Episode two is here, in which we discuss festivals, growlers, and a multitude of other good things and finally come up with a name (thanks Luke!): Pint/Counterpint. We’ll let you decide which is which.

What do you think? Have comments about festivals or growlers, retail or otherwise? Comment below!

Find yourself saying Episode two? Wait! There’s an Episode One as well. This one has better lighting.

Any topics you’d like to hear us pontificate about? Let us know! We’ll probably take you up on it.

I made my first two stops today on my grand tour of NC Breweries for the book: Roth Brewing Company in Raleigh and Triangle Brewing Company in Durham. I couldn’t ask for a better way to get everything rolling. It was a great couple of stops with a bunch of guys who are really passionate about their craft.

But I fully expect to tell you that about everybody I meet with.

If you haven’t been over to Roth, you should take the time to do so. They’ve got a little taproom/hang out area that’s warm and cozy. The big leather couch, old TV and game system bring me back to my college days in a way that isn’t unpleasant. The added bonus is that my college days didn’t have great beer on tap a few feet away.

Until recently, (on the opening of Dry County Brewing) Roth had the distinction of being the smallest brewery in the state. They operate a 2 bbl system that double batches into 4 bbl fermenters. For those of you playing along at home – that means that they brew twice in one day to make 8 kegs of beer. It’s a lot of work, but it’s given them an enormous amount of brewing experience in a short amount of time. Last week, June 11, was the one-year anniversary of their opening and owner Ryan Roth shared with me today that they’ve brewed over 250 batches of beer in that time.

Ryan talked to me a little bit about where he and his brother came from, what brought them into the beer business, and where he sees the brewery in the future. They’re currently looking at accounts outside of the Triangle area of North Carolina for the first time since they’ve opened and they’re excited to expand: “By this time next year, we should be operating on a much larger system and continuing to grow – but we really want to be a big part of the local craft community, here.” He also shared a little bit about Roth’s flagship beer, the Raleigh Red. “I couldn’t believe it when I looked it up and I found out that none of the local brewing companies had ever named a beer ‘Raleigh Red.’” Ryan is an alumnus of NC State and his brother Eric, Roth’s head brewer, is currently finishing his studies there.

In the book, we’ll get into what the Roth brothers were doing before the brewery opened, how they decided to take the leap, and a few good stories about naming and maybe dumping a batch or two of beer. We’ll see how it plays out.

* * *

Word to the wise: If you’re planning on visiting Triangle Brewing Company on a day that they’re not offering a brewery tour, call ahead.

Triangle is located in an area of Durham that used to be a little unsavory. While that’s no longer the case, the warehouse that is the home to Triangle Brewing Company is located behind a locked fence, and while the guys inside are welcoming and friendly, they might not know you’re there unless you give them a ring.

Once inside, you’ll be met with a busy brewery. Their canning line – the first automated craft canning line in North Carolina – is full front-and-center in the space with their brewhouse and fermentation room acting as a back drop.

Rick and Andy sat down with me and told me a little bit about their history – they went to high school together up in New England (Rick is a die-hard Red Sox fan; right on!). Andy moved down to North Carolina to work in the hospitality industry and when Rick came down to visit, he fell in love with the area. From there, they finally got to a point where they decided the time was right (the phrase “shit or get off the pot” might have been mentioned in passing) and decided to act on opening the brewery they had talked about for so long. For a while, they owned the distinction of being Durham’s only operating brewery (and maybe its first – historical research pending). What really set them, apart, though, is their choice of making strong Belgian-style ales as their flagship brands.

Rick: “People said we were crazy to have a Belgian Strong Ale as our flagship in North Carolina. They said it wouldn’t work, that the market wasn’t ready for it. But here we are!”

In the book, we’ll get into what Rick and Andy were doing before they become brewers, their decisions behind why they started canning, and the story of Rufus, the beloved brewery mascot found buried in their basement.

As I’ve been working toward starting Mystery Brewing Company, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity of making some great new friends in the craft industry, particularly here in North Carolina. In talking with friends in the industry, I find that we discuss topics in a completely different ways than I did when I was just a fan and beer drinker.

