Terry Hawbaker Interview

For our 4th episode we'll be speaking with Terry Hawbaker of Bullfrog Brewery, in Williamsport, PA.

Bullfrog Brew Day

Having tried a few different and striking bottles from Bullfrog Brewery in Williamsport, PA we knew it was only a matter of time before we would be making the trek up to meet head brewer Terry Hawbaker: friends of ours had smuggled to DC bottles of Bullfrog's "El Rojo Diablo" - a Cabernet Sauvignon barrel aged sour red ale dry hopped with 3 pounds of hops in the barrel, and "Magic Beans" - a barrel aged, soured black saison with chocolate and vanilla beans. Terry's experiments with wild yeast and barrel aging have garnered him both a GABF gold medal in the Wood and Barrel Aged Sour category for "BeeKeeper" and a cult following amongst the beer geekerati.

When we contacted Terry, he was enthusiastic to have us up for a brew day and we had a feeling it would be memorable trip to Billtown. Turns out Terry is a brotherfish, with a birthday in March like ours which ventures speculation on the predilection of Pisces and the umami of sour beer.


Because the brew house at Bullfrog is front-in-center of the pub, Terry and his assistant Nate keep bakers hours so as not to get in the way of the lunch crowd. We were up early to start the brew day at 3AM, with a brief tour of the cellar and a sample of a just tapped cask of an 18 month old Flanders Red, a vinous and intriguing blend, that Terry was going to be transporting to Wilkes-Barre later that day for the grand opening of his friend's restaurant AuRants. With the first sip, we knew this was going to be an amazing day...and the taps kept flowing and the bottles popping.





Terry and Nate are obsessed with the possibilities of their beer. They've learned that patience and the art of forgetting are keys to the life of long aged and mixed fermentation beers: "Beekeeper", a buckwheat honey spiked saison, spent well over 2 years in Cabernet Sauvignon barrels before it was released and at times was thought to be a lost cause. Long aging in oak barrels make for significant investments of time and space for a small brewpub.

Their ambitious schedule of bottle releases of single barrel experiments, painstakingly blended and hand bottled in the cellar have been wildly successful. It's a demanding job keeping the pub supplied with interesting, new drafts and burning the other end of the candle keeping the bottling schedule on-line and it's apparent that these guys are not getting a lot of sleep (and further apparent they're doing so without regret). They are not giving themselves a break either, with plans to put in several more barrel racks in the near future: Underground, Independent...Maximum Rock N' Roll.


Their kegs gone wild series are original, off-the-cuff riffs on Bullfrog's clean draft beers that Terry inoculates with wild yeast and acid producing bacteria in the keg, giving these beers funk without the added wood notes that accompany their barrel aged beers. On the occasion of our visit, the current interpretation was Smokin' Amber Gone Wild. A delicious, hugely complex enigma of smoke, malt and gamey-lacto-funk.

Terry's big 8% abv Edgar IPA is his best selling beer, which they have to scramble to keep in the tanks. Bullfrog has bullied and corrupted their local clientele to expect evermore artful and compelling beers with each return visit. Even his hop bombs haven't escaped the creeping influence of wild yeast, as shortly before our trip Bullfrog released bottles of "Undead Ed" which is a reformulation of Edgar IPA with brettanomyces, which dries out and sharpens the beer, as well as adding enticing aromatics.

It seems Terry is near bursting with ideas for new beers and is only bound by the limitations of the physical space of the cellar and hours in the day. He apprenticed in a very serious bakery that specialized in spontaneous leavening years back that served as his introduction to wild yeast and acid producing bacteria, and he has proved an apt pupil. Terry very consciously sees his brewing as an act of art, yet without any pretense or pomp.

Both Terry and Nate are that great combination of easy going and really engaging, equally music and beer possessed and have fanatic homebrewing backgrounds. Nate just bought a used 55 gallon system to start filling barrels at home: a man after our own hearts. They are both passionate about the entire spectrum of brewing from dialing-in their house Blonde, to Terry's quest for the ultimate Scotch ale, to all the barreled madness.

A bottle of De Dolle's Oerbier Reserva stands sentry over the mash tun. It's one of our favorite and inspiring beers, a mixed fermentation goliath (~13% abv), aged in used Bordeaux casks for 18 months, and it made absolute sense to see it there. We also spotted a bottle of Pretty Thing's Baby Tree on the stairs down to the cellar, who we visited with just a few months back.

