sugar.

Mike: Yea, so in all the time you’ve spent at Redhook, is there any one moment that you can remember, a funny moment, something stupid, just something funny that happened?

Kim Brusco: Not really. It’s a pretty well run plant.

Mike: So no.

Kim Brusco: I’m drawing a blank.

Mike: That’s cool.

Kim Brusco: Stuff happens that’s peculiar. It’s not very funny. Three years ago, we tend to lose our power out here. We’re in a valley and if the wind is coming out of the southeast it knocks the power out. Once our power is gone…we’ll be right in the middle of brewing something and we’ve had to destroy a lot of beer because of a power outage.

Mike: Ouch…

Kim Brusco: It’s a shame. One time the power went out and we had 5 brews in progress and the whole system just stops. We had to clean the whole system out, it was a mess.

Mike: That stinks.

Kim Brusco: Yea…that’s not that funny. We’ve gotten better and better out here. The guy who heads our maintenance department is really good with the computerized systems. We’ve got some backup power and stuff. We can survive better than we did in the early days.

Mike: I appreciate your time. Is there anything you’d like to add at all?

Kim Brusco: No, we covered a lot.

Mike: I appreciate it! Have a good day.

Kim Brusco: Take care, you too!

The third article in the Brewery Highlight Series for Redhook Ales. Click the link for more articles.

For Redhook in the mid to late 90′s things were looking fantastic. Being the trend setter for the craft beer revolution and having a distribution system setup that could not be matched by anyone, allowed Redhook Ale to expand, and expand rapidly into new markets to capture the trend as it unfolded. The first planned expansion was out to Portsmouth to capture the booming East Coast craft beer drinking market. When asked why, Doug MacNair of Redhook stated,

“So, we’re a West Coast brewery, we always have been, that’s where we always were. We wanted to grow, we wanted to go national. We were absolutely committed that…if you let the bean counters do it, the thing that would make the most sense is to build one big ass brewery in Kansas. Right in the center. The company has always been really dedicated to doing things right. So instead of building a 500 barrel brewery in the middle, we had the two breweries on the West Coast and decided to build one on the East Coast. Obviously the beer scene was there, Boston, New York, those are big markets on the East Coast.”

But, in the late 90′s, the craft beer trend hit a plateau with a ton of new flourishing breweries, Redhook was slowly being pushed out of the lime light as new trendy beers became available. The once Golden Goose of breweries, was now becoming the ugly duckling and not getting the attention it once thrived on. The unimaginable happened…layoffs, closing of one of the west coast breweries and the eventual contraction of production became evident and turned good times into something a bit more bleak.

Breaking Out Of The Rut

Courtesy Redhook

Competition was and still is fierce in the craft beer industry. Redhook Ale was fortunate to get in early and establish themselves as a leader. Today Redhook is brewing about 183,600 barrels of beer with plenty of room to grow as the market continues its minimal annual increase. With breweries on both coasts, Redhook is able to deliver quality, fresh beer to anyone in the lower 48 states. But how does a brewery with as much experience and capabilities as Redhook get their voice heard in the sea of beer bottles in hopes of growing their brand once again?

As I see it, when Redhook Ale delivered their banana brew some 20 years ago there was an excitement that filled the air. The idea of a local, fresh craft beer appealed to their region. In fact, living in Fargo, ND, I wish there was a local brewery/brew pub right here. That essence of something new, something different, something local, is what I personally feel Redhook started with, but is now competing against. With new breweries and selections jumping into the kettle daily how does Redhook keep their piece of the pie and eventually expand it?

Innovation and Community

INNOVATION

When Redhook opened its doors it was bringing something new to the market and people drank it up. But the sea of choice has muted their innovation. Everyone has an IPA, a Pale Ale, a Stout and so on. But, not everyone has special or limited releases. More on my thoughts on this craft beer trend here. These beers are really allowing us craft beer drinkers something of a treat to have with our dinners and special occasions. In fact, I think Redhook’s Marketing department said it best in response to a question about this beer trend.

“Redhook’s limited release series provides a couple opportunities. It’s a way to encourage our brewer’s talent and challenge them to bring new and innovative beers to the market. It’s also a response to the beer community’s desire for big, complex beers.”

