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A Conversation with:

Garrett Oliver

Brooklyn Brewery

Brooklyn, NY

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As in “Cooking & Eating with Beer”, this series of conversations with chefs, brewers and owners, is presented in their own words. I have done as little editing as possible of their words.  The sequence of topics may be shuffled but I have made every effort to present the subjects words and thoughts in their entirety.

On a bright spring morning a week ago I made the trek to the Brooklyn Brewery in Williamsburg to talk with brewmaster Garrett Oliver. I began the interview, and he was well into his thoughts on why there has been no real move by Craft Brewers to brew low-alcohol “session” brews, when my tape recorder stopped recording. As I have no stenographic training we decided to take advantage of the light and set up a series of photos.

The following interview was done the next day by telephone.

I was asking why there seem to be so few low alcohol “craft Beers.

First you are asking about the lower alcohol beers. We make a Brooklyn Light Beer here, which is one of the favorite beers here at the brewery. But it has a limited audience outside the brewery.

Why do you think that is?

A lot of people looking for craft beers are looking for things with larger flavors than Brooklyn Light has. This has considerable depth to it and that is why we like it. But it is a ten degree beer. It is all malt and it has a great malt flavor and a nice crisp hopping to it. As I was saying, when I was brewing at Manhattan Brewing Company, years ago, we had an “ordinary bitter” called Village Bitter that ended up being drunk almost entirely by expatriates from England. They would say, “Wow, this is a great version of a pint of bitter, the kind I would have in my pub.” But most of our customers wanted the stronger versions.

One thing that I will say, that I am encouraged by, I have had the opportunity two or three times in the last few years to judge in both the Great British Beer Festival and the Great American Beer Festival within several weeks of each other and judge the British Style beers at the Great American Beer Festival. And one thing I can say is that, of the subtle styles of British Beers the American brewers are doing (they are doing) a much better job of picking up on that lighter style, on the subtleties and really clue into what those beers are all about.

From what you have just outlined, it seems that when consumers, think of “Craft Beer” they assume that it is a strong, high alcohol, high hopped beer.

That is what they are starting to assume. As far as I am concerned, that is not a good thing – to be the “be all and end all” of what excites the consumer. What you need to have are beers that can be bought and drunk every day. A very good example of that is Fat Tire. Fat Tire is… I don’t think it is the most exciting beer in the world, um, I would prefer something more interesting, but at least it is a beer that is selling quite well and it is a beer that is not hopped through the roof. That is not to say that I don’t enjoy a brew that is hopped through the roof. We make quite a few of them here ourselves. However, the attitude that seems to be prevailing more and more is that if it isn’t like that then it is not a real Craft Beer. This is not, to me, even vaguely true.

How do you think this happened?

I think it goes in both directions. I think it’s that a lot of the younger brewers kind of sewing their oats so to speak. They are saying, “This is how we are going to make our mark.”… Like I said, just putting more hops in a beer is like a chef pouring more salt in the food. It is not very impressive. Anyone can put more and more hops in the kettle. And come and they say my beer has 95 bu’s… Well, am I supposed to be impressed (by that)? Because I am not! What is really interesting is, is the beer beautiful? Does it smell wonderful? Does it taste wonderful? Is it well rounded? Does it play out on your pallet like a story, with a beginning, middle and an end? There are too many beers out there that have a beginning, no middle, and a thin bitter finish. And, um… I think that’s a shame.

And the reason for this is that the young brewers are trying to brew beers that they feel are exciting?

 

They feel that the beers out there are not sufficiently exciting so they want to create something that is outside the box. I think everyone wants to do something new. And there is nothing wrong with that. But I think that if the consumer was to get the idea that that is all there is to craft beer then we’d all be in a lot of trouble because no one is going to drink those types of beers all the time. Now, I am not making the argument that we should all be going down to the lowest common denominator or that hoppy beers are not good. Our I.P.A. sells very well and we are very proud of it. But I think that is good that there be a more well-rounded attitude towards brewing than just new type of beer. If that is all that is around I can tell you I get bored pretty fast.

What do you think would be the way to educate consumers about these different styles that are not the extreme beers?

You won’t be surprised to hear that I think that food is the big key to consumers getting in touch with craft beer. Because, when you reach people at the dinner table, you reach them where they actually live. If you are not at the dinner table, if you are not in peoples houses, in a way you don’t really matter to them. You are not really in there lives in a significant way. I think that is important. Some of these bigger beers, because of their high flavor profiles virtually exclude their participation at the table.

How should the Craft Brewing people go about showing up on the dinner table?