Yeah, that sounds arrogant as hell. But it’s not what you think. It’s not like I’m somehow more awesome now, but the discussions take a different path. It’s not: “Hey – is that beer awesome?” Those still happen all the time, but it’s also “Hey, what do you think of the packaging options these guys are using to get into the market?” It’s “I know you’ve been monitoring oxygen pickup on that process, what have you found?” It’s industry-related, it’s technical, and it’s fascinating. So, when a fellow brewer – one that I particularly enjoy these discussions with – approached me to propose some sort of podcast centered around those same discussions, I was intrigued.

We talked about it. We planned it. And now here it is.

It’s not going to be for everyone, but we hope that it allows us to bring a unique perspective to some topics in and around the brewing industry that we don’t see getting a lot of discussion. Sebastian is the Director of Brewing Operation at Natty Greene’s Brewing Company, one of the largest breweries in North Carolina. I am Founder of the soon-to-be-open Mystery Brewing Company, one of the smallest breweries in North Carolina. He’s school-trained in Germany, I’m self-taught in my backyard. His brewery makes a lot of traditional styles, mine attempts innovative twists on style creation whenever possible. We think that our combined perspectives are, at the very least, interesting and worth listening to. We hope you enjoy it, we hope it leads to discussion, and we hope that you’ll join us in the future when we put more together.

What do you think about homebrewers pouring in public under the auspices of a startup brewery? Hit us up in the comments section below; we’re eager and willing to keep going on this conversation.

A big ol’ helping of thanks (and many beers to come) to Tres Bruce Media for helping us shoot, edit, and post this.

You know what I needed? More to do.

Brewery startup is a lot more work than I necessarily expected, even if most of that work is filling out paperwork and chasing down equipment. So, naturally, when I got a message asking if I was interested in writing a book about North Carolina Beer and Breweries I said, “Sure – why not? What else do I have to do?”

Starting this summer, I’ll be traveling to every brewery in the beautiful state of North Carolina to get the low down – how they started, who they are, what they make, and how they make it.

The goal?

Next spring you can hold in your hot little hands a comprehensive guide to beer in North Carolina, with maps, pictures, and a suite of factoids and tidbits about where to buy beer in NC, the best, most popular beer festivals, and even some information about where to get good local cider and mead, and local food to go with your awesome local NC Beer.

What’s more? While I’m doing these travels, I’ll be taking the blog with me. So while the book will be the information source, you can get my personal take on the whole piece here, where I hope to be able to inspire some of you to get out to a local brewery in North Carolina and see it for yourself.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t send a huge, nay, enormous thank you to the good Beerinator Jonathan Surratt who pointed this opportunity my way. Sir, I owe you many a beer, and here it is on public record.

Thanks also go to John F. Blair, Publisher of Winston-Salem, NC who is publishing the book.

Look for more soon! Travels start in the next couple of weeks!

And before you ask me to never use the word “sluice” again, here’s a lovely picture of a sluice from Wikimedia Commons:

I would also like to relay that “sluice” is a surprising safe Google Image search.

We will now carry on with our regularly scheduled blog post.

So, what’s coming down the sluices!?

I’ve been conspicuously silent across both this blog and Mystery’s blog (where this, incidentally, is being cross-posted, if you’re reading this at Mystery’s blog, you may want to check out Top Fermented), for the past couple of weeks and that’s primarily because my days have been turned into a twisting mass of odd jobs, manual labor, staring at the wall waiting for inspiration, and alternately burying myself so deep into work that I forget to eat. A good chunk of this has been keeping me away from writing.

But it hasn’t been keeping me away from the computer. More on that in a sec.

I’m on a more regular schedule now, where I’m actually spending 3 days a week “at the office” so you should be seeing a few more blog posts popping up here and there.

Also popping up should be the fruits of (some of) my labor, so here’s a little preview of what to expect in the next couple of weeks:

Educational Opportunities

In case you haven’t heard, myself and a couple of excellent friends organized and hold a monthly beer Meetup here in the Triangle in NC called Taste Your Beer for lack of a better, more inspiring, name. It’s been received pretty well and people seem genuinely excited to learn more about beer – not how to make it, but how to enjoy it, and just more about beer in general. So when I heard that there were upcoming Cicerone exams coming to Raleigh, I had the idea to make a study group for it.