I couldn’t agree more. Competition breeds quality and this is a perfect example. With Redhook’s talent I surely expect to see some really innovative and great tasting things to come. I was talking with Greg Duehs the other day and I was really hoping to get some secret information out about any upcoming projects. Unfortunately all he said was,

“I can tell you that the fall release is going to be a beer that you would never think that Redhook would make. It is going to be a classic style of beer that I’ve tasted and it is very true to style and it will hopefully take note of Redhook.”

COMMUNITY

Courtesy Redhook

Beer and homebrewing is really all about community. We love beer, don’t get me wrong, but there is nothing better than sharing a cold one with a friend or brewing up another batch together. And as long as Redhook is brewing beer, community is going to be a big part of their success.

I have to hand it to Redhook for their commitment to that community. They love their tried and true fans and it must be noted that in all my conversations with Redhook, the words “We love our fans” came up more often than not. They support their local communities by having homebrewing classes, Redhook Fest and a whole sleuth of other charitable events to help build a stronger community. I think its a true testament to how important their fans and community are to them by the fact that Redhook is the first brewery to agree to do Mike’s Brew Review’s Brewery Highlight. There was no questions asked. They sent me some beer to introduce and put me on the phone with 3 of their most talented brewmasters. It is all about spreading the word and sharing in the brewing/beer community and my hat is off to Redhook Ale for their commitment to quality, community and great beer!

I hope you have enjoyed this mini-tour through Redhook’s past, present and future. Please let me know what you think and when your at the store picking up some tasty brews, just remember when you pick up a Redhook, your part of that historic revolution.

The second (part 2) interview in the Brewery Highlight Series for Redhook Ales. Click the link for more articles.

Continued from yesterday’s “Interview with Doug MacNair of Redhook Ale Part 1”
I’ve cut down the interview to keep it interesting. If you’d like to download the full audio interview click here.

Mike: That’s cool. So let’s kind of talk about the Portsmouth Brewery. What was the driving factor for Redhook to…

Doug MacNair: Build here? So, we’re a West Coast brewery, we always have been, that’s where we always were. We wanted to grow, we wanted to go national. We were absolutely committed that…if you let the bean counters do it, the thing that would make the most sense is to build one big ass brewery in Kansas. Right in the center. The company has always been really dedicated to doing things right. So instead of building a 500 barrel brewery in the middle, we had the two breweries on the West Coast and decided to build one on the East Coast. Obviously the beer scene was there, Boston, New York, those are big markets on the East Coast. And not only that, but Seattle and L.A. on the West Coast. You wanna be near the people. So, originally we had looked at, well maybe down in Virginia, Delaware, somewhere where you were hitting D.C., New York, that kind of stuff. But you can’t just look at where the road is, you…a big one is you gotta find the water. And for us, being a Seattle based company. Seattle is 100% snow melt off the Cascade Mountains. Very, very soft water. Most of the Eastern Seaboard has pretty damn hard water…

(laughter)

Doug MacNair: And  you get down in the South and you get a lot of carbonate, there just a lot of stuff going on. Portsmouth was particularly interesting, its right on 95, yea it’s way up in the Northern end, but that was kind of the downside of things. But it was right on 95, it was very near Boston, which was one of the target markets and for New England, it has pretty soft water. Your a brewer right?

Mike: Yeap.

Doug MacNair: Alright, you can build water up to anything you want. You can add calcium sulfate, you can do whatever you need to do. But if water had just a boat load of carbonate in it or a bunch of iron, god knows what, it’s a hell of a lot harder to take that stuff out.

Mike: Yeap.

Doug MacNair: So you want soft water and Portsmouth has relatively soft water. We could take the water here and be able to match the water profile that we have in Seattle. Redhook, in general, makes a lot of English Ales. We do some other stuff to, but…we make a lot of English Ales, so we’re adding a fair amount of bertinizing salts if you will. Seattle water is softer than here, but both breweries are able to bring the water to where they need to. I find it a little harder water here, but if you add a little less calcium sulfate and the brews are the same.

So that was the big reason. The water was a big one. Right behind it was access to the market because if we are going to make a fresh, non pasteurized beer, you’ve got to be able to get it to market quickly. That’s the name of the game.

Mike: So I’ve been wondering, along with people on my website, with these dreams of becoming a brewmaster or becoming part of the brewing process. Once you’ve reached your status, what do you dream about?

