{"id":2729,"date":"2017-03-24T11:01:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-24T10:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bierversuche.ch\/blog\/?p=2729"},"modified":"2021-02-01T15:16:09","modified_gmt":"2021-02-01T14:16:09","slug":"interview-with-van-havig-of-gigantic-brewing-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bierversuche.ch\/blog\/en\/2017\/03\/interview-with-van-havig-of-gigantic-brewing-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Van Havig of Gigantic Brewing Company"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Some things just take longer: Interviews last longer than expected. Transcribing the interview takes longer than hoped. The duration of both was, let\u2019s say of gigantic proportions, thus somewhat fitting for an interview with Van Havig of the Gigantic Brewing Company<\/a> in Portland, Oregon. The interview took place a few months ago, but don\u2019t panic, we have put updates where updates were applicable. The interview also went on for about an hour. As Van had a lot of very interesting things to say, we did not radically shorten it. Thus, this might take a bit longer to read. So, get a beer, sit down, let\u2019s go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you read about Gigantic, something that pops up quite frequently is music. For example you took part in the B-Sides project<\/a><\/strong> and you talked about how you\u2019d like there being an original song in connection to your beer releases. Has that happened yet?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, we are still pretty young \u2013 we\u2019re only five years old. It is something we are still working on. However, there\u2019s this beer called \u201cKiss The Goat\u201d that we released last January. That actually has a 7\u201d record that goes along with it. It\u2019s by a band called Sons Of Huns, who are playing heavy metal and sound a lot like Black Sabbath.
[Update: So this is a year old, and since then we\u2019ve been working with the local record label Tender Loving Empire.  Now, each of our new releases has a QR code that links you to a song.  We try to have is somehow match the beer.  Either in mood, name or feel.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How did that happen?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was this short-lived festival in Portland called The Malt Ball. It was a local alternative weekly, matching up bands with breweries with them getting together to brew a beer. Then there would be sort of a beer festival and concert.
They matched us up with Sons of Huns. They are so metal and with that name, we just knew we had to make a black Bock and call it Kiss The Goat.
The name comes from a Coven record from \u201968 or \u201969. Coven was the first band to do the satanic thing. They were pre-metal, so their music was more psychedelic, but the lyrics were all about witchcraft and sorcery. On the end of their first side, they have the entire satanic mass. The culmination of the satanic mass is when the acolyte \u2013 and they got some British girl with the most innocent sounding voice \u2013 says that she\u2019ll wed herself to Satan and the priest goes: \u201cHold the shavings in your hand, and turn and kiss the goat!\u201d Apparently, that\u2019s when you\u2019re wed to Satan: When you kissed the goat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That Malt Ball sounds like one of the most Portland things I\u2019ve ever heard of.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, it was pretty Portland-y. We did it two years and got matched up with really good bands, actually. Sons of Huns is great. The other band was Summer Cannibals \u2013 they\u2019ve actually started to get a little bit of press. They are young, two women and two guys, really influenced by Patti Smith. They are really cool and super awesome live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tried to figure what the equivalent of the way you brew beer would be in music. The best I came up with was that you compose a song, perform and burn it on a self-destructing CD and then never ever release or do the song again.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We would perform it for three months and then be like \u201cI\u2019m done with that\u201d. I would be like Nick Cave: \u201cI wrote well over 400 songs, I cannot remember them all!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve talked about doing a \u201cGreatest Hits\u201d for a while now. Will that ever happen?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, I think it\u2019s going to happen this year. You know, the Eagles have done theirs after five years \u2013 so that\u2019s the big joke. With this year being our fifth, honestly, the idea is to reprise some of the people\u2019s favorite beers this year.
[Update: That is happening right now \u2013 we\u2019re in the middle of brewing Axes of Evil and The City Never Sleeps, the first two seasonals we ever did.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You always say that it\u2019ll be the people\u2019s favorites. But are there some that you want to re-do?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearly. People are going to vote. However, I don\u2019t know if the UN is going to sanction those elections.
There\u2019s definitely some beers that I want to make again and there\u2019s some beers that Ben Love [co-founder of Gigantic \u2013 ed.] wants to make again. For various reasons, but mainly they are beers that we like to drink and some that we like to make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this something that happens: You like a beer so much that a good portion of it will go into your own belly or basement?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

God no. I am an after work drinker: I have a pint or two after work here. I may take a little bit of beer home, but honestly, I don\u2019t really drink beer at home.
