Need up to 30 seconds to load.
had to borrow a pot from my girlfriend's
mom i didn't have anything big enough in
my apartment and even then it was
probably like a three gallon pot
so i ended up
i didn't have a work chiller so i used a
couple bags of ice
this was
rudimentary home brewing
right home brewing to professional
brewer there's
a big big sort of gap there what was the
what was the transition like for you
when did you when did you start
pursuing a career in brewing and how did
that first start well i was a home
brewer for probably a good
um
seven or eight years before
it felt like a realistic
plan and even when i decided to do this
it really
was barely a realistic plan it all
worked out i guess right
so i i was living in new york city and i
was working in the finance world i
actually quit and took a job at a at a
local brewery i would not have been
comfortable making a jump from ex from
home brewing to having my own brewery i
really wanted to learn from other
professional brewers because while the
technique is the same
the actual practice is so different you
have much more complicated equipment
you're using uh
either an enormous steam boiler or a
direct fire kettle it's much more
dangerous there's a lot of things you
have to learn if something goes wrong
you don't lose forty dollars you lose
thousands exactly that's the thing you
don't want to dump a lot of uh you know
thousand gallon batches down the drain
do you remember what the first home
brewed beer was that you made very
clearly uh it was a i was a german miner
in college uh up in in the bay area is
this where your love of all these
different you know you said you'd like
berliner vices and all these different
styles i do have a i do have a soft spot
for german style beers yes pilsner the
nice german pilsner is is great you know
nirvana
but i also love belgian beers and it's
hard not to love american beers these
days i'm an equal opportunity beer
drinker but i had a
a ta in a class i was taking was a an
avid home brewer and he encouraged me to
to pick up the hobby after i gave a
presentation on on beer in in one of my
german classes
and i did i went to uh to oak barrel
wine craft on san pablo avenue in
berkeley and sort of bought a kit for a
nut brown ale oh nice and i had to
borrow a pot from my girlfriend's mom i
didn't have anything big enough in my
apartment and even then it was probably
like a three gallon pot
so i ended up
i didn't have a work chiller so i used a
couple bags of ice
this was
rudimentary home brewing right right but
uh it turned out well enough that uh
some friends you know who opened those
first bottles with me were like
they didn't die
and they said yeah okay let's open some
more step one no one died
yeah
step two they enjoyed it yeah everybody
enjoyed it and then it really becomes
it's the sort of thing
uh where
homebrewing is such a mix of sort of art
and science it really allows you to be
creative but also allows you to kind of
nerd out on the things that you you want
to to to nerd out on and that's it
that's why it's such a great hobby i
think and brewing in general it's just
it's a it's a great thing it really it's
something that humans have been doing
for thousands of years there's also that
love of just handing something that
you've created and then seeing people's
faces light up or seeing their opinion i
mean do you still get that today with
these when you see people drinking the
beers that you i do walking into the
tasting room on a busy friday
afternoon uh and seeing you know a room
full of people sitting there drinking
beers that maybe i'm not brewing myself
anymore but that i've had a hand in or
like california ale which was based on a
home brew recipe that was the first beer
that telegraph uh brewed and launched
with and that was a that was one of
those that was one of my homebrew
recipes yeah it's changed a bit over the
years but at its heart it's still that
beer that i was brewing in in my kitchen
in santa barbara and
that's that's a great feeling it's just
a wonderful feeling
you