Doug MacNair: Ahhhh, you know. I guess I would back up and say that the point that I am at in my career I don’t give a damn what my title is. What gets me out of bed every morning is the challenges of, like I was mentioning earlier. It’s the challenges that are there everyday of running a facility like this. The challenges are surmounting problems, but then also when we come up with just a ringer on some of these small beers…its been, I don’t even know how long, 23 years or whatever it is. There is nothing better than when I walk up in front of the brew house into the pub and I’m just in my Joe Schmo, no Redhook attire, nobody knows who I am and I can sit there and hear a couple people talking about the beers. They are just taking them apart and saying, “Hey, you know, maybe they used a little bit of black strap molasses,” or something like that…that’s great. It’s something I’ve made that is making somebody happy. They are enjoying it. That sounds corny but still to this day, that is just a really great feeling.

Mike: I think that’s kind of the fundamentals of being a homebrewer. I know some of the most enjoyment that I have making my beer is when I finally open it up and I’m sitting there with 2 or 3 other people and they are like “Hey, this is really good!” And I’ve made it.

Doug MacNair: Yep! It’s very, very satisfying. It’s hard to describe. It goes a long, long ways. Points of wisdom for people getting into the industry. There are a lot of reasons…but if you look at the brewing industry analytically, is it a high paying industry? Ummmm…no. You missed the boat on that one. Is a spring board to a higher career? Well, I don’t know, not really. Its kind of a thing in and of itself. The vast majority of people, I think its why I tend to really like that are in the industry, I know I’m being kind of homer right now…The vast majority of people that are in the industry are in it because its what they really want to do. It’s not so much that it is a means to an end to buying a fancy car or a big house or that kind of stuff. It’s because this is what they want to do. They enjoy it and take pride in it. And that’s kind of cool because that rules from the guy washing the keg to the guy out in the cellars pitching the yeast to the brewers to someone like me, this is what people want to do. What that tends to do is…I have a lot of friends that work in industry, manufacturing and you just don’t see the comradery. You walk up into our pub on any given evening. Chances are you going to see someone from the administrative offices having a beer with one of the brewers and the two of them may be having a heated discussion with me, the top of the food chain inside our little organization here and when we are having a beer, everyone is an equal. We can have our differences and discussions about the subtle points of a beer…”Oh yea, we need more hops in this!” Or whatever it is and I don’t know of any other industry where you see that happening on a regular basis. It’s pretty neat. I encourage you to go to a car show and have the Ford engineer hang out on the back bumper with the GMC engineer shooting the shit about solving an issue with the ball joints. You just don’t get that.

In brewing you do. I had a brewer a half an hour ago, a guy from down in Delaware, I never met him before but he called me up and said, “Hey, I’m having this issue and I just want to have someone with experience to bounce off of.” And absolutely, I took 20 minutes to sit down and give him a hand. I pointed him in a couple different directions to look at. That’s the great part of the industry, no where else you can have that.

Mike: Yea everyone seems very willing to share information.

Doug MacNair: Everyone seems to look out for each other.

Mike: Well I don’t want to take up to much of your time but I have one very technical question that has very much to do with brewing beer. Do you have a beard?

Doug MacNair: Do I have a beard?! I don’t…I’m one of those guys endowed with the lack of…I can grow a really good goatee, but that’s about it. I just look like an axe murder with this miserable thing. The only time I wear a beard is when I do a lot of back packing. If I come back from a couple weeks backing trip, I guess you can call it a beard, its more of this miserable scruff cover.

(Laughter)

Mike: Right on. Thank you for your time. Is there anything you’d like to add?

Doug MacNair: Good luck to you. I think its kind of an interesting angle you are trying to do. What better way to get to talk with a bunch of people in the industry than what you are doing…If your actually looking at it for a career, it is a brilliant move.

Mike: Awesome, I appreciate it.

Doug MacNair: Good luck and I encourage you. Its a long road. Its a hard industry to get into in some ways. Its like a baker, your up at 4 in the morning and they are long days. But after all these years, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Mike: That is exactly what I wanted to hear.

Doug MacNair: Good luck to ya, if anything comes up, by all means, give me a shout and good luck!

Mike: I appreciate it. Have a good day!

Doug MacNair: Talk to you soon! Bye!

The second interview in the Brewery Highlight Series for Redhook Ales. Click the link for more articles.

