The thought of going pro pops into every homebrewer's head at least once. In my case, I wanted to have a brewing company here in San Jose. I wanted the brewing company ethos to pay homage to the fact that his area used to be a captain in the agricultural industry. A line of our beers would be based upon several cash crops of the past, such as apricots, prunes, plums, cherries and pears. It's important to me that business help each other by shopping from one another, so we would've sourced these ingredients on a seasonal basis from local producers. Sound familiar? It should as a local brewery has already beaten me to the pint!
To a large degree, this is exactly what Almanac Beer Company is doing. Almanac co-owner Jesse Friedman is someone I first met when he use to blog about beer and food. It was through him that I got a small taste of the "foodie" movement. Far from being an elitist viewpoint on eating, being a "foodie" is more of a "geek" approach to food where every aspect, from production to preparation, is looked upon with an intent desire to "see how it's done". It is this mentality, coupled with a desire to support local businesses and farms, that serves Friedman well as he developes new beers for Almanac Beer Company.
With SF Beer Week 2012 just a few short weeks away, Friedman found himself at Hermitage Brewing Company in San Jose checking up on his latest beer as well as looking in on his growing collection of barrels. He invited me to join him prefacing the upcoming experience as "messy". Having tried his inaugural ale and loving it, I took him up on the offer as I wanted to get a small glimpse in the life of a small business owner in the craft beer industry.
What's Behind the Curtain
Almanac Brewing's Jesse Friedman pulling samples from the fermentor.
It's no secret that Almanac Beer Company brews their beers out of Hermitage Brewing in San Jose. The cost to open up a brewery is staggering, hovering near the 1 million dollar mark (or significantly more depending on what you want to do), and few people have access to that kind of capital. So it's not unusual for a brewing company to start its life out by having its beer brewed by someone else. It's a more economical way to get going and many beer companies will just roll over their profits into capital and equipment for their own facilities. Friedman tells me that the end game is to eventually have their own brewing facilities but until then, it's very nice to be able to make a phone call and say we need to up the production and be done with it.
Because Hermitage brews beer for so many other people (a blog post for another day), Friedman will basically have this entire production run put into bottles and kegs which Almanac then ferries to their storage facility near San Francisco. This makes much more sense because San Francisco is where the principles of Almanac, Jesse Friedman and partner Damian Fagan, are based out of and, from a distribution standpoint, is centrally located.
What Friedman and Fagan don't have in San Francisco though is an impressive wall of barrels. Almanac has 2 lines of beers. The first is a line of beers that fall under the "From Farm to Bottle" moniker. As the name suggests, these are beers that have been designed to be bottled and be sold in the retail space. The second line falls under the "From Farm to Barrel" line. These are beers that are being aged in various 2nd use barrels, the majority of which will end up being soured at one point or another. Almanac, so far, has these barrels stored at Hermitage Brewing Company where they are carefully accounted for. Almanac procures these barrels from an unnamed vendor who guarantees the quality of the barrels. Some breweries I've been to have an entire deparment with dedicated resources for their barrel program. For a beer company like Almanac, Friedman and Fagan do it all.
New Almanac Beer Sneak Peek
While visiting with Friedman, I had the opportunity to get an early sample of Almanac Beer Company's next beer. Fagan couldn't be onsite this particular day as he was in Sacramento (I think) on a press check ensuring the labels for their next beer were up to their standards. Set to be released during SF Beer Week 2012, the newest beer in the "Farm to Bottle" line is a strong witbier brewed with several types of oranges, such as Blood and Cara Cara, along with spices like ginger. The oranges were sourced from Hamada Farms, a 3rd generation familiy owned and operated farm located in Kingsburg, CA, some 30 minutes south of Fresno.
The latest Almanac release, a strong 7% witbier, straight from the fermentor.
Coming right from the fermenter, the strong witbier is an opaque yellowish color reminiscent of watered down orange juice. I'm picking up some wheat malt aromas and flavor, as well as ginger and orange-citrus character. What I find is that the witbier still tastes like a witbier but with fruit accents.
