As if that weren’t enough, Garrett joined the Brooklyn Brewery in 1994 and designed the brewhouse we were sitting in.
The brewhouse was unexpectedly beautiful. The outside is a pale yellow, with some seriously charming brick exposure. We entered and met Garrett in their party room, which can hold up to 300 people. We were surrounded by bags of malt from all over the world, neatly lining the walls. What really surprised us was how clean the place was. We were a stone’s throw from where all the beer is made; yet it smelled less like beer than your average bar.
Before the interview commenced, Garrett poured John and I large cups of Blanche De Brooklyn. This is their Belgian white beer that uses coriander seed, Curacao orange peel, and Garrett’s secret blend of spices. After one sip we forgot all about the rain outside, and were warmed to the gills inside.
Garrett is enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and way eloquent. We learned a lot and we got tipsy. So why not join in? Pour yourself a tall one right now while you get to know Garrett Oliver, brewmaster extraordinaire.
LC: Wow! This is lovely. Give us an idea of what goes on here.
GO: We have tours on Sat, Friday night happy hour from 6 to 10pm, and this space is used for everything. Weddings, concerts, serious dinners. We also have art exhibits here. This is the largest arts community in the United States. We have about 8,000 artists within the square mile around here. Or at least people who file their tax returns as “artist” -
LC Instead of “waitress”….
GO: (laughs) Yeah, exactly.
LC: So are you originally from Brooklyn?
GO: I’m originally from Hollis, Queens. But I live in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn
LC: And how long have you been with Brooklyn Brewery?
GO: Since 1994. The brewery actually started in 1988, but it started out as what is called a “contract brewery”, which means you have your own recipes, etc.. But you have someone else produce the beer because you don’t have a brewery. People here always wanted to have a brewery but they’d seen what had happened to New Amsterdam. You might not remember, but they opened up a brewery in 1985, and it went out of business in six months.
LC: Why do you think that happened? Was there not a lot of interest at that point? Was it poorly run?
GO: No, a combination of things. But it was too much too soon. The equipment is extremely expensive. If you try to build a brewery first and then get the brand off the ground, it takes a long time to build up enough sales so that you can start to pay for the equipment. Contract brewing started as a way for people to get their beer out there, and then once they had the wherewithal to build their own brewery, they could do it in a prudent fashion. Which is what happened here.
LC: So the Brooklyn brewery was started in 1994?
GO: They brought me on to built it, and bring out all the new beers. When I came there were only two beers. Brooklyn Lager and Brooklyn Brown Ale. So I redeveloped those two and…
LC: Isn’t it exciting to have been here from the beginning of the brewery?
GO: Yeah it is. I wouldn’t say it was a ground floor kind of thing. I mean, they were around for six years before I was here.
LC: When, or how did you become a brewmaster?
GO: At the Manhattan Brewing Company, I started as an apprentice and worked my way up to brewmaster in a few years. That was a fun place.
LC: And we read you left a law firm to become the apprentice?
GO: Yeah, it was a cushy job! I had a window office on the 52nd floor of what was then the Pan Am Building. In fact, a bunch of people who are here now left good jobs to do this.
LC: So what made you leave the law firm? What happened? You’re too young for a mid-life crisis…
GO: Ha! I wouldn’t be too sure about that! Well, I WAS too young then, anyway. Basically, brewing is what I wanted to do. My degree is in film, actually. I did that for awhile, but I figured out I didn’t have the fire in the belly to max out 200 credit cards to make my magnum opus… and that’s the kind of drive it takes to do that.
LC: Right, but how does that lead to brewing?
GO: I came to home brewing as a hobby. I lived in England for a year. That is when I really got to love beer. In England beer had flavor and personality. Your average English person gets to the pub, and even if they never think of themselves as a beer fan, the first thing they talk about is how the beer was today; “Oh, that’s a nice pint in’it?”