Today’s interview is with Redhook Ale’s Doug MacNair. Doug has been with Redhook for a long time and shared a very unique story of how he got into brewing and eventually ended up with Redhook.

I’ve cut down the interview to keep it interesting. If you’d like to download the full audio interview click here.

Mike: Hey Doug, this is Mike from Mike’s Brew Review dot com. How you doing today?

Doug MacNair: Pretty good! How bout yourself?

Mike: Good!

Doug MacNair: Your punctual.

Mike: I try to be. Your time is important.

Doug MacNair: So, what can I do for ya?

Mike: Well, I was just going to ask you a few questions, kind of do an interview to get some more information about you and kind of just go from there.

Doug MacNair: Well, whatever you’ve heard, its gotta be wrong.

(laughter)

Mike: So, to start out, could you discuss a little bit about your background information. Where you grew up, where you went to school, are you married, those kinds of things?

Doug MacNair: Its not very particularly interesting. I grew up out in the Seattle area. I got my degree over at Whitman college which is a small college over in Eastern Washington. You know, Walla, Washington. I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest as much as I can.

Got out of school, worked for a couple of years. Made FABULOUS money doing something that I hated doing. I quit my job, bought a one way ticket to Europe about a year bouncing North Africa, Europe, just kind of bouncing all over the place. I ended up, cuz my pride goes before whatever I ended up running out of money. So I took a job in a small brewpub in Germany. I went back up to Germany and said, “I’ll work for free, feed me and house me, and I’ll work for free.” I worked for them for about 4 months, it wasn’t long. But I was then able to do an internship at one of the larger breweries in Germany for 5 months and got kind of a bootstrap education in brewing in Europe. Came back to the states, this was back in the mid 80′s. Back the there weren’t a whole lot of breweries out there, just the Bud’s and Coors of the world and a couple of little guys on the west coast.

Mike: Yeap.

Doug MacNair: Anchor was around. Sierra was around. Redhook was around. Then there were a couple others like Hale Ale, which is a west coast brewery, a real small one. Anyways. Knocked on the doors of everybody and Redhook was in the process of moving out of an old transmission shop which was duct tape and bailey wire for brewing. And they needed someone to hold the fort down, brewing, bottling, racking and whatever needed to be done. So I started with them in the original brewery over in Ballard. Then worked at the new brewery which was an old building in Fremont, which is a suburb of the district of Seattle.

Mike: Yep.

Doug MacNair: A little Scandinavian, yea sure ya betchya, where all that came from. Ended up running that brewery. Then we built the Woodinville brewery and I ran that brewery then we decided to expand to the east coast and we built one back here and I came out to help build this one and now I’m running this one.

Mike: So you’ve been with Redhook for 20 some years then?

Doug MacNair: Yea, I started in…87 I think. Eighty-seven or 88, somewhere in there.

Mike: Wow, so you started off bottling and packaging…

Doug MacNair: Ah yea! Any small craft brewery…it was anything from washing the kegs to mucking out the sumps where all the spent grain, rags flowed outside into a concrete nasty bin…(laughter) to scrubbing the whole copper brew house back then. The brew house was built in 1889 or something. Anyway, it was cool! The old goose neck brats and all that. Was polishing that with the D.E. and every thing that goes into being the little guy. But it was a great hands on experience and helping build all the breweries since then has been a lot…

Mike: Had kind of helped you a long the way.

Doug MacNair: Helped me along the way, absolutely!

Mike: Right on. So before you started in a brewery, you said you headed over to Europe, before you started working in a brewery, did you have any experience doing homebrew?

Doug MacNair: I had been a homebrewer since I was in college. No other professional brewing experience.

Mike: yea..

Doug MacNair: Actually when I went to work over there I didn’t even speak German.

(laughter)

Doug MacNair: That’s how, you know, when you 20 something you can be blindingly arrogant. But hey, it worked. I frankly talked my way into the door and proved myself worthy I guess. They kept me on. It was a great experience. It was fun. We always made lagers. We did eight barrels. It was a little tiny brewpub in a village in rural Germany. The brewpub was owned by…in Germany the brewmaster is less of a position, its more of a status…its like being a doctor. If your a brewmaster you’ve got a four year degree from Reichstag or one of the other brewing academies. He was the brewmaster of the bottling hall for one of the 10 largest brewery’s in Germany. One of the big ones. Which is great. I ran the brew pub for him…actually what the deal was, his son was back at school getting his brewing degree and was so buried in the academia world that he couldn’t be around enough to brew the beer in the brew pub. So between the son and the father they taught me how to brew. During the day I’d brew beer and at night I’d work the bar.