Brewing fruit beers can be dual-edge sword at times. Something Frieman still wrestles with is the criticism that his beers don't taste "fruity" enough. My personal opinion of fruit beers is that they should, first and foremost, still taste like beer. The fruit character should be a part of the overall flavor profile and not the dominant flavor. Thankfully this is something that Friedman agrees with as well and it shows in the beers he brews.
I should also probably clarify that I've been calling this beer a strong witbier because its alcohol by volume is about 7%. While much stronger than a traditional witbier, the beer so far still retains all the key elements that make a witbier a witbier.
The other thing I should probably elaborate on is the seasonality of their beers. Almanac will always be a season behind with their beer releases. That's just how nature works. You can't brew a summer seasonal beer with summer fruits and release it in the summer simply because nature doesn't work that way. Almanac harvests the fruits during the peak of their growing season, brew with it, and then release the resulting beer the following season. To brew a beer any other way would mean Friedman and company would have been sourcing their ingredients from areas outside of our region and I just don't think this is something they want to do.
Did I Ever Tell You About that Time I Fingered a Bunghole?
4 buckets of roasted heirloom pumpkins ready to be stuffed.
My main reason for visiting with Friedman this day would be to help him move the needle forward with their "Farm to Barrel" beer program. Friedman and Fagan broke down and roasted 250 pounds of pumpkins the night before. These pumpkins were then divided between 4 food-grade plastic buckets and brought down to San Jose where I helped add them to a barrel.
A tense moment as Friedman watches his barrels being moved from off the stacks.
There was a tense moment when Peter Licht of Hermitage Brewing used a fork lift to move the barrels Friedman needed to the ground. Once there, I mounted the barrel I would be working on and got to work. I donned on a pair of latex gloves, screwed in the homemade funnel into the bunghole of the barrel, and started stuffing in pumpkin bits.
As Frieman promised, the process was a little messy. I ended up getting bits of pumpkin on my sleeves and on my arms. As we worked, we both cracked jokes about "showing the barrel a good time" and I think I even mentioned how this reminded me of manually flushing a toilet after dropping the kids off at the pool.
Friedman with a handful of heirloom pumpkin ready to be stuffed into the barrel.
Friedman then remarked about how this was the "glamourous" side of brewing. While he was being sarcastic, I actually agreed with the sentiment. To me, this was the glamorous side of brewing. Yes, it is fun to interact with people, and to do pourings, and beer dinners, but to a brewer, this was the fun part; this was the "art" in artisanal. Talk to any brewer you respect and I'm sure they would agree 100%.
A word about the heirloom pumpkins used in these barrels. I wasn't there when Friedman and Fagan roasted the pumpkins but Friedman commented on how much flesh the fruit had. For example, a basketball-sized pumpkin would have an inner core (where all the seeds were) about the size of a baseball. By comparison, the pumpkins you find at your local Lucky's or Savemart during Halloween will be mostly hollow as those varietals were bred and grown to be jack-o-lanterns. As I stuffed the pumpkins into the barrel, I couldn't help but notice their wonderful, sweet aroma. The juice, for lack of a better term, in the buckets were syrupy. I almost regret not taking a bite while working.
Last Call
With the day's work done, Friedman and I grabbed a little bit of lunch, spoke about the impressive growth of Almanac, and then parted ways. Getting a glimpse into his work, even an afternoon's worth, left a good impression on me. Almanac, as a company, is at the point where Friedman can finally reap a salary. As such, he is looking to sell his soda company, Soda Craft, and focus full time on Almanac Beer Company.
"Going pro" will always be on the mind of aspiring homebrewers. But before you decide to jump in the deep end, you better know what you're getting into. Spending a few hours with Almanac Beer Company has shown me there is a huge difference between brewing professionally and owning a brewing business. Almanac Beer Company has also shown me that regardless which path you choose, the important thing is to make great craft beer.
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