Touring the Brooklyn Brewery with Brewmaster Garrett Oliver
Near the end of April I attended an American Homebrewers Association (AHA) membership rally hosted by the Brooklyn Brewery. One of activities at the rally was a tour of the Brooklyn Brewery by brewmaster Garrett Oliver.
The tour consisted of standing in the one big room where all the brewing takes place and listening to Garrett Oliver tell about how operations are conducted at the Brooklyn Brewery. At first I was surprised that Brooklyn Brewery could produce so much beer in such a small brewery, but Mr Oliver explained that only about 25% of the Brooklyn brewed beer was actually produced in Brooklyn. The bulk of the production takes place as F.X. Matt Brewery in Utica, New York. Mr Oliver supervises the brewing at both locations.
At the Brooklyn location, they brew nine batches of beer per week: two batches a day Monday through Thursday, and one batch on Friday morning. Mr Oliver explained how their brewing system works and also explained the absence of the almost ubiquitous grain silo which marks just about every brewpub or microbrewery I’ve been to. These silos hold what’s called the brewery’s base malt—the malted barley that makes up the bulk of the grains used to make the brewery’s beers. Many breweries use the same base malt for all of their beers. Changes in color and taste are introduced with the addition of specialty grains and hops (and sometimes different yeasts). Mr Oliver doesn’t believe in using the same base malt for all of his beers. Each of the Brooklyn beers has its own character and thus its own malt profile.
Mr Oliver said, “Don’t you just hate it when you go to a brewpub and you start sampling the beers and they all taste the same?” The essential character of a beer comes from the malt, so beers made from the same base malt will have a similar taste whether they are a pale ale or a stout. “I want all my beers to have their own flavor and character,” said Mr Oliver. “So I buy all my grain in bags. It’s more expensive to buy in bags, but that’s the only way to achieve what I want with my beers.” Mr Oliver speaks like a true artist—a liquid artist who combines grain, hops, and yeast with Brooklyn tap water to create drinkable masterpieces like his Belgian strong golden called Fortitude, his Smoked Porter, and the 2005 Saison (the beer that I started the night with).
