Dann Paquette Interview

In this second BrewLocal Podcast episode we talk to Dann Paquette and his wife Martha of Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project Massachusetts. To subscribe with a podcast downloader use: http://brewlocal.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Audio

An Evening with Pretty Things

After our brew day at Mayflower, we drove back to Boston and had dinner at Redbones, a great, and hugely popular, concept barbeque and good beer joint where the pulled pork married well with Cambridge Brewing Company's "Imperial Skisbol", a dark Danish smoked lager brewed in collaboration with Nørrebro Bryghus. After dinner, we met up with Pretty Things duo Dann Paquette and his wife Martha on the back deck of Deep Ellum, which proved to be the metaphysical nexus of the day, including several Mayflower beers on tap and cask, Pretty Things' own "Jack D'Or" and "Confounded Mr. Sisyphus" on tap, along with other local standouts from High and Mighty, Berkshire and Cambridge. The laundry list of creative New England breweries and a focus on session beer made for an extremely smart tap list, and it was great to hear how interconnected all the brewers are with each other.

Dann was a fixture of the Bay State brewing scene having brewed at Ipswich, John Harvard's, The Tap and inventing the Rapscallion beer line (where Matt Steinberg also worked), before moving to England and brewing at Daleside for a couple of years. Now back in Massachusetts, the beers he is currently producing span his experience, from riffs on saison to a British brown, to a session lager coming shortly.

Dann and Martha seem to share an impish-psychedelic-storybook imagination and funhouse spirit that is readily apparent in their highly personal and brilliant website. There is a real charm to the Pretty Things mystique, we weren't surprised to hear that Dann looks to fellow madcap Kris Herteleer from De Dolle Brouwers for inspiration. Our conversation lead towards a real interesting mash-up of eccentric Belgian and traditional British beer-ways. Dann's alternate persona "Jack D'Or", an Edwardian character of his and Martha's design furthers the spirit of fun at the heart of the Pretty Things Project.

It was really enlightening to be able to drink Pretty Things beers while Dann expounded on the virtues of authenticity and fun that are the drive of the project. Of particular interest is the brew house rental (not contract brew) model that Pretty Things has worked out with Paper City Brewery in Holyoke, MA (which also has a more traditional contract brewing arrangement to produce High and Mighty). The model has worked well for De Struise and De Ranke in Belgium before they got their own respective breweries.

Thank you to the inimitable Dann Paquette and the eminently charming Martha Holley for a memorable evening.

We'll be posting Dann's Guidelines to a Proper Bitter and a podcast of our conversation on the site shortly.

Matthew Steinberg Interview

In this first BrewLocal Podcast episode we talk to Matthew Steinberg of Mayflower Brewing in Plymouth MA. To subscribe with a podcast downloader use: http://brewlocal.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Podcast

Matthew Steinberg's Recipes

Mayflower Porter

Taking its cues from “Three Threads”, a bartender’s blend of three distinct ales, Porter became the beer of choice for 18th-century Londoners. Mayflower Porter embraces this history. This complex brew is smooth and full-flavored with notes of roasted coffee beans and bittersweet chocolate that will warm the palate all year long.

Recipe Specifics
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 11.86
Anticipated OG: 1.063
Anticipated SRM: 34.6
Anticipated IBU: 38.8
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75 %
Wort Boil Time: 75 Minutes

Grain
-------
9.50 lbs. American Pale Malt(2-row)
1.00 lbs. Chocolate Malt America
0.75 lbs. CaraMunich 120
0.50 lbs. Brown Malt
0.15 lbs. Scottish Peated Malt

Hops
------
0.68 oz. Pilgrim @ 70 min.
0.77 oz. Glacier @ 20 min.

Extras
--------
1.00 Unit(s)Whirlfloc Fining 15 Min.(boil)

Yeast
-----
S-04 SafAle English Ale

Water Profile
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Profile: Plymouth

Mash Schedule
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60 min @ 152

Notes
-----
Pitch at 73
Ferment at 66

FG 1.021
Crash chill to 32 after fermentation is finished for 1 week.