Mike: Right on!

Doug MacNair: Then when I got off shift I’d go up to my room I would translate…they loaned me an old German brewing text book. You know I was the only American around I would translate the German brewing textbook. I was just teaching myself with this German textbook. I kind of figured it out.

Mike: That sounds…(laughter) really interesting.

Doug MacNair: It was really fun!

Mike: It’s a story of passion. I’m curious. How did you know that you wanted to spend all that time in Germany and learning to brew?

Doug MacNair: I didn’t! When I went over there, that was not on the radar. It just wasn’t. I liked making beer, yea, I’m definitely going to spend some time in Germany, yea I definitely want to drink some good beer. I did that all over the place, Czechoslovakia, I was just all over. When I got back to Germany, I was trying to give you the Reader’s Digest version, I actually did start thinking about it. I was in Germany, pretty soon I was without money, I wanted to stay and I had to figure out what I was going to do with my life.

(laughter again!)

Doug MacNair: The very first thing I did, again just being widely optimistic I guess, I knocked on the door of of Reichstag, which is one of the most prestigious brewing schools in the world. And to this day I have no idea, and God bless him for doing it, the Dean came out, I don’t know if he was having a slow day or what, the Dean actually took 20 minutes to meet up with this scrappy American kid. I’ve been traveling in the same clothes for 9 months, I was probably a little rough around the edges. And he took the time, you know, and he talked with me because I was like, “Hey, what is it going to take for me to get into this school?”

“Hey this would be cool, I’ll just go off to brewing school.” What a great idea. I’m not thinking it through. It’s $30,000 dollars a year, and you gotta have some asking for you…I hadn’t thought of that.

Mike: Yea.

Doug MacNair: But he sat down with me and said, “Look, you ambitious, that’s great. I encourage you, its a great industry, fascinating to get into. Tell you what. Why don’t you go get a job and go work for a while and figure out if its something your interested in. If your really interested, comeback and talk to me.” He was very polite and that got me going “Hmmm, alright. I guess I gotta go work. That makes sense.” Kind of like when you go off to get your business degree. Most schools don’t want you right out of your undergrad. They want you to get some business experience.

Mike: Right.

Doug MacNair: Then you go and get your Master’s. I get that, that makes sense. So I went and looked for a job. Landed the job. Once I got into it…my background…I got my degree in Geology. I’ve been a science guy all my life, and I just immediately dug that brewing is chemistry, its microbiology, when you deal with the brewery itself, its physics, hydrodynamics, there is all this different stuff that comes into play. I’ve got to admit, all these years later, it was good going into brewing because you never know what your dealing with and your usually dealing with 3 or 4 things.

Mike: Ya?

Doug MacNair: Whether its a mechanical with the process, or I find that really challenging. Its what I find interesting about it. Then there is the whole artistic side of it. We’re a production brewery, we’re a big brewery, and for me, a lot of people interpret things differently. A lot of people in our case would be out there with these canoe paddles stirring the mash and I get that. That’s cool. To me the art is being able to take all the pieces you’ve got and all the science that you’ve got and really be able to do exactly what you wanted to do.

Mike: Yea!

Doug MacNair: And the thrill of…I don’t know…I’m not a big gear head I’ve got to imagine in some ways that there is a little piece of it that is kind of like being a race driver. Having just a really high performance machine under you and really knowing how to make it fly. There is a thrill on that side of it to. At home I’m a furniture maker, I’m a bread maker, I just got into making my own cheese, I mean I love all that cooking aspect, and there that side of it to just putting the flavors together. But I equally like all the science sides of it as well. Bringing the temperature down half a degree, what’s that going to do to the yeast catalysm and are the ester profiles and I find that fascinating as well.

(laughing)

Doug MacNair: One long answer, bottom line is once I got into it over there…the cool thing was this father and son team even through the language barrier really got me to understand that that stuff was there. I was in a brew pub level to ease me into it but then when I got into the internship with the bigger brewery that is when I really got into it as a profession. Its bottomless! The more you think you know the less you do and the more there is to learn. That’s cool!

Mike: You open one door and it opens into a room full of other doors.

