Nanobrewery Interviews Part II - Why their doing what their doing...

Hey all,

About 9 months back, I posted about my brother's and my fascination with nanobreweries. This prompted us to reach out to many of the regional nanobreweries in our areas to conduct interviews with the owners in order to find out their stories. The project ended up being a very enjoyable and taught us a good deal about why people embark on these small breweries.

When we first mentioned this on HBT, we had only conducted a few interviews at that time. Given the popularity of that original posting, I wanted to come back to expand that list of interviews so anyone who is interested can check them out.

Interviews Posted To Date:

• White Birch Brewing Co. (Hookset, NH)
• Lefty's Brewing Co. (Bernardston, MA)
• Manchester Brewing (Concord, NH)
• Wolf Hills Brewing (Abingdon, VA)
• Wild Wolf Brewing Co. (Nellysford, VA)
• Rocky Point Artisan Brewers (Rocky Point, NY)
• Baying Hound Aleworks (Rockville, MD)

Take a read through and let us know what you think. And more importantly, if you are anywhere close by these breweries, pay them a visit or pick up a six pack to see what the buzz is about.

Slainte!

-Okt

Thanks for the link to your site and interviews, it's awesome to see average people that start as homebrews move up to something bigger. It makes me think that someday I could dabble in something like a nanobrewery.

You should hit up Paper City Brewery in Holyoke, MA, too.

Ernst - Thanks for the feedback. If I recall, Paper City brews with a 20 bbl system. We've tried to focus our interviews on those breweries who use a 3 bbl or less system (which is our 'fuzzy' threshold between nanobrewery and a micro). While the stories coming out of most breweries are a great time, we wanted to look at outfits that are are just a step above homebrewing.

-J

I was at Hess Brewing in San Diego, CA with a 1.6bbl system the other day. They are fermenting in 50g plastic conicals inside of glass fronted beverage coolers with Ranco temp controllers on them. It looked so much like the nicer homebrew system I've seen it was amazing.

Great guys, and they do so little volume of beer that they don't bottle or keg and only sell takeaway in growlers. Awesome stuff.

I have been to Hess as well. Awesome setup and great beer. Like munche said, it looked like a nice large homebrew rig.

Is there anyway that you could PM the email address for the nanobrewery in NY? I have a few questions for him on licensing and what it takes to get up and running in NY state.

You could try these guys, they are another nano in NYS in the Finger Lakes. I've had their beer before, although I just found out it was considered a nano.
http://www.keukabrewingcompany.com/Home.html

Thanks for all the awesome interviews, it's very inspiring to hear from these brewers! I would be interested to know more about their licensing processes, their brew rigs - not super detailed, but basics like what type of burner, liquid transfer mechanism, and type of vessel for boil and ferment. Also how do they control ferment temp? what type of incorporation did they follow (LLC, sole proprietor, etc),

Ato: I believe I sent them an inquiry before, but I never got a response. However, I'll give them another try.

MikeRoBrew: Awesome feedback, thanks! We are about to interview another nanobrewery and I'll try to work in some of these questions to see what they say.

Regards,

-Okt

I really enjoyed reading all the interviews, Okt. Keep it up!

hillhousesawdustco said:

I really enjoyed reading all the interviews, Okt. Keep it up!

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Thank you. We have one or two in the queue at the moment - if you want to subscribe to our feed, you'll get notice when they go live.

-Okt

I also think they're interesting reads. Thanks for posting!

Sorry but I thought of another question: It would appear that even small will need a collection of kegs to sell your beer in. I would guess quarter barrels are the most common but some bars will accept a corney keg??? Also I am hearing you need to have every one of your kegs labeled with a government warning as well as tax stamp. Any clarification appreciated. Thanks again!

Ato said:

You could try these guys, they are another nano in NYS in the Finger Lakes. I've had their beer before, although I just found out it was considered a nano.
http://www.keukabrewingcompany.com/Home.html

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I had their beer, and I thought it tasted like they were scrambling to fill their fermenters to get beer out for sale. Everything they had, at least the day I was there, tasted terribly green. Hell, my wife picked up on it not tasting like it was "ready" before I said anything. That's always struck me as the real risk of brewing with such small equipment, the pressure - if things do well and you're selling out - of not being able to keep enough beer in stock.

I didn't want to mention it but I kind of thought the same thing.

Sent from my Droid using Home Brew Talk

Thank you for doing this!
I will also shamelessly plug our own brewery here in Chattanooga, we have a 2 bbl electric HERMS system, using 6 2bbl conical fermenters, serving via long-draw draft system from 1/2bbl kegs. All home-built geeky stuff by myself Would be fun to chat if you would like. We are a couple weeks away from receiving TTB license but are going through a few test batches to finalize equipment Also carrying 8 craft beers on tap, and traditional Irish food.

McHale's Brewhouse and Pub

This is a really cool project, I'm looking forward to getting to read through them all. Thanks for posting!