Hop Goddess

"The beer itself is a dedication to a girl...cunning and blatant, embodied among succulent notes of earth and spice. I wanted to make a really hoppy beer that was in the Belgian tradition. De Ranke XX Bitter happens to be one of my favorite beers in the world, not that I was trying to brew a beer specifically like that, but I used that beer as a stepping off point."

-Matthew Steinberg

Recipe Specifics
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 11.06
Anticipated OG: 1.062
Anticipated SRM: 5.4
Anticipated IBU: 69.0
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70 %
Wort Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Grain/Sugar
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8.00 lbs. Belgian Pilsener
1.38 lbs. Munich Malt
0.81 lbs. Corn Sugar/Dextrose
0.63 lbs. Flaked Oats
0.25 lbs. Biscuit Malt

Hops
-----
0.50 oz. Chinook @ 60 min.
1.00 oz. Sterling @ 60 min.
1.00 oz. East Kent Goldings @ 30 min.
0.38 oz. Sterling @ 20 min.
1.00 oz. Sterling @ 5 min.
3.00 oz. Amarillo @ Dry Hop

Extras
-------
0.25 Tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.
1.00 Unit Whirlfloc @ 15 min.

Yeast
-----
White Labs WLP510 Bastogne Belgian Ale Yeast

Water Profile
-------------
Profile: Martha's Vineyard

Mash Schedule
---------------
90 min @ 146

Notes
-----
Begin ferment in the low 80's

Aim for high carbonation (~3 volumes)

If you're feeling randy spike with Brett B, but do not age for an extended period.

FG 1.010
84% AA
6.9% abv

Mayflower Video Tour with Matthew Steinberg (in 2 parts)

part one...

and part two.

Mayflower Brew Day

Matthew Steinberg gained acclaim as a versatile and innovative brewer at Offshore Ale Company on the exclusive vacation island of Martha's Vineyard, just off the coast of Massachusetts' Cape Cod. Matthew is a truly linked-in brewer who seems to be right near the center of New England's vigorous good beer culture, he's also one of the most gregarious and outgoing guys you'll ever meet. We knew he'd relish the opportunity to spread the good word about all things good beer. Matthew is a brewer possessed with the craft.

Nathan's first contact with Matthew was a few years back. Nathan has family on Martha's Vineyard, so he had plenty opportunity to drink a bunch of Matthew's beer: everything from his cask brown to Hop Goddess, the first American brewed Belgian IPA (not even a recognized style at the time) we're aware of, and it was Hop Goddess that inspired Nathan to contact Matthew and ask about how he formulated the recipe. On the basis of of a short e-mail, he asked Nathan to give him a call and then spent over an hour on the line deconstructing recipes and talking good beer, a completely open book.

Flash forward a few years and a new gig as Director of Brewing Operations at the burgeoning Mayflower Brewing Company in Plymouth, MA. Matthew had us meet him at the brewery at 8AM on a Wednesday morning to mash-in Mayflower's outstanding Porter (which has a light smoked character from peat smoked malt). Matthew has a great assistant in Ryan Gwozdz (formerly of Buzzard Bay Brewing Company, in Westport, MA), who was manning the controls of the shiny new, 20 barrel DME fabricated brewhouse under Matthew's sage tutelage.

Mayflower was opened in 2007 by Drew Brosseau, a tenth generation grandson of the Mayflower's beer barrel cooper, who made the bold decision to self distribute. Their current capacity is around 2,000 barrels a year, with a focus around the Boston market and the South Shore.

Mayflower's impressive Wall o' malt...
and equally impressive bottle collection.
The grain is milled in a room adjoining the brew house.

The grist is then transfered by auger to the grist case above the mash tun.

The rakes automatically stir the grain with the mash water from the hot liquor tank.