However, after thinking about it, I thought – why limit this to just people who want to become Cicerones? Lots of people want to learn about beer but don’t necessarily have the desire (or the work experience and wallet) to become Cicerones. That’s why, starting in February, I’ll be offering beer education classes at my location at Mystery Brewing. It’ll be an 8 week class meeting once a week (with a few exceptions) covering beer from ingredient cultivation to serving and food pairing including off-flavors and style samples. It will cover the Cicerone exam content thoroughly so if you, like me, want to take the Cicerone exam in April or June, then this should act as an excellent study guide. However, if you just want to learn about beer then that’s cool, too.

Look for more information about these classes popping up in the next few days. We need to get going soon to be ready for the Cicerone exam AND the World Beer Festival.

New Website

With a new brewing company comes a new website. The blog over at mysterybrewingco.com will soon be going away for a more robust website with some features that I think will be fairly interesting to people. Among them are the normal kind of website things: discussion boards, a news feed, info about the brewery, social media and that sort of crap. But here’s a little preview of some of the other things I’m working on (not all of which will be up and running immediately):

• A check-in point/badge system specifically for Mystery Brewing. Think FourSquare, or Untappd except you actually have the chance to get REAL REWARDS if you earn the right badges: Discounts on brewery merch, beer, private brewery tours, beer, t-shirts, beer, stickers, and probably, at some point, beer. This should launch with the new website, even if beer won’t.



• A Mystery beer genealogy tree. I am quite proud of the fact that all of my beers started as homebrew recipes, and I am telling you now that they are all going to evolve over time. Recipes I have now may spawn other recipes in the future. This beer genealogy tree will be a way to find out how all Mystery beers are linked together, batch to batch over time. It will serve as a means as helping people find out both what they enjoyed about a beer and what new beers they might enjoy. Once all the equipment drops into place and Mystery beer starts hitting bars and restaurants, this will also serve as a way to track which batches of which beer are out in the public and where you can find them.
• An ongoing art contest. I am a big fan of the arts in general. I went to an art school for my undergraduate experience and was, shall we say, intimate with the art school, even though I was only a performing artist, myself. I would like to take the opportunity to showcase art through Mystery. In specific, I will be announcing an ongoing art contest of sorts through which artists of any sort – professional, amateur, painters, web comics, whatever – can submit artwork for use to represent beer in our repertoire. The artist who’s work is chosen will receive money in return for the use of the art, as well as a royalty for every piece of (non-packaging) merchandise sold using the artwork. (Since we won’t be in bottles for a good long time, we’re talking posters, t-shirts, etc.) More details on this later in the spring, but artists, start thinking Evangeline.
• Weekly updates on progress in the brewery. Things are starting to pick up speed and while anybody who is part of the classes up above will be able to see things starting to pop up around them, a lot of people don’t know what exactly is going on in there, so we’re going to get into some detailed updates on how we’re progressing toward getting beer on the market, even if that update is why progress isn’t being made. Back when I started Top Fermented, this is one of the things I really wanted to do is get into the nitty-gritty of what goes on behind the scenes when a brewery is opening. For the most, especially when it’s come to financing, I’ve felt like it was either a little boring or getting into detail would get into confidentiality issues with my partners. Now that we’re moving past getting money and into (*whimper*) spending it, I feel a little more like I can let people behind the curtain. Prepare yourselves to see week after week after week of.. ermm.. well… pictures of an empty cement box. Yaaay!
• More from me about the industry in general. I’ll be folding Top Fermented into the new website. It’ll still exist on the original domain and function independently, but it will also be integrated into the new website as the brewer’s blog. It means no more separation of sites and it should mean a more rigorous update schedule. It might also mean that I piss more people off that I probably want to retain the respect of as I voice my opinions, but.. ermm.. well.. that sucks.

  Okay – this part isn’t nearly as exciting to you as it is to me. Still. I’m excited.

Kickstart-y Goodness

And no, that doesn’t mean that I’m starting another Kickstarter project (yet), but Kickstarter backers will remember that there are still homebrew recipes to go out, Irregulars memberships to revel in, beer dinners to eat, and video chats to watch. I haven’t forgotten, and there will be movement on a couple of these things soon.

And more.. much, much more.

If I’m running into any sort of problem, lately, it’s the fact that I have more ideas for things to do than I have resources and, frankly, spare neurons for processing. The important part that my next blog post should be a snark filled rant about some sort of craft beer segment piece and not one of these lame update sessions.

But! The future is bright and there’s beer there. Join me!

À votre santé,
Erik