At one of my previous breweries, during the 1996 World Cup \u2013 so this was like the height of my brewing career (joke)\u2013 the timing was great: I was working on the east coast and the tournament was in France. We could get to work a little bit early and mash in. Watch the first half. Start to lauter. Watch the second half. Clean up the tun. Get boil started. Watch the whole next game. Get knock-out started. Watch the first half of the third game. Get CIP started. Go back and watch the end. Like that we watched almost all the games. It was awesome. And at the end of the day, my assistant brewer was doing loops. So I could even watch those last afternoon games \u2013 which for you were the evening games \u2013 and have a couple of beers. So everyday after work we\u2019ve had a few beers. And there was this one beer that we really liked at the time and that\u2019s all that we were drinking. And we figured that we drank almost ten percent of that beer.
Now at the brewery, all we show on the TV is soccer. The sign below the TV says \u201cThis machine shows Timbers matches\u201d, with Timbers being our local soccer team. If there\u2019s an Oregon team in the playoffs of another sport, we might show that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s another Portland idea for you: Brewers Cup, where brewery soccer teams play against each other.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It probably would have to be foosball, because we couldn\u2019t field a full eleven player team. Now if we could add some of our regulars, then it would work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure, heck, if you can train your yeast to kick a ball, you can add that to your team.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

True, we just need a Meura mash filter and we can take the spent mash and we can make clay golem brewery men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, one thing you already mentioned, is that you brew a beer for three months. Meaning you don\u2019t just brew one batch of one beer, but you brew the same beer for three months and then move on to another beer.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. Typically, we do three or four fermenters for each beer that we do. We have a 15 barrel brewhouse and the fermenters are 45 barrels. So we are tripling into the fermenters.
So really, when we say we make one beer for a period of time, that\u2019s anything from 9 to 12 kettle fills and three to four fermentations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How far ahead of time do you know what you\u2019re going to do, say, do you know what you\u2019re going to do in six months?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In October to November we are figuring out what beers we are going to make the following year. We try to be six to eight months ahead of schedule. The main reason we do that is for the label art; we work with different artists for every label, for the most part. For that we need a long lead time for them to figure out what they want to do.
We have one 15 barrel fermenter  and there\u2019s plenty of beers we make where we\u2019re like \u201coh fuck, we gotta fill that tank next week. Guys, what do you wanna do?\u201d Sometimes even as little as the day before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But those don\u2019t go into bottles.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Correct. Unless we really like the beer and decide to put it on the schedule at one point. To talk about Kiss The Goat one more time: The first time we did that beer was a couple of years ago. The beer was really good and we really liked it. So we concluded that at some point we needed to do it again.
Sometimes, with a beer like Kiss The Goat, when the name has a certain feel, the beer has a certain feel, sometimes you wait for the right artist to come up and you realize that artist would be perfect for that beer. Then we put it on the schedule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How often do you brew per week?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We typically do six kettle fills per week, so two fermenters a week.
Our average week looks like this: On Monday we package IPA. On Tuesday and Wednesday we brew IPA. On Thursday we package whatever else we\u2019re brewing. And then we brew whatever else we\u2019re brewing on Thursday and Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The IPA being your first \u201call the time beer\u201d and the Double IPA your second \u201call the time beer\u201d. When\u2019s the third one gonna arrive?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t really have time in the schedule for a third one. You can make the argument that Pipewrench, our IPA aged in Gin barrels, is the third year round beer. I would argue it\u2019s not. From a production standpoint it\u2019s a batch of the IPA that we divert into Gin barrels. Sure, there\u2019s some process differences there and we have to dry-hop it a separate time. Therefore, in a way, it is a different beer, but from a production standpoint it is not.
In order to keep up with what we are doing with everything else, we cannot fit in another production beer.
The reason why we started doing an imperial\/double IPA all the time, and this is the truth, is simply because we made a few of them, little batches, and everyone went apeshit for them.
[Update: So this has changed a little \u2013 we\u2019re about to start brewing K\u00f6lsch on a regular basis, but just for the Oregon market \u2013 so still pretty limited, maybe 10 to 14 fermenters (450 to 630 BBLs) per year.  And we\u2019re also about to make Ginormous a series of Imperial IPAs instead of just the same every time.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taken beernerds are a significant chunk of your customers and considering that beernerds are not likely to drink the same beer too often, you made necessity your business model.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, in a sense.
