Brewery 3; The First Layer
This is part one of a 3 part series (probably).
This series will focus on different aspects of the same events. These events are much like ogres, which are much like onions; they have layers. Let’s start with the first layer, and talk about my friend who I’ll call Boysenberry Brewer (because I like alliteration). Here we go!
It began how many stories begin…with a beer 🍺
As I’m sitting down to write this story, I have a home brew in my hand. Well it’s a work brew. Well it’s not the regular work brew but a small batch work brew. Rather than continue to confuse you, why don’t I just tell you about this beer. This beer is a boysenberry stout that we made for one of our brewer’s retirement. He had worked at the Los Angeles Brewery for a few decades, he had probably made hundreds of thousands of barrels of beer, but I’m not sure if he’d ever designed, hand crafted, and then drank his own beer. The beer itself is a bit lacking in boysenberry (the flavor mostly fermented out), but apart from a muted fruit flavor, it’s absolutely delicious. The beer is roasty, fudgey, and very slightly bitter. It’s nearly everything I want in a stout, but most importantly, this beer is a defining achievement for our brewer who got to dream it up. This brewer got to make something that he proudly served at his retirement party, for his friends and family. That is the magic of Brewery 3. And I’d love to share how we got there!
Brew Day #2: Green Tea Belgian Wit
When I was in packaging, I had heard there was a “home brew rig” over in the brewing department. I had seen it in action once and it looked pretty great! It had everything you needed to make beer, and I could get most of my ingredients for free...what a win! I pinged the folks over there and found some time to come in on a weekend to make a brew. I fumbled through it, and produced some acceptable beer that I got to share with friends. That was essentially that as my work load picked up, but the thought was in my head that there was this fancy piece of equipment sitting in that closet going unused. When I got to the brewing department, I had the idea to ask my boss if maybe I could set up a brew day on a Friday. I’d get some brewers involved to help out, and I’d bring in my laptop so I could take my meetings on Zoom. It’d be like a (mostly) regular day at work. Well one emergency cleaning later (turns out there was very old, and very smelly wort still in the lines), then one very stuck mash, then an emergency, manual emptying of the mash cooker, then reassembling the system, then finally getting the mash up to temperature, then...well it turns out I missed all my meetings. All of them. Even the one that was a “One-to-One” with my boss. I thought that would be the end of that. And then my boss asked me when I was going to organize the next one. It was this moment that I realized, not for the first time, that I worked somewhere really cool.
Someone’s gotta help us mash in
I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the beginning of Brewery 3. I scheduled the next brew day, set up an ‘out of office’ message that explained I would not be in any meetings that day, and we got to work coming up with the next brew. There were other folks who were excited to get involved and make something cool. These brewers had energy, creativity, resourcefulness, and just needed someone to say “let’s do this” and remove the barriers in their way. And thankfully, I was able to help remove those barriers. We moved the system into the brewhouse on the brewer’s recommendation and I let them design the recipe. By getting the brewers involved the word was out; this system was for everyone to use (apparently it had been very tightly controlled in the past). It also helped that we shared some taste samples of that batch with the brewers. Nothing helps convince folks like free beer 😁. We made our next brew (a hoppy red ale), and folks started asking what the next one would be.
If this man doesn’t OWN that beer, I don’t know who does
In steps our Boysenberry Brewer. This fella had been talking about his retirement since I had met him, about 6 months ago but it seemed like he was really going to go through with it. He was heading up to Knott’s Berry Farm and suggested something with boysenberry. We kicked around a few ideas and landed on a time honored tradition, fruit goes well in a stout! When brew day arrived, this brewer was everywhere observing the process, getting involved, and soaking in the moment. As I said above, this was HIS beer, so he was going to make sure it was done right!
This was an amazing realization for me, but unlike so many moments in life, this was a repeatable thing. Our next brew was a dry hopped IPA that’s called “Swiftly Sleeping.” This was a different brewer’s ‘dream’ IPA and we’re waiting for it to finish out before we know what we really have. From the smell of it, I bet it’s something great.
In parallel, our QA department had made a seltzer experiment in order to identify possible sources of microbial infections. Much like how Mendel worked on peas because when he was done with his experiments, they were food, this seltzer project yielded a perfectly good seltzer base. So I figured we could throw some lavender earl grey tea, a bit of lemon peel, and sweeten with lactose in order to create “English ‘Cuppa” seltzer (in process; I should have an update on how it turns out in the next installment). Thus Brewery 3 had a spin-off, Blendery 3!
So that brings us to the present. What I’ve learned on this first layer is how the simple act of brewing beer (or seltzer), can do for folks. For Boysenberry Brewer, it's a capstone to a long, successful career. For the IPA dreamer, it’s an educational and fun way to learn more about how his day-to-day job fits into the overall brewing process. For those QA folks, it’s an introduction to the brewing side of things, it’s about building relationships with their ‘supplier’ and ‘customer,’ and it’s about seeing their hard work turn into something drinkable! Finally, it’s another way for me to love my job, express a passion for making delicious beverages that put a smile on someone’s face, and for me to practice leading folks. Which brings us back to the ogres, which are like onions, which have layers. What I’ve just described is a bunch of folks who have a home brew rig. I haven’t yet explained how this is an organization yet. That’s for Part 2!