There are a lot of different ways. Obviously “Beer Dinners” are a great vehicle.

But there are also cheese tastings, beer vs. wine events. Those are the kind of things I like to do. Everyone has their own way of approaching it. But I think that we have to… we should keep an eye on the type of image we are promoting to the general public. If the overall image is one of “Yahoo … Extreme beer!” It will turn so many people off that you will have a hard time getting those people back.

And appealing to the food press…

The food press, as I was saying yesterday, is upwards of eighty percent women… I don’t think that the craft brewing industry represents itself well to women at all. Certainly the mass production brewers are doing a worse job; I mean they are openly misogynistic in their advertising. I mean the “cat fight” advertisements for one. This is a huge turn off for women who will say they don’t like beer for that reason. It is not only that they don’t like the beers they have had; they don’t like the image of beer and the attitude that surrounds it. And I don’t blame them.

One thing that I like to do is to go to some of these organizations and say to them “I would like to come on a Friday afternoon, say around two o’clock in the afternoon, and do a beer tasting for your entire staff. I will bring twelve different beers and taste everything... for the editorial staff. And I have done this at Gourmet and Saveur and a number of other magazines. It really does shows big results. What you find is that a lot of these people can’t write about beer because they don’t know anything about it. Therefore, they are afraid to write about it. Once they learn about not only do they have a basis from which to write but a lot of them discover, at that moment, that they actually like beer. It’s shocking how many people in the food press have never paid the slightest attention to craft beer. I mean not only in their writing but personally. They know nothing about it.

Can you guess at the percentage of the people in the press that you have had at these events who know nothing about beer?

It is hard to say but I would say that it is up in the seventies.

They would be like seventy percent of the food press not knowing about wine?

They don’t think about beer in the same category. They think of beer as an afterthought. When they think of beer it is still the image of some guy sitting in front of a television set watching a sports game in his underwear. Until we move on from that image we are going to have a tough time reaching these people. We don’t have the money to put on huge advertising campaigns. So the only way we have of reaching the public is through the press. And I don’t think we are doing a great job of doing that communicating.

To change that you are suggesting a hands-on sort of thing?

Yes. The Brewmasters themselves need to be out there and really be in touch with what is going on not only in their communities but on a broader level with the food press. The wine people have done a great job.

I was just listening to something on N.P.R. this morning and they were saying that not very long ago the top selling wine in this country, the wine that everybody knew, was Manishevitz. Very quickly wine has become huge in this country. I think that if we are not we are going to have our lunch eaten, so to speak.

So that’s why it is most important for Craft Brewers to incorporate food and think of the family dinner table rather than think of the local pub…

The local pub will always be there and it is not like any of us are trying NOT to be there… I think when you change the image of beer from something that is connected with a lot of negative things to more positive images such as food and a positive lifestyle you are harder to attack. Let’s face it, do we think that people are out there “abusing” Chemay and lager … Is that a problem in society? No!

Well, in today’s society kids are being taught in school that alcohol is just as bad a drug as heroin…

That is another fallacy. Alcohol is not a drug. I mean, even people who know better have fallen into that fallacy. A “drug” is not something that is metabolized by the body for energy. I mean, alcohol is, literally a food. Now, like a lot of foods, it has effects on food and your body. On the other hand, heroin is not something you can eat that will keep you alive. Until just recently in our history beer was considered a food product for a majority of people on the face of the earth so to try and lump it in with heroin, cocaine and marihuana is absurd.

The problem then is positioning beer to be accepted as a food?

One thing that I have noticed is Eric Asimov, who is now the wine writer for the New York Times, and he has been a friend of mine for over fifteen years, and a supporter of craft beer, he tells me that when they do articles on craft beer they get more mail than they get from any of their wine articles. That shows that there is a lot of interest out there. It also shows that enthusiasts of good beer are being drastically underserved by the press. If people actually wrote to their newspaper, which they almost never do, and ask why they are not covering beer, you might have more of coverage. Certainly that kind of reaction has had an effect at the New York Times where they are now saying we should cover beer more often. Now, there are so many newspapers and magazines in this country that in their lifestyle edition every week they will carry a wine article and then when you ask them about beer they will say something like “Well, we did a piece on beer last year.”

You see that as a major challenge. The image of the craft brewers?

Yes, absolutely. That goes for almost any group out there who is trying to promote a food or anything else. Again, wine has done a great job. But there is nothing wrong with beer being more accessible and more proletarian. People have sometimes said to me that “You want beer to be more like wine. You want it to be unassessable and elitist and the thing is that is so far from being a problem it is laughable. In a country where beer is associated in peoples minds with all these negative things and I should worry that I am going to “elitist it… I mean I wish that was a problem that we had to worry about.