Have you seen Smoky and the Bandit? It is an important American cultural icon.(joke) The plot is as follows: It\u2019s about 1975 or \u201976. There are two rich guys in Georgia. Their birthday party is coming up and they need to drink Coors. In the seventies Coors was the<\/em> beer, which is kinda hard to believe nowadays. And the reason why it was the<\/em> beer,  was because you could not get it east of the Rocky Mountains; it was a western beer. As nobody was able to get this beer, those rich guys were willing to pay $80\u2019000, which in today\u2019s money would be around $320\u2019000. Plus a new semi, which is about 150 grand, plus a Firebird Trans Am, which is another 45 grand. Add to that the cost of a trailer full of Coors and you get what they were willing to pay, just to have Coors at their birthday party.
Now, to loop back to your question: People were not able to get the beer, so they were willing to pay that much money. Smoky and the Bandit!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know that you were already known in Portland, like with Ben working at HUB, but was something like this necessary in order to stand out in Portland?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No. It was just an idea to have a continually evolving creative brewery.
Draft craft beer is something like 70 to 80 percent of all the draft beers sold in Portland. If you take all the packaging, craft is something like 40 to 45 percent. We are a craft town. But if we only try to talk to beer people, that is like preaching to the choir. It\u2019s boring and no-one gives a shit.
I have a lot of friends who are artists and Ben and I both appreciate art a lot. We realized that if we work with a bunch of different artists, then we can get involved in the art scene, which is outside of beer. We can use that to get involved with events in other cities, completely outside of beer.
That is much more interesting.
I don\u2019t give a fuck about being in All About Beer magazine or Draft or whatever. It\u2019s great if you are, it\u2019s fantastic to have a beer blogger to talk to. But it\u2019s a lot cooler that Juxtapose magazine wanted us to do an ad. Then we are doing something outside of beer. And I personally think that what beer allows you to do outside of beer, is more important to beer.
Part of that for us is music, part of that for us is having a community centered around the tap-room. Structuring the business this way it\u2019s going to be better if we do all those things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can relate. Both my co-blogger and I are Doemens\/Siebels beer sommeliers. And if I could chose between doing a tasting with beer nerds or beer virgins, I\u2019d do the one with the virgins. I would expect the responses to be more excited and the impact to be bigger. In order for beer to go further, as you say, we need to go outside of beer.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, you\u2019re spreading the word.
Beer nerds are great. A lot of them are wonderful people. But too much of the time, beer nerds are too focused on the beer that\u2019s in front of them, instead of who is next to them. If you give a tasting with a bunch of people that are not nerds, they get really excited and want to share their excitement with whoever they are with. This even happens with people that don\u2019t know each other. And when they leave, they\u2019ve made a connection. That to me is what beer should be about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which is also why I ban mobile phones at my place when we do a bottle share.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Same reason why our TV says: \u201cThis machine only shows Timbers matches\u201d.
We are lucky here in our tap-room. We do get beer tourists, who come specifically to try our beers and they\u2019ll be on Untapped or Ratebeer and it\u2019s no big deal. But what\u2019s awesome: Depending on the time of day and who\u2019s here, half the time they get interrupted by our locals. \u201cHey, what are you doing?\u201d, \u201cHey, who are you?\u201d. The locals will be like \u201cYou should be talking. Do that later. Meet Scott, he\u2019s really cool!\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Ratebeer rater, a great guy who is genuinely passionate about beer, he once told me that he doesn\u2019t have time to drink the same beer twice.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s doing it wrong. That means he\u2019s not enjoying anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel it becomes a chore. I actually stopped writing about music, because it became a chore to listen to music. I did not want that to happen.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can see that happening, yeah. That\u2019d be a huge drag.
I\u2019ve been brewing for a long time now, more than twenty years. When I was a younger brewer, I used to worry about every beer, think about it. Most of the time when I have a beer now, I spend about three seconds acknowledging it and then the rest of the time I\u2019m having a beer, because I like beer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I did notice however, one year at CBC we all wrote down each beer we\u2019ve had and rated it. The next time we didn\u2019t. And I have better memories of the beers from the first time than the second time.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me personally, I never felt that writing down anything helps me personally. And to tell you the truth, there are a lot of beers out there that I think are really good, but they are not necessarily memorable.