Doug MacNair: Yea and again and again and again…Yeap.

Doug has so much good information I had to break it into two articles. Tomorrow we will discuss the Portsmouth expansion and get a little more candid. Be sure to check out the Interview with Doug MacNair of Redhook Ale Part 2 tomorrow!

The second article in the Brewery Highlight Series for Redhook Ales. Click the link for more articles.

Yea, I said it, Revolutionary. Revolutionary, by definition is someone who  “marked by or resulting in radical change.” Redhook Ale, is just that. You might be saying, “Oh, there are so many other beers out there, why would I drink a Redhook?” What you may not be aware of though, is that Redhook cracked open the the craft beer market and subsequently the boom in craft breweries and selections available to all of us fine craft beer fans.

I know that what I’m proposing is a pretty bold. You may be thinking “But they are partially owned by AB/InBev”. Although, AB/InBev has no control over what Redhook does it is more important that we look at the facts and a bit of history here to understand exactly why this seemingly harmless brand forged new ground for the beer we drink today.

Courtesy Redhook

First off, I am not saying that there were not already craft breweries around. Sierra Nevada, Anchor, Yuenling and a handful of others, all of which make great beer. So good, in fact, it is astonishing that two masterminds with no beer making experience were able to  lay new ground for all brewers.

Reasons Redhook Is A Revolutionary

Imagine yourself, an avid homebrewer making some of your own delicious beers finally hearing that someone was taking the plunge to bring, fresh local, flavorful beer back to production and available for you to drink. I’d be pretty excited. I mean the whole reason a lot of people started homebrewing was because they wanted more options than just light lagers. Imagine the disappointment of the homebrewing community when this off flavor brew hit their lips. Imagine how upsetting it would be to know that the beer isn’t really that good, but for some reason the way it was marketed, allowed it to sustain and gain popularity. In all fairness, this really reminds me of Budweiser. A beer that a lot of people don’t like, but the way it is sold to the masses keeps it popular.

Imagine once again, hanging out with buddies, brewing beer and someone, somewhere has to say. “If these guys making off flavored beer can do it, why can’t we?” The idea isn’t new, it has been happening over and over for years now. How many breweries do you drink beer from, all started with a group of guys saying the exact same thing? Redhook’s marketing scheme and off flavored beer sparked a new generation of breweries to jump in to get their piece of the pie.

AB Deal – Good or Bad?

Courtesy Redhook

But this wasn’t the big one. This didn’t bring craft beer to North Dakota, this didn’t ignite the fire and turn it into an out of control blaze. That came in 1995 when Redhook did what no other craft brewer had ever done or would even speak of. They teamed up with Anheuser Busch. The controversial partnership set the town on a blaze.

A lot of people were mad, thought Redhook sold out. Redhook wasn’t local anymore and they were even seen as having sold their operations to A-B. That couldn’t be more further from the truth than anything. Redhook created a partnership with A-B to have access to distribution channels that no one else could possibly dream of. I can’t blame them for that, who really can? A-B holds the 3 tiered system at will and the old addage of “If you can’t beat them, join them” rings true here. However, Redhook still owned the majority, still developed their own recipes, still did things day in and day out as Redhook would do them, they just get to put their beer in AB/InBev’s warehouses.

The partnership deal went down and Redhook expanded to the east, putting more craft beer and more selection into other people’s hands. In the end, isn’t that what we all want? But there is a silent factor that never gets mentioned in the craft beer revolution in regards to this controversial partnership. When Redhook and A-B signed a deal and went public with stock offerings, the Craft Beer Gold Rush began. Peter Krebs writes in “Redhook Beer Pioneer,”

Redhook’s successful IPO marked a watershed in the specialty beer business, sparking a series of IPOs rom other specialty breweries hoping to follow in the wake of Redhook’s success. Within the same year, three other breweries went public. Two of them were the specialty beer industry’s largest brewers-Boston Beer Company, producers of Samuel Adams, and Pete’s Brewing Company of Palo Art, makers of Pete’s Wicked Ales. The third company, Hart Brewing Company, was the second largest specialty brewery in Washington.

This is not where it ended though. Small breweries were expanding all over the country. Once there was blood in the water, the corporate sharks feed, and these sharks were feeding on beer.

