Interview with a brewer: Metropolitan Brewing in Chicago, IL

We’ve let a little time pass since our last interview with a professional brewer. Okay, a LOT of time. We started this series with the hope of giving us little nuggets of insight as we plan our own brewery. From that standpoint, this series has been incredible. It has also strengthened my belief that the craft beer industry is like no other. The spirit of collaboration is strong (Exhibit A: Collaboration Not Litigation Ale) and the people are great. And with that, I introduce you to the next professional brewers in our series:

Doug & Tracy Hurst from Metropolitan Brewing in Chicago. Metropolitan is unique in our series in that, like us, they aren’t quite off the ground yet. Unlike us, however, they are dern close. We targeted them for an interview because of the freshness of this whole planning thing in their minds. And we were not disappointed:

1) What were the steps that led you up to start a brewery?

Doug, my husband, earned his Diploma in Brewing Technology from the Siebel Institute/Doemens Academy in 2004. I’ve been a business owner for years, so naturally, we decided that instead of his getting a job as a brewer somewhere (boring), we risk everything in order for him to give it a try himself (exciting!). He wrote a business plan and quickly decided that he needed a partner. He asked me to join him in attempting the feat of bravery and madness that is opening a brewery. Always up for something new, I closed my portrait studio and became his business partner.

We raised our funds through friends and family as well as a bank. Doug quit his day job. And now we work together for Metro Brewing. It’s not exactly always a lovefest, but it is fun as hell.

2) How is the brewery progressing?

We’re negotiating the lease on our official location. Right now, though, the brewery doesn’t wait for such minor details. So we’re furiously churning out beer in small batches on our pilot system. Our bedroom is now a cold fermentation room, our dining room is an office, and we work pretty much around the clock.

We do need a location soon, though, because we’ve purchased our 15 bbl brew house as well as four 30 bbl fermentation tanks. Doug regularly hits the brewery classifieds for used equipment and kegs. Also, with this crazy hop shortage on, we luckily secured our hop needs for about our first year of production. That was our first Big Purchase; 300 lbs of hops. The UPS guy was so pissed.

And finally, we do a lot of promotion. We participate in as many beer events as we can. We bring beer everywhere. And we talk about the brewery to everyone: the press, the local craft beer community, random strangers on the street.

3) What is your favorite thing about what you do?

The beer. I’m not kidding. Doug’s beer is damn good.

And meeting people. When we do a beer festival, we tell people about our Little Brewery that Could. Folks are sincerely happy for us and excited that Chicago is going to have another local brewery.

Of course, working for ourselves kicks ass too. Doug and I both have a ferocious DIY ethic. We work a lot, but we make our own hours; set our own schedule. This freedom is worth the long hours and stress. Who can complain about constantly being surrounded by beer?!?

4) Why the focus on German beers?

Craft beer is dominated by ales. Ales are awesome, to be sure. We enjoy them regularly. But the Midwest is known for producing lagers. Why not brew craft lagers? Well, because producing lagers is more expensive and takes up more time and space. But so what? If you plan for those contingencies, you can make it work.

Finally, Doug likes German style lagers. And he’s in charge of all the decisions around what beers he makes. The Dugg has spoken.

5) What marketing tactic has been the most beneficial to you? If "word-of-mouth," what’s the SECOND most beneficial?

Bringing free beer to events, festivals, and parties. Sometimes we set up a table complete with a sign and email sign-up list, sometimes we just simply bring a keg of beer. Bringing free beer places is fun and wins you many friends.

6) You have a fairly strong online presence for an upstart brewery (Facebook, Myspace, email newsletter, a website that’s actually updated). What benefits have you reaped from this strategy? In what ways hasn’t it met your expectations?

Thanks for noticing! The main benefit is that keeping our web presence fresh is fun and keeps my writing chops up. Sometimes people come up to me and mention something that we put in our blog. I love that. It means that people are as excited about Metro Brewing as we are. Well, maybe not AS excited. Again, we like talking to people. Keeping our online content fresh is a really easy way to reach lots of folks.

As far as not meeting our expectations… well, we didn’t have any expectations to start with.

7) If you started another brewery, what is the one thing that you would do differently this time around? (We’re not trying to copy your answers… okay, we are.)

I think we’re too new at this whole thing to answer this question. Every time we do something, it’s the first time. Everything surprises us. We make mistakes, but we learn more from our own stupidity than we do from anything else.

Thanks again to Tracy & Doug. And we’d like to formally wish ya’ll the best.