Let me talk about a beer I really like: Anchor Liberty. I think it is a fantastic, delicious beer. But if you put it in a line-up with other beers, you wouldn\u2019t really remember it, even though you know it was a good one. However, what\u2019s important about it is: You can trust it.
There are a lot of beers like that. And I don\u2019t want to mention any breweries names, because it feels like I am insulting them, even if I don\u2019t. There\u2019s a lot of breweries out there that produce a beer that I, whenever I drink it, notice that it is really good. But what stands out about it? Not much. But I can trust it. It\u2019s delicious and I can drink it. And even at a festival like CBC there are only a few beers that you can taste and you\u2019re like \u201cwoah!\u201d.
Actually, I remember one beer that I had at CBC: Jacky O\u2019s had a Ginger Lime beer, and it was \u201cwoah! Good job guys, this is fucking great.\u201d It was very memorable, it was very well done and I really enjoyed it. Nonetheless, when the choice is between that one or an Anchor Liberty, I\u2019m likely to choose the Liberty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Would you rather have a bar that only has beers you like or that every time you go there has new beers?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, if there\u2019d be a bar that only had new beers from breweries I knew and trust, I\u2019d be okay with that. When I go to a bar and see a tap-list that I don\u2019t know, I go brewery first and style second.
Sometimes you work closely with brewers or you\u2019re just in the same town as them. Sometimes it is remarkable how much the brewers voice comes through the beers. My buddy John Harris at Ecliptic, oh my god, the beers taste exactly like the kind of guy John is. Or my friend Mark Youngquist who started Rock Bottom. He went off and started this tiny, tiny brewery called Dolores River Brewing in the middle of nowhere Colorado, really far from everywhere else. The first time I went there, Mark didn\u2019t yet know I was there. Got a beer and after a few sips, my wife asked: \u201cSo, how is it?\u201d \u2013 \u201cIt\u2019s like Mark\u2019s beer.\u201d \u2013 \u201cIs that good?\u201d \u2013 \u201cYeah, it\u2019s like Mark\u2019s beer. I like Mark\u201d. That is always remarkable to me, when certain breweries or brewers have such a clear voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you have that with your beers?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would argue that I do. Or we do, I should say. But that\u2019s a hard question. Ben and I do most of the recipes \u2013 and frankly, Ben does 75 to 80 percent of the recipe development; I am much more of a technical brewer\u2019s brewer. I worry about getting it done. I\u2019ve been doing this for over twenty years, so recipe development to me is like: \u201cWhat do you wanna do? Okay, A, B, C and D. It\u2019s fine. It\u2019s gonna work.\u201d Done. Everything else is much more important, interesting and challenging, like how are you going to deal with it process wise.
Anyway, so Ben usually takes care of the recipe. But the beers that I kind of took the lead on, and I ran it and blah blah blah, I feel they really taste like the beers I have always made. I always say every brewer has a bag of tricks and they use them over and over again, so you kind of get a voice.
Because both Ben and I are doing this, we kind of speak the same brewing language, but we are different people. So our beers are kind of very different. There\u2019s a Portland beer blogger Jeff Alworth who, maybe a year ago, said: \u201cGigantic is the only brewery I know that doesn\u2019t have a voice. Their beers are so disparate that you can\u2019t peg them as Gigantic.\u201d I argued with him for a little bit, but he held firm: \u201cYou guys always do such different shit all the time.\u201d Well, if you say that, then sure. But in the choice of how the flavors come out, I think we do have a voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it that easy after twenty years that you can just go A, B, C and D and the beer will be good in the end?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not joking. Both Ben and I came from pubs. When you work at pubs for sixteen years like me, you\u2019re responsible for turning out twenty to thirty different beers a year. Or to put it differently: Would you be surprised if a chef says: \u201cI wanna try a new risotto\u201d and he just went and came up with a recipe for a new risotto?
I don\u2019t think it\u2019s uncommon for brewers to be able to design new beers like that. The beer public thinks that what makes the brewer so good is because of his recipes. I disagree entirely. Some people have the ability and the palate to design good recipes. But that is not what makes you a brewer. When you are making a production beer, the recipe is like one quarter of one percent of the time involved in what you\u2019re doing. Process, keeping things consistent, knowing your yeast, managing fermentation, or even things people would never think about like plumbing and electrical work and knowing when to do maintenance, how to pay attention to your bottling line, repairs, that\u2019s being a fucking brewer. That\u2019s what we really do and where the real skillset is.