Redhook paved this road. They took a chance, marketed it right and made the right deals to show that making good beer is a viable business model. They busted the craft beer market wide open by not only inspiring avid homebrewers to “one up them” but also by creating one of the most controversial deals that not only brought hype, distribution and money to Redhook, but also lit the fire under investors and other brewers to get on board.

Redhook enjoyed substantial growth after their stock offerings. This would be the high times for Redhook. Life was good. An expansion out east with plans to build in the grain belt, record sales and a general overall good feeling would all begin to crumble. The question though, is it Redhook’s own fault? We’ll see in the next installment.

The first interview in the Brewery Highlight Series for Redhook Ales. Click the link for more articles.

In today’s interview we talk with Head Brewmaster of the Woodinville Redhook Ale’s brewery, Greg Duehs. You may recognize his name from the specialty beer labels that Redhook is putting out. Beer is in his blood!

I’ve cut down the interview to keep it interesting, to hear the whole audio recorded interview click here.

Mike: Ted was telling me you have an interesting background. I’ve done a little bit of research on the net about you, and there really wasn’t a whole lot there. So my first question is, can you give us a little bit of information on your background? Where you grew up, what school you went to, you know, other information along those lines.

Greg Deuhs: I grew up in Saint Paul, MN.

Mike: Sweet, that is kind of near where I live.

Greg Deuhs: Yep, I was a homebrewer in the late 80′s so my friend told me, “Hey, you make pretty good homebrew you should do it for a living.” And I never really thought of that. So I started looking around the local beer scene in the Twin Cities at the time…at the time the only craft brewers or microbrewers available were James Paige and Summit. And course they were the big brewers there at the time.

I was always fascinated with beer. I grew up going to breweries of Minnesota. Ever since I was a little kid my father would take me on brewery tours at least 4 to 6 times a year, especially during those summer vacations we’d go to all the breweries. In those days there was Grain Belt, Hamm’s, Schmidts, there was Schell’s in New Ulm, there was Cold Spring. So those breweries were always breweries I went to. I was always fascinated with the beer that was, you know, the beer and the brewing process. And I remember looking into the kettles at the Hamm’s brewery in Saint Paul and seeing the copper kettles and if you’ve ever seen pictures of that brewery or been to that brewery it was a beautiful, traditional brewery with 3 or 4 levels with the mash mixers on top the lauter tuns on the next floor and the kettles on the floor below it and it really put an impression on me. So when I was homebrewing those kinds of things made were reminiscent to when I was a kid going to breweries.

Mike: Yea…

Greg Deuhs: So I’d be homebrewing and my friends said I should think about doing that for a living. At the time I went over to the craft breweries in town and I went to Jim Paige and I sat with Jim Paige one day and offered to work for free there. And that’s what I did. I started working for free cleaning kegs. One of my first jobs was not only cleaning kegs, because everyone has to do that, was shoveling out the lauter tun. That was the job you always got as a new person. But at the time to buy malt, there wasn’t…malt houses weren’t setup to sell to small breweries. So the malt house in Minneapolis had a bag system that made 100 pound bags of malt. We’d go over there with a rental truck and pick up about 10,000 pounds of malt. The 100 pound bags would slide down a shoot and you would grab the bag and you’d have to put it on your shoulder and carry it into the truck and stack them up in the truck. At the time I probably only weighed 150 pounds so lifting a 100 pound bag was a lot…

Mike: I can’t imagine doing that in the middle of August in St. Paul or the Upper Midwest. It is REALLY hot…

Greg Deuhs: Yea! About every 4 to 6 weeks we’d have to go…you know 10,ooo pounds of grain was only good for about 10 brews. So depending on what time of the year it was every month you’d have to go over with the truck and pick up the malt.

So that was my first exposure at Jim Paige. Eventually after being there a few months I ended up by default becoming the head brewer, in fact I was the only brewer there because it was Jim Paige and me and there was another guy that started the homebrew shop that Jim Paige used to have. Then it went from there.

I worked at Jim’s for 3 years and during that time I went to the Siebel Short Course in brewing I was really into making beer commercially. From there I went on to, I decided I needed to make some money so I could buy a house. Being a craft brewer making 1,500 barrels a year is a pretty tough business so I was offered a job at the Hamm’s brewery, which was Strohs at the time in St. Paul. I started there as a production supervisor of brewing. I was there for a year and a half and I worked my way up to assistant brewmaster of that brewery. During that time was the early to mid 90′s where the craft beer scene started to take off.