A note from a fan of that Bobo Bush

For those of you that don’t study the latest marijuana slang, Bobo Bush is slang for Mary Jane. Reefer. Ganja. And it’s not everyday that we get emails written from admittedly high folks. Only on Mondays. One “D$” sent us this little gem:

Nice work guys.  I love the the passion for beer that I see coming from your website.  Funny story about how I found your page…I was sitting here in front of the computer super stoney and typed in the search: Monday Night.  Your page was like the third down and I clicked on it.  I love beer.  We have some pretty good micro brews up in Seattle where I live. My band should play one of your tasting parties this summer, check out the site www.fatdogheavy.com and while your at it give us a friend request on myspace

Well random to meet you but thats what happens when surfing the net under the influence of the erb.

D$

I checked out their music. Not bad at all! It’s got a rocky-bluegrassy feel. Self-described as “sounds like we’ve been drinking for too long.” In the same vein as the Avett Brothers but without the refinement. Listen to “Whiskey Drinking Woman.”

Also, how awesome is our Google ranking? Travis, jealous much?

Joel’s “Beard of Sanitation”

Anyone who reads this blog semi-regularly (my mom and perhaps a few other people) knows that Joel… isn’t quite right. Fortunately, he is always good for a laugh. We’ve taken to filling our Star-san bucket with a hose with a nozzle on it. Not the best move, since this can result in quite the build-up of sanitized foam. Joel found a GREAT use for all of this excess foam: “Beards of Sanitation”!

They look great, but they also serve a purpose: keeping your face sanitized. In case you accidentally dip it into the wort. As it’s boiling.

Brewing tonight? Yes please.

Don’t have Memorial Day plans yet? For shame. But don’t worry, now you do. We’re brewing our Swashchuckler IPA over at Jeff’s. Come on by! Email us if you need directions.

Strange and mysterious beers

We’ve gotten into the habit of winding down after brewing on Monday nights by gathering back together and opening a few beers. We try to collect beers we haven’t tried yet and store them up for this mini-tasting sessions. Last Monday I brought 3 brews from Stones River in Tennessee (they’ve got a great high-gravity section). The beers?

Super Baladin: A high-gravity Italian beer with a Belgiany-feel. Slightly sour notes,  but the good kind. Not too aggressive.

Kulmbacher Eisbock: The best thing about this beer was the idea of it. An eisbock is “a traditional Kulmbach specialty beer that is made by freeze distilling a doppelbock and removing the ice to concentrate the flavor and alcohol content.” Unfortunately, the beer itself was, to our tastes, a little ho-hum.

Avery Mephistopheles: A crazy big 16% stout (for those of you who are counting, this is above the legal limit available in Georgia). Very little carbonation, very much dark chocolate, coffee and cherries. A huge beer, not to be consumed alone.

In sum, a fine collection of beers.

Homebrewing gets a facelift

We’ve been talking with John Carnett, creator of The Device, about his innovative cooling techniques (using a cold plate to chill water running through copper tubing that runs around whatever you’d like to chill). These talks originated from our pilot brewery discussion in which we were trying to find the best way to control temperatures during fermentation. John started acting all weird and mysterious, saying things like:

Sadly due to IP I can’t tell you about everything that we learned but we are no longer using cold plates in our process at all… If you can wait a a bit my patents will be fully filed.

Whoa. Ok NOW we’re intrigued. Turns out John was on to something big. An entire business, even, called Nanobrewing Technologies.  And what they’re selling puts the original device to shame. A beautiful all-in-one brewing solution that even the wife or girlfriend might allow inside the house. Check out the article on PopSci.

Photo used WITHOUT permission from John Carnett 

Weiss becomes Wit. Easy fix for our wheat beer, right?

Never mind the creepy detached limbs of Jeff. Let’s talk about our WeissGuy Hefeweizen for a second. We brewed our latest batch Monday. This time it’s going to be a little (okay, very) different, though. Up until Monday we’ve brewed a Bavarian-style hefeweizen with coriander and orange zest.

It seems like everyone and their mom uses coriander and orange zest. And in Georgia we’ve already got a couple decent hefeweizens from ABC and Sweetwater. We’ve recently been sipping on a few Belgian hefeweizens that we love ? most notably the St. Bernardus Witbier. We’d like a little bit of a lighter brew for the hot Georgian summers. Monday we had a targeted 1.051 OG. We ended up with 1.048. Obviously this is acceptable, but we will still be flogging Jeff for the discrepancy.

In summary, wish us luck. This is new territory for one of our most consistent beers.