If you say: \u201cI\u2019m a great brewer, I can create all these recipes\u201d. Then go to a brewery and see if you can fucking do it. And repeat it for three months and then I\u2019ll tell you if you know what the fuck you\u2019re doing. Brewing is skilled labor. Personally, I think it takes seven years to make a good brewer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How would you translate that to a homebrewer?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Homebrewing is a hobby, it\u2019s not a job. It\u2019s not a profession and as such completely different.
Look, I love cars. I do very, very small time car racing. I once made a really, really fast Toyota Corolla. But you know what? You couldn\u2019t sell a single one of those to the public. And it also doesn\u2019t mean that I\u2019m a fucking automotive engineer. It means that I was able to tinker around in my garage to get the right spring rate, the right shock rate, and the right suspension, so it made the car do turns really fucking fast. And I knew how to drive it. Homebrewing is like that. It\u2019s a hobby. You have a skillset there. But it has nothing to do with being a professional brewer. Zero. Zip. None.
Michael Lewis, academic at the University of California in Davis, once said my favorite thing about brewing ever. He said: Brewing is not fun, it\u2019s a profession, it\u2019s hard work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Van<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When you have identified something that is really important within the context of a professional brewery, what would you identify within the hobby of homebrewing to be important in order to make good beer?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you get to know one yeast really, really well, you can do a lot of things with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You just said that brewing is hard and it\u2019s not fun. But you are consciously staying small with the consequence that you will have to continue brewing.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. Yes. Arbeit macht das Leben s\u00fcss. [German for: Work is what makes life sweet \u2013 ed.]. That\u2019s what I tell everybody in the brewery.
Look, I don\u2019t say that cute little German phrase lightly. I was an economist, a graduate student, a PHD candidate. And I fell out of love with that. At that time I\u2019d been homebrewing. The thing about homebrewing to me is like, I\u2019m a terrible cook. But when I was homebrewing, everything made sense, instantly. For some reason, right away, I had this innate understanding.
I say that I feel called to brewing. It is my vocation in a non-religious though Lutheran sense of vocation. It is what I am supposed to be doing. It doesn\u2019t mean though that it is fun time for me. Fun at a brewery is left for: \u201cwell, we did a good job today, let\u2019s sit around and have a beer.\u201d
Once in a blue moon you do something fun in a brewery. But making a different beer, a new beer, there\u2019s nothing fun in that to me. It\u2019s a new beer, and all I want to do is nail the process on it. I gotta focus and I gotta be a professional. And when in the end the beer comes out well, guess what, I get to have the beer, it tastes great: Arbeit macht das Leben s\u00fcss.
I get it, I get it: Everyone else in craft beer will be like: \u201cI\u2019m having fun, look what I do for a living! It\u2019s amazing!\u201d Sorry, I\u2019m a Norwegian American, I can\u2019t help it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a similar experience when I was working as a music journalist. Everybody\u2019s perception is that it must be the best thing ever, going to all these concerts. But you go there, you wait for hours for the musician to show up, oftentimes they are a drag to talk to because they are forced to talk to you. Sure, every now and again, you\u2019ll meet somebody who you get along with great and in the rarest of cases you even become friends. So while there are fun aspects to it, it\u2019s still and mainly work.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And you enjoy the work, but it\u2019s not fun. Ever since we started the brewery we get asked: \u201cAre you having fun yet?\u201d What the fuck are you talking about fun. This is fucking work!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you say that it is your calling to be a brewer, has your motivation changed over the years?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, it has. I am much more concerned with people that work for me than I was when I was much younger. When I started, it was all about beer. I have people that work for me here now, obviously, but I used to train brewers at Rock Bottom already. That has become a much more important and satisfying part of having a brewery and being a brewer. As I said, I was a doctoral candidate; I was a teacher, essentially. And I find that teaching brewing is very rewarding to me, coaching people, managing people in the sense of helping them develop new skillsets, helping them grow. That I actually find enjoyable. That is actually fun and it\u2019s enjoyable to me to see other people have successes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Considering you saying brewing is work and considering Jean of Cantillon saying he wants to see passion in the people for beer. Would you encourage passion or a dependable professionalism?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t think saying \u201cnot fun\u201d equals lack of passion. Me personally, I get very passionate about \u201cthis needs to be done fucking right!\u201d It\u2019s all about how your passion manifests itself and there isn\u2019t just one way for it to manifest. Just because I don\u2019t go to every new beer release in town, doesn\u2019t mean that I\u2019m not passionate about beer. Just because I don\u2019t always want to drink mixed fermentation sour beers, doesn\u2019t mean that I\u2019m not interested in those beer styles. Being passionate about beer in brewing means you\u2019re passionate about your job. And understanding that what we do here is important. Beer is important, culturally, in the history of humanity. Beer is important in terms of getting people together. Beer is important for having a flavor creative expression for human reason. Beer is important for a lot of reasons. Therefore you need to be there every day.