Bullfrog was founded in 1996, and still operated by Steve Koch and his father Bob. Charlie Schnable brewed there for 5 years before leaving to open Otto's in State College, PA. Terry came on board in 2004, after brewing for the now shuttered Black Rock Brewing Co. in Wilkes-Barre, PA. Steve has given Terry free rein in the brew house which has paved the way for some really radical creations.

The copper brew house at Bullfrog is an Old World showpiece...

The fermenters and conditioning tanks are right behind the bar, making even transferring beers something that must be done before any customers arrive. Bar patrons have a front row view to the ageless mystery of fermentation.


Like many of the breweries we have visited, a farmer comes by to collect the spent grain once it is removed from the mash tun.


As the brew day wound down, Terry was kind enough to open up a bottle of "Frambozen" for us to sample. A perfectly balanced sour raspberry beer blended from two barrels of completely different beers (one higher gravity, one lower, one with raspberry puree, the other with freshly picked berries). All of their sour barrel aged beers start out clean with the rest served on tap, no special grainbill, mashing , or hopping, the magic is in the microbes and time.


We sat the fella's down for a detailed interview in which we cover all things wild, barreled and otherwise Bullfrog, that we'll have posted soon. If you've never been to Bullfrog, there's no time like the present (to get ripped apart). Thank you Bullfrog.

Central PA Preview

Our second BrewLocal road trip found us pointed North to the great wilds of Central PA. Pennsylvania is ripe with beer destinations that make for endless possibilities for beer touring, there are dozens of interesting, small breweries and brewpubs: an intricate stratagem scattered across the map.

Our search for local took us to Williamsport, PA for a brew day at Bullfrog Brewery, where wunderkind Terry Hawbaker is producing highly original, boundary shattering beers with abandon.

Next up we sat down with Williamsport's prodigal son Mike Hiller, who plies "The People's Beer!" at his small production brewery Bavarian Barbarian Brewing Co. Mike gave us some great insight into the logistics and realities of starting a small brewery.

An hour south found us in Selinsgrove, where we spent an afternoon with founder, head brewer and secret mycologist Steve Leason of Selin's Grove Brewing Co. Steve is a bit of a brewing-polymath, producing impeccable beers across a glut of styles.

We'll be rolling out posts from the trip over the next several weeks, keep tuned.

David Wollner's Recipes

We suppiled the name and then asked David Wollner of Willimantic Brewing Co. to dream up a recipe for a no-holds-barred IPA named "Menschkeit", which is yiddish for the quality of being a Mensch or a good guy. Drink up and be Menschful.

"Menschkeit" ~ David Wollner's Dream Rye IPA

Recipe Specifics
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 15.50
Anticipated OG: 1.074
Anticipated SRM: 8.3
Anticipated IBU: 144.2
Brewhouse Efficiency: 68 %
Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Grain
------
10.00 lbs. Pale Malt
3.00 lbs. Rye Malt
1.50 lbs. Wheat Malt
1.00 lbs. Crystal 30L

Hops
-----
1.50 oz. Chinook (Pellet 13.00% AA) @ First Wort Hop
1.50 oz. Columbus (Pellet 12.00% AA) @ 40 min.
1.00 oz. Cascade (Pellet 5.75% AA) @ 25 min.
0.50 oz. Columbus (Pellet 12.00% AA) @ 20 min.
1.50 oz. Cascade (Pellet 5.75% AA) @ 10 min.
1.50 oz. Cascade (Pellet 5.75% AA) @ 0 min.
1.00 oz. Cascade (Pellet 5.75% AA) @ Dry Hop
1.00 oz. Columbus (Pellet 12.00% AA) @ Dry Hop

Yeast
-----
WYeast 1028 London Ale

Extras
-------
0.25 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min

1.00 Unit(s) Whirlfloc @ 10 min

Water Profile
-------------
Add gypsum to adjust water to ~100 ppm Sulfate

Mash Schedule
-------------
Sacch Rest 60 min @ 150

Notes
-----
FG 1.014

David was in a particularly rye mood, because he also supplied us with the recipe for "Rail Mail Rye", his favorite house beer.