Mike: So you made it over to Redhook and what year did you start working there?

Greg Deuhs: I’ve been here two years.

Mike: Two years. So your, from my understanding, in charge of the complete operation?

Greg Deuhs: Yes, I’m in charge of the Woodinville Brewery.

Mike: Ok, so what is your exact position?

Greg Deuhs: I am the Woodinville brewery plant manager and staff master brewer.

Mike: So, because I don’t know, what all does that entail?

Greg Deuhs: I’m pretty much in charge of the whole shooting match, from raw materials to finished product leaving out the door. Heading all departments brewing, packaging, maintenance engineering, administration, profit/loss the whole thing.

Mike: Wow, so when a beer goes out your doors its got your name on it? I know the 8-4-1 has your name on it.

Greg Deuhs: I have my name on the limited releases, but yes I am responsible for all, and I’ve very fortunate to have a good crew here that can help me out.

Mike: In actuality, I was sent one of those 8-4-1′s and I really think that the idea behind the beer, the team work and creating the guidelines for the creation was really interesting. Where did that idea come from, and I guess any idea to create a new recipe? Do you do anything for inspiration, sit down and have meetings…or what?

Greg Deuhs: Before a limited beer is made and this jug is last summer, so its essentially 8 months before the beer is even released, you know its like any other business plan. You come up with what the styles of beer are out there that would fit what we are looking for. And we had a very, ah, kind of list that we were looking for a beer that is unique, a beer high in alcohol, one that would have an appeal to the craft beer scene, one that would bring credibility to the brewery, and we had a couple of attributes that we were looking for. And that narrowed down the styles of beer we could do and the 8-4-1 idea came up in conversation about “Hey what if we had some sort of collaborative beer?” And the 8-4-1 name kind of evolved from that. Eight brewers, four recipes into one beer concept.

Mike: That’s pretty cool. So when I do finally get to open it, what can I expect from the Expedition 8-4-1?

Greg Deuhs: Its a very complex beer. It really turned out well in my mind. It is a high alcohol beer, it is 9.5%. You can tell it is a high alcohol content beer. You can tell the complex flavors though. It starts out rich and malty, with some hops upfront and the you taste some of the smoked malt and then the finish in my mind is the oak flavor of kind of the vanilla, the smooth vanilla oak flavor. That’s what I taste when I taste the 8-4-1.

Mike: So, feel free to not answer this question, but I feel I need to ask. Are there any secret projects or recipes that you are working on that you would be willing to give us a sneak preview on for the fall or…

Greg Deuhs: Yea…there are but we’ve been bound to secrecy. (Laugh)

Mike: (Laugh)

Greg Deuhs: I can tell you that the fall release is going to be a beer that you would never think that Redhook would make. It is going to be a classic style of beer that I’ve tasted and it is very true to style and it will hopefully take note of Redhook.

Mike: Perfect, that is exactly the sneak preview I wanted.

Mike: Right on. Cool, well is there anything you’d like to add?

Greg Deuhs: Interestingly enough, and I always new there was some folklore in my family, my great great grand father immigrated from an area of Holland that border Germany and Belgium. He immigrated to Minnesota and he had a brewery in 1800′s that is now documented in a book called…”Amber Waves of Grain.” Its a new book that came out not to long ago that is the history of Minnesota brewing. In there it documented his brewery, in Minnesota outside of, which is now the suburbs of the Twin Cities. I guess I could say…I don’t want to sound like Jim Cooke, but I can say it goes back to my great, great grandfather who was a brewery and had a brewery.

Mike: It’s in your blood.

Greg Deuhs: Yea, so it was always talked about, it was never documented and now its documented. At the end of May I’m going back to Minnesota and there is a relative from Holland that is visiting and we are going to go to the farm where the brewery was. So I’m going to walk the grounds where the brewery was.

Mike: Wow, that is going to be really cool!

Greg Deuhs: So that to me will be a very memorable experience in my brewing career.

Mike: Wow, (a little astonished by this story) that is going to be cool! Well, I just want to thank you for your time again.

Greg Deuhs: Ok, yea! No problem.

Mike: I really look forward to trying the 8-4-1.

Greg Deuhs: Yep, and I look forward to the website.

Mike: Yep. Thank you very much and have a good day!

Greg Deuhs: Have a good day to!