You wanna talk about passion? Fuck. There are breweries out there that think they are the fucking shit. And when you ask them where they are on Christmas, you know where they are? At home! You know where I am on fucking Christmas: Here. Cause someone has to be here. The beer and the equipment don\u2019t know what day it is. So if you\u2019re so fucking passionate, make the fucking commitment. It\u2019s not fucking fun time. Arbeit macht das Leben s\u00fcss! It\u2019s a real fucking thing we do here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Passionate, you\u2019re getting passionate now!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

See!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, I\u2019m not sure if you\u2019re passionate about hops, but I was told you know a lot about hops.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I have a lot of experience with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So are you passionate about hops?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uhm, am I? Yeah, yeah I am. Because I feel that it is really important to learn everything you can know about them. And there is a lot to know. Thing is that it is very difficult to learn about them, because there are many people that try to prevent you from knowing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In what way?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sure you know all the basic stuff: hops are clones, all Cascade are Cascade, blah blah blah. Do you know that hops sort of have terroir? That they vary, depending on the farm, the region, blah blah. Well, I am here to tell you that it\u2019s not just location. For example, the date is crucial. Drying method is crucial. There\u2019s a whole bunch to it that\u2019s crucial and the thing is, the hop farmers and hop vendors \u2013 not bad people \u2013 they have a very vested self-interest to keep some information to themselves. The reason for that is simple: When you\u2019re trying to grow, say, 20,000 acres of Simcoe, you have to convince, frankly, the brewing public that there\u2019s a reason why you pick some Simcoe early and some Simcoe late. You have to convince them that none of the hops are shit. However, I am here to tell you as a guy who has done hop selection for sixteen years: There\u2019s a right pick date.
To some extent, brewers get to choose what they want: Do I want my Simcoe to taste like weed, like cat pee or like tangerines? But in order for you to do that, you\u2019ve got to work at these guys a little at a time and every time you talk to a hop vendor, you listen to everything they say, because once a year someone slips up and you get to learn something.
Hops are fascinating that way; there\u2019s so much to them. Malt is fascinating as well, but malt is much more a process than it is an agricultural product. It clearly is an agricultural product, but good maltsters can take barley of varying qualities and can turn it into the same malt. But you pick a hop on September 10th and on September 20th and I don\u2019t give a fuck who you are, it\u2019s going to be different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, if there are such vast differences, isn\u2019t that why they try to sell you hop extracts?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They do that because at some point the hops go to shit and you can still get extract out of them and they don\u2019t lose the crop. That\u2019s truth. They tell you: \u201cWe do it, because various people give you various times.That\u2019s bullshit\u2026. And now I will have a bunch of hop-growers mad at me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of my pet topics is forgotten hop types. Everybody is running after the next hype, while they forget about all these great hops that were all the hype just a short while ago or have never stopped being great.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, like no-one gives a shit about Brewers Gold, which is a great hop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or Warrior.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s the other thing and you have to remember \u2013 that Brewer demand can only do so much. Because at some point you\u2019ll run smack into the agronomics of hop growing. You can only keep a certain hop in the ground if brewers want to pay for it. And there aren\u2019t a ton of people that are using Warrior for anything but bittering. So as a farmer you\u2019ll switch over to something else that is cheaper. What they grow usually has to do with yield, mildew, cold resistance, pick ability.
Something most brewers don\u2019t know about hops, the agronomics are crucial. There\u2019s an experimental hop known as 527 that we made a beer with over a year ago. It is great! We love this hop. It smells like strawberries, like good, fat, juicy strawberries. We love it. Thing is, they do trials and they like it: it grows really well, so you\u2019d think they\u2019d keep it in the ground. But no, because there\u2019s a problem: Sidearms. You know, the sidearms come out of the stem and the hop cones grow on them. Now, when the sidearms pop off, it\u2019s really difficult to separate the hop from the sidearm. And that\u2019s a problem.