"Rail Mail Rye"

Recipe Specifics
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 10.63
Anticipated OG: 1.055
Anticipated SRM: 5.6
Anticipated IBU: 36.0
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75 %
Wort Boil Time: 95 Minutes

Grain
------
7.50 lbs. American 2-row
2.50 lbs. German Rye Malt
0.63 lbs. Crystal 20L

Hops
-----
0.38 oz. Cascade Pellet (7.80% AA) @ 85 min.
0.50 oz. Cascade Pellet (7.80% AA) @ 55 min.
0.43 oz. Cascade Pellet (7.80% AA) @ 25 min.
0.50 oz. Cascade Pellet (7.80% AA) @ 0 min.
0.68 oz. Cascade Pellet (7.80% AA) @ Dry Hop

Extras
-------
0.25 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 Min.(boil)
1.00 Unit(s) Whirlfloc @ 10 Min.(boil)

Yeast
-----
Willimantic House Strain Fermented in the mid 60s (WYeast 1028 London Ale is the closest commercial equivalent)

Water Profile
-------------
Profile: Unfiltered Willimantic tap water plus 1.68 tsp of gypsum added to the boil

Mash Schedule
-------------
Sacch Rest 60 min @ 153

Notes
-----
FG 1.008

Cold condition for 5 days after primary fermentation finishes.

David Wollner Interview

For our 3rd episode we'll be speaking with David Wollner of Willimantic Brewing Company, in Willimantic, CT.

Audio

Willimantic Brewing Company Video Tour

Join David Wollner on a tour of Willimantic Brewing Company...

Willimantic Brew Day

Secreted away at The Willimantic Brewing Company, in Willimantic, CT, David Wollner carries on a nearly 30 year affair with the Humulus Lupus. David has built a reputation as a hopcentric brewer who regularly has 3 or 4 variations on his IPA oeuvre on tap (what we like to call the Wollner Variations). Through constant experimentation he seems to have evolved an extra sensory sensitivity to hop profiling. Being the owner and brewer gives him absolute freedom to brew whatever strikes his fancy, the only constant on his beer board is his flagship Certified Gold.

Willimantic Brewing Company is located in the historic old Willimantic Post Office in the center of town that had sat vacant for close to 3 decades before David and his wife renovated it. They painstakingly restored and have maintained the structure and the postal theme. The other driving theme at Willimantic are the frogs you see all over the place that reference the local tale of "The Battle of Frog Pond".

David was waiting for us on an overcast Wednesday morning at 8:15AM with sacks of milled grain to brew his Summer S.A.S.E., a session ale brewed exclusively with Sybilla hops from Poland. David is a real stand up guy with an easy-zen-humor that puts you immediately at ease and the 7 barrel brewhouse is second nature to him. Within minutes we were up on the platform taking turns dumping sacks of grain in the mash/lauter tun and canoe paddling the thickening mash. We hit our mash temperature dead-on.

When David deemed the mash lump free, we trooped out across the parking lot to the local diner for breakfast sandwiches on Texas toast and got straight into a thoughtful interview that wound in and around the brew day.

When we got back to the brew house we were ready to sparge the mash and collect wort for the boil kettle. We grabbed a few garbage bins from the basement for the spent grain, where we snuck a peak at his Dickel bourbon barrels in which he has aging a double IPA, souring an Imperial Porter and propagating a solera-mother-funk-barrel that he adds whatever he deems worthy to. Next up was raking out the spent grain into the bins to be picked up by a local farmer.

While we waited on the kettle to fill with wort and then come to a boil, we ran the numbers on the Sybilla hops, which David had never used before, to determine our hopping schedule.

Next up was the boil and hop additions...

at the end of the boil, we whirlpooled and ran sanitizer through the fermenter.

When we had transferred all the boiled wort from the kettle it was boots on ...

for hopping in and scouring the inside of the kettle, it’s a sweaty but vital job. Lastly we harvested fresh yeast from the bottom of one of the fermentors and pitched it into the cooled wort.

Everything we sampled throughout the brew day demonstrated David’s assured experience and hop sensitivity: including a super dry, spicy saison fresh from the tank, a crisp Imperial Pilsner ale, and 2IPA, a lush, fruity hop bomb. What really floored us was his huge funky blend of intentionally soured Imperial Porter, vintage Willi Whammer barleywine and some of his solera funk that made for this really ponderous chocolate, oaky, lactic masterpiece.

Among other brewing memorabilia David has on prominent display in the brewhouse is a big picture of the 3 Stooges, stooging out with bottles of beer. The Stooge spirit seemed to increasingly pervade the brew day with everyone naturally adopting their respective personae (Nathan>Larry, Mike>Curly, David>Moe).

Thanks Moe.

We'll be posting a video tour, interview and recipe shortly.

DRINK WILLIMANTIC BEER.