Over Beers

I sat down with Kathy Ganser of Devils Creek Brewery in Collingswood New Jersey. They’ve been brewing up great beer for three years now, in fact their third anniversary is on Saturday May 18th!

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Produced by Freddy Clark

Music:"Slow Burn"

Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

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I had the opportunity to sit down with Jeff and Jessie Greco to talk about how you open a brewery, get engaged and keep your full time job while you wear out a lane on the Garden State Parkway getting it all done. Plus make great beer at the same time!

I had the opportunity to sit down with Jim Barbiere, head brewer of Two Ton Brewing in Kenilworth New Jersey. We met in their downstairs “speakeasy” taproom along with is father Doc the CFO, the talk about their journey to opening about two months ago.

After the show back in September on the ABC rule changes, when we had three breweries together on the show, I wanted to do another one where we had a few brewery owners but spoke about the beer, not the state rules. So I asked each brewery to bring two beers so we could sit down and discuss what went in to the beer, why they brewed and how they felt about the beer. I think you’ll find it was a really interesting discussion and we had a lot of fun.

Throughout history brewing and farming have always been tied together. You brewed with ingredients that were nearby and for farmers that meant you brewed with what you grew yourself. Today there is usually a space between where the grains are grown and where the beer is brewed. That is not the case with Screamin’ Hill Brewery. The brew house sits right on the farm, Owners Brett Bullock and Ryan Cole like to say “From Field To Glass”. Where ever possible they use their own grown ingredients, whether it’s the grains to make their base malt or the pumpkins, tomatoes or basil used to flavor their beers. It’s grown right there.

Breweries in most places were traditionally in industrial sections of town. When laws changed and they had the opportunity to open a tap room, they were created by carving out a section of the production brewery, putting in some taps, a bar and some stools. Tap room opened. For breweries that started after the law changes, the dynamic changed and they built their taprooms as the center piece. Thought was given to how welcoming the space can be. How will people feel when they visit. It can be a place where people can be social with one another and generate a sense of community. That’s the feeling you will get when you visit Death of the Fox. Plus there’s something different. The smell of coffee greets you when you walk in. In addition to being a brewery, Death of the Fox is also a coffee house.

www.brewedindependent.org

A couple of weeks ago the show was at the Fir Farm’s Hop Harvest. One of the places getting hops was Jughandle Brewing Company. We talked about getting together for the release of the beer they were making with the picked hops and that is exactly what we did last Saturday. Jughandle released Fir Coat, their harvest ale.

I knew that there was a rich history of brewing in the Northeast but I had no idea just how rich it was. During his talk Rich Wagner mentioned that he had published a book, entitled “Philadelphia Beer” going through the history of brewing in Philadelphia. I knew I wanted to read it and I knew I wanted to have him on the podcast.

There’s the old saying is Blood is thicker than water…but is blood thicker than beer? That’s what I was looking to find out when I visited Fort Nonsense Brewing Company earlier in the summer. FNC is owned and operated by not just two, but three brothers. Andrew, Thomas and James…the Aslanian Brothers. They are brewing a variety of classic ales and lagers with their own unique twists and talk about those beers with only a hint of sibling rivalry during the conversation.