So, even though everyone really likes this hop, it\u2019s probably not gonna go anywhere. In the same way, the same thing can happen to these old hops. There will be a new hop that meets very similar criteria that has much better agronomic characteristics.
There are hops like Liberty, which is a phenomenal hop, but it\u2019s hanging by a thread. Frankly, Hallertau is hanging by a thread. At least in the US; I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s any US Hallertau left. US Golding is probably disappearing. They yield a thousand pounds per acre. In 2015 they got brutalized by sleepy hop syndrome. It\u2019s rough sometimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Space is finite, so if something new comes in, something old has to come out.
Now, I actually forgot to ask you our regular first question.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the interview is starting now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. But what we usually ask first is: Which of your beers would you have served beer hunter Michael Jackson?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We made this beer in 2015 called \u201cUme Umai\u201d. Which in Japanese means \u201cPlum yummy\u201d. It was a beer with 50 percent black rice, a bunch of plums, almost no hops. It was definitely a beer, you could taste it and you would never mistake it for anything but beer. However, it was a beer that had no malt flavor, really no hop or yeast flavor neither. Instead it was a balance between this earthy, mushroom-y, tea-like black rice and this fruity, slightly tart plum flavor. It was a beer with a balance that tasted like beer, but no balance that was beer like.
A lot of times you make those oddball beers and people call them stunt beers or festival beers. People taste it at the festival: \u201cOh, neat!\u201d \u2013 Do you want to have a pint? \u2013 \u201cNo!\u201d. This beer was the opposite of that: \u201cWhat is it?\u201d \u2013 Black rice and plums. \u2013 \u201cHuh\u2026. Wow! It\u2019s fruity, it\u2019s interesting!\u201d By the time you had tasted a hundred milliliters, all that mattered was that the beer was really refreshing and light and fruity and delicious. Instead of becoming crazier with every sip, it actually became more drinkable. People would want another one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which takes us right to the question we end interviews with: Which five beers should people drink before they die?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bud\u011bjovick\u00fd Budvar \u010cern\u00e9. It\u2019s kind of a simple beer, but I had that and was blown away. The malt balance is so incredible and so clean.
I\u2019m a sucker for Dupont Avec les Bons Voeux. It\u2019s a beautiful, balanced beer and it gives you a good idea of what yeast strains can do.
Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Weizen by Brauerei Heller. Hefeweizen are not really my jam and neither are rauchbiere. But you put it together and it\u2019s so fantastic. It\u2019s like the Reese\u2019s Peanut Butter Cup of beer: It\u2019s a candy with chocolate and peanut butter inside and it tastes better than either of them separately.
Maybe you should have Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Because it started this whole, goddamn thing and you should respect it.
The last beer you should have before you die: Whatever your fucking favorite beer is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you have a favorite beer?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course I don\u2019t. That\u2019s a ridiculous statement.
Okay, so if I\u2019m really going to mention a fifth one: You really need to have a really small English bitter. There\u2019s a ton of them out there that are really good and I\u2019m trying to think of a good example. What you need to have is something like Black Sheep Best Bitter when it\u2019s fresh on cask, say, at the tap-room.
Especially American brewers are woefully inadequate at working with three ingredients at a time. American brewers are really good at working with two ingredients at a time. In other words, and I\u2019m going to ignore water here for a second, because my personal belief is that you should work with your local water, because it is the only local thing you have. Now, most American brewers can do a great job working with like malt and yeast or malt and hops or maybe even yeast and hops. But to do all three together, they are fucking bad at it. While the British are fucking genius at it. Their beers are little and delicate and they don\u2019t have big flavors, but they have flavors that all come through: a little of malt, a little of hops and a little of yeast. It\u2019s beautiful.
So either that or Fr\u00fch am Dom K\u00f6lsch. Because it does the same thing: A little of malt, yeast, hops.