One of the first things we noticed while waiting on mash conversion was a fleet of Buffalo Trace bourbon barrels that we learned had been used to age Sam Adams' Utopias and in which Matthew is currently aging a barleywine to be released next year. So of course, it was samples of barreled barleywine all around at 8:30AM. Matthew went the traditional British route using an all pale malt grist and a long boil to develop wort color and increase gravity a la JW Lees Harvest Ale and it's already developing some nice barrel character after only a short dip in the barrels.

A nail is stuck into each barrel to enable easy sampling without undue exposure to more oxygen. This is also done at many other breweries such as Russian River and New Belgium where acetobacter is a major concern.

They have a state of the art, semi-automatic brew house with lots of shiny control panels.

Matthew was testing out his newest toy, a pH probe. The pH of the mash was right where we needed it to be.

Next up was sparging the mash and collecting wort for the boil kettle. The rakes automatically sweep the spent grains out of the tun, but they still need to be hauled out back by hand, where a farmer comes to pick it up.

Ryan measuring out the Pilgrim hops, we assumed and had confirmed that it wasn't an accidental choice for Mayflower.

Just two hop additions for the porter, one at 70 minutes and one at 20 minutes.

Mayflower has a small but growing cask program, each of which have a special hop/botanical/wood added to the cask to make it unique. We smelled some sweet fern that grows out in back of the brewery that they are considering playing with in a future cask offering. They also have a gaggle of grain hungry chipmunks that live out in back of the brewery, and we also spied a wild turkey roaming around.

During breaks in the brew day we recorded a far ranging and informative interview and sampled our way through their stellar current line-up. All their beers were impeccably fresh and bright tasting, including their newest seasonal Summer Rye, a dry, low alcohol, golden ale with some classic spice and fruit from a warm ferment with Fermentis T-58 (a dried Belgian yeast), a good bit of rye and a heavy dose of dry hopping: a really elegant beer.

Midway through the interview we were interrupted by a label delivery. Matthew jumped on the forklift and went to grab them...

We spied a cask of the Golden Ale that was dry hopped with the Japanese hop varietal Sorachi Ace which was originally developed for the Soporro Brewery.

While we were sitting around chatting, one of the resident chipmunks ran in, sadly there are no photos of the chase that ensued. Maybe the fella's should consider a brew house cat.



We retired upstairs for some tacos from a local restaurant and flipped through Matthews first homebrewing book.






Matthew and Ryan bid us bon voyage and fair weather on the rest of our New England journey. A million thanks to these two brew pilgrims.

New England Preview

BrewLocal's first road trip couldn't have been more fun or productive. The state of New England's beer culture is strong, unpretentious and growing organically, one honest pint at a time.

We had an awesome brew day at Mayflower Brewing Company in Plymouth, MA with head brewer and beer obsessive Matthew Steinberg which produced some great photos, a long format interview and a video tour.

Later that night, we met up with diamond geezer Dann Paquette and his lovely and charming wife Martha, who collectively create some of the most singular and inspired beers around under the Pretty Things imprint for a leisurely interview. We were regaled with their exploits over glasses of "Jack D'Or" and "Confounded Mister Sisyphus" on the back deck of Deep Ellum, where Aaron Sanders, Max Toste and Josh Velazquez author the smartest beer list in town.

The following morning we were off to brew with David Wollner, head brewer/owner/hop savant at Willimantic Brewing Company in Willimantic, CT. We recorded another long format interview, shot video and a bunch of photos, and riffed on the Three Stooges.

We wrapped up the trip with a stop at the rightly infamous Julio's in Westboro, MA where among other rarities we procured 5 different funky, barrel aged offerings from Cascade Brewing in Portland, OR (no idea through what chicanery they got those bottles that are fuel enough for a BrewLocal trip to the Great Northwest (We'll see)).

We've catalogued some great recipes this trip as well. There are some definite trends we're seeing: Sierra Nevada worship, a surprising fondness for dry yeast, session beers, barrel aging, collaboration and camaraderie. We're gonna start editing content (there will be plenty) and posting soon (in between full time jobs and all of the other daily distractions).

Big thanks to our New England brew crew and to our readers for your support.