            People in this country are very aware of the high end of wine and the low end of beer.

When they think of wine they think of a bottle with a cork in it and a nice label. And they think of beer they think of the mass marketed beers in a can.

            Now when you go to any winery in France there are the wines in the bottles and then there is the “gasoline hoses” on the wall marked “red” and “white” and you bring your own fill-up bucket, you get five gallons of wine and go home. That is still how the vast majority of wine is sold in the world. But here people think of wine as being something sophisticated and a ticket, if you will, to upper class. Beer is lower and working class. If we can’t get away from those class associations I’m not sure how far it is going to be possible to get…

What is your favorite beer to brew?

I know it is a cliché but that is like asking which child you like best.

I mean which is more challenging?

I love both the lighter and darker beers. Probably I am more interested in the brighter flavor range but that may only be because it is a bright spring day here… If you asked me in the middle of winter I might be thinking something different... I mean, right now we are developing a Christmas Ale for the Danish market and that is fun to work on. It will be strong spiced ale. At the same time I like brewing our Saison because it is one of my favorite beer styles. And it is a difficult yeast strain that likes to mess with you and it keeps you on your toes. So there are all sorts of different things. I love when we start brewing our Blanch beer in the spring time, just smelling the orange and coriander to me is a sign of spring in a certain way. Right now we are making our next Brewmaster Reserve called Scorcher which is a very light and very dry but with a huge hop character. So it is a very heavily dry-hopped beer so we are having a good time enjoying that directly out of the tank and smelling it. So there are always fun things. The Brewmasters Reserve series is a way to make sure that everything stays interesting not only for our customers, but also for us.

How many beers do you brew in Brooklyn?

Over the course of a year probably more than a dozen… Probably fifteen or so. At the moment we are brewing Pennant, I.P.A., Blanche, Weiss, Brown Ale, Light Ale and all the Brewmasters Reserve Beers. We are pretty much at capacity at the moment.

What kind of freedom have you personally felt there in the fact that you brew the specialty beers in Brooklyn and the other beers are being brewed upstate?

I mean … My feeling is that is not really the case. I mean, for some of the beers Pennant, I.P.A. and Brown Ale, we brew the draft here and they brew the bottled beer up there. So it depends on what you are thinking of as a specialty… If I.P.A. is considered specialty then we are brewing it here, and there. The Brewmaster Reserve Beers we are brewing entirely down here right now. I am working on the spiced holiday beer for Denmark and that I s going to be brewed upstate. I mean it really is, to borrow a phrase from Jim Koch, it is like being a chef and you have two or three restaurants and you have different kitchens that you work in. This is one kitchen that is another one. Even up there we have our own malt and our yeast strains so we are really doing something different than anyone else is doing there.

The Black Chocolate Stout comes from there and always did, and I certainly think of that beer as a “specialty” beer… So certainly, not having to deal with the day to day making of our top selling beer allows me more room to do other things. That said, I am always constantly working on those beers too. You know, and the Pilsner in particular where we have made some real improvements recently. So none of these beers are far from my sight or my mind at any given time. Not having to brew them physically at this brewery, which we couldn’t do in a brewery this size, allows us a little more range. But as we fill up here because the beers we have in house are growing rapidly so that puts a squeeze on our ability to do the Brewmasters Reserve here. We have to work hard to get them in here.

So that makes expansion difficult?

Especially in a neighborhood like this which has gotten so “hot” over the last few years so we are looking at will we expand here or will we move somewhere else in Brooklyn, which we have talked about… and then, if we do, will be brewing everything in-house, or will we build a brewery somewhat larger than this one, I mean there’s… all these things are on the table.

Who was your inspiration to become a professional brewer? Not a brewer… a professional brewer.

Well, it was less of a “whom” than a “what”, I mean the beers I had during the year I lived in England were the inspiration. And I have to say Peter, if you remember that I am now old enough that, back then there weren’t that many… I mean the only brewer that I knew was Mark Witty certainly, watching Phil Markowski getting into brewing a year and a half or so before I did, certainly was an inspiration. I had spent time on the phone with David Geary, I liked his beers and was very happy to have the time he was willing to spend talking to me about the beers that I was trying to make, emulating some of his at home. So those are the ones that I can think of but especially out where we were on the East Coast and in the late 80’s there wasn’t exactly anybody around. But I mean certainly, on the professional side, Mark Witty taught me professional brewing. And it was certainly a wake-up to see how different it was than cooking in your kitchen.

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