Where all those other beers I mentioned don\u2019t. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is typically American: It\u2019s all hop and malt, with only a little of the clean yeast strain. Budvar \u010cern\u00e9 is a malt beer. Dupont Avec les Bons Voeux is a yeast beer, Schlenkerla Rauchbier Weizen is a yeast and malt beer. None of them do all three things. But Fr\u00fch or a lovely English bitter do all three. Surprisingly rare in this world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The interview took place on 1 July 2016 via Skype.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some things just take longer: Interviews last longer than expected. Transcribing the interview takes longer than hoped. The duration of both was, let\u2019s say of gigantic proportions, thus somewhat fitting for an interview with Van Havig of the Gigantic Brewing Company in Portland, Oregon. The interview took place a few months ago, but don\u2019t panic, we have put updates where updates were applicable. The interview also went on for about an hour. As Van had a lot of very interesting things to say, we did not radically shorten it. Thus, this might take a bit longer to read. So, get a beer, sit down, let\u2019s go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2702,2707],"tags":[3440,3442,3444,3446,3448,2871,3450,3452,3454,3456,3458,3007,3460],"class_list":["post-2729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craft-beer-breweries","category-craft-beer-people","tag-aecht-schlenkerla-rauchbier-weizen-en","tag-ben-love-en","tag-brewers-gold-en","tag-budejovicky-budvar-cerne-en","tag-dupont-avec-les-bons-voeux-en","tag-gigantic-brewing-company-en","tag-hops-en","tag-oregon-en","tag-portland-en","tag-sierra-nevada-pale-ale-en","tag-the-malt-ball-en","tag-van-havig-en","tag-warrior-en","col-sm-6 col-md-4"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"featured_image_urls_v2":{"full":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bierversuche.ch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/gigantic-brewing-van-havig.jpg?fit=990%2C658&ssl=1",990,658,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bierversuche.ch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/gigantic-brewing-van-havig.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bierversuche.ch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/gigantic-brewing-van-havig.jpg?fit=300%2C199&ssl=1",300,199,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bierversuche.ch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/gigantic-brewing-van-havig.jpg?fit=768%2C510&ssl=1",768,510,true],"large":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bierversuche.ch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/gigantic-brewing-van-havig.jpg?fit=990%2C658&ssl=1",990,658,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bierversuche.ch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/gigantic-brewing-van-havig.jpg?fit=990%2C658&ssl=1",990,658,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bierversuche.ch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/gigantic-brewing-van-havig.jpg?fit=990%2C658&ssl=1",990,658,true],"greatmag-extra-small":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bierversuche.ch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/gigantic-brewing-van-havig.jpg?resize=100%2C70&ssl=1",100,70,true],"greatmag-small":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bierversuche.ch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/gigantic-brewing-van-havig.jpg?resize=270%2C180&ssl=1",270,180,true],"greatmag-medium":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bierversuche.ch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/gigantic-brewing-van-havig.jpg?resize=380%2C250&ssl=1",380,250,true],"greatmag-featured-a":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bierversuche.ch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/gigantic-brewing-van-havig.jpg?resize=990%2C658&ssl=1",990,658,true],"greatmag-featured-b":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bierversuche.ch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/gigantic-brewing-van-havig.jpg?resize=790%2C535&ssl=1",790,535,true],"greatmag-featured-c":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bierversuche.ch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/gigantic-brewing-van-havig.jpg?resize=600%2C425&ssl=1",600,425,true],"greatmag-single":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bierversuche.ch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/gigantic-brewing-van-havig.jpg?fit=710%2C472&ssl=1",710,472,true]},"post_excerpt_stackable_v2":"

Some things just take longer: Interviews last longer than expected. Transcribing the interview takes longer than hoped. The duration of both was, let\u2019s say of gigantic proportions, thus somewhat fitting for an interview with Van Havig of the Gigantic Brewing Company in Portland, Oregon. The interview took place a few months ago, but don\u2019t panic, we have put updates where updates were applicable. The interview also went on for about an hour. As Van had a lot of very interesting things to say, we did not radically shorten it. Thus, this might take a bit longer to read. So, get a beer, sit down, let\u2019s go.<\/p>\n","category_list_v2":"Breweries<\/a>, People<\/a>","author_info_v2":{"name":"christian","url":"https:\/\/www.bierversuche.ch\/blog\/author\/christian\/"},"comments_num_v2":"0 comments","yoast_head":"\nBierversuche.ch, the Swiss Craft beer online magazine, localy produced, internationally respected<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Artikel zu Craft-Bier Tastings, Festival-, Ausflug- und Reiseberichte. 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