LC: We have a lot of friends who are English, and we’ve got to tell you, this is the beer they like to drink when they come to town. You guys got some cred with all our European friends. Sorry, go on…
GO: No, it’s always nice to hear! I hadn’t paid attention to beer before England. And when I got back, in 1984, there was nothing to drink. You went to your average deli and it was: Bud, Bud Light, Coors, Coors Light. Maybe there would be some stale Bass and some dusty bottles of Guinness in a corner and that was it.
LC: You’ve got the art space here, the events. Was being involved with the community one of the things you all envisioned at first?
GO: Yeah because we want to be a part of the community, not just something that sets down here and feeds off the community. I don’t know if you’ve been to any of our block parties…
LC: No! You have them here in Williamsburg?
GO: There’s one coming up May 20th. Right out in front of the brewery. We have thousands of people here. We put up a big stage. We have bands. It’s solid people from one end of the block to the other. People out with their kids… it’s a great atmosphere. Very Local. This whole thing harkens back to the turn of the century when there were 48 breweries in Brooklyn. Prohibition shut down the breweries, and when they came back, they thought people were willing to drink anything.
LC: Now you’re the only one in Brooklyn.
GO: Yup. And back in the old days everybody knew their guy who made the bread, their guy who roasted the coffee, and they knew their brewers. What’s cool is now when I walk down the street, and everybody knows, I’m their brewer! If I see a place that has a Brooklyn light, I walk in and introduce myself and ask how they like it.
LC: You’re working on a very local level, and yet, you guys are a rather large operation.
GO: We’re as far north as Massachusetts and as far South as North Carolina. If I go somewhere they don’t have us, I go in there and –
LC: convince them, right?
GO: Right.
LC: When did you write The Good Beer Book?
GO: I wrote the book at about the same time we were building this. Which was not a fun thing. The two things just happened to fall together at the same time. Someone talked me into doing another book. It’ll be about how beer goes with fine food and travel. I’m involved with Slow Food International.
LC: Slow food?
GO: As opposed to fast food.
LC: Got it.
GO: It’s a big thing. 60,000 members worldwide. They’re looking to preserve world wide food culture. Today people say they don’t have time to make good food, and yet they’ll plunk down and snack in front of the TV for hours. Slow Food kind of a hedonistic pleasure based organization. And you know, Beer is food. And we’re bringing back styles of beer that haven’t been brewed in ages.
LC: Very nice. So how much beer is brewed here?
GO: We’re adding equipment right over there that will increase our production by 50 percent. We’re growing at a rapid pace, by about 25 percent a year. Now we’re turning out 1000 kegs a month. Last year Brooklyn Brewery turned out about 32,000 barrels of beer. To give you some idea: a barrel is 31 gallons, a standard keg is a half-barrel.
LC: Wow!
GO: But actually that’s pretty small compared to say, Anheuser-Bush. They put out about 90 million barrels a year. But the famous Peter Luger Steak House goes through a large amount of our beer, as do the ESPN Sports Zone guys - who were here just before you came. Columbia business school goes through a HUGE amount of Brooklyn Beer, which I think they’re quite proud of (laughs).
LC: Was there a time when it was tough going?
GO: Oh yeah. It never stops being tough going, to a certain extent. There’s not a huge amount of money for advertising. We sell on word of mouth and the quality of the product. All of the money goes into making a superior product, which hopefully, people will buy because they like it. We don’t sell by saturation advertising…
LC: Like most beers with their girls in bikini’s…
GO: Though we did make Baby Tee’s last year, so —
LC: Alright! Woo!
GO: It wasn’t even our idea. It was because a lot of bartenders were asking for them.
LC: Well, your logo IS cool. Other than pure reputation, how do you get your beers into bars?
(Fun fact: Brooklyn’s label was done by world renowned designer, Milton Glaser, best known for the "I Love NY" logo.)
GO: We have a sales force, and actually there’s two parts to Brooklyn Brewery. There are the Brooklyn brands, and then there’s the Craft Brewers Guild, which is our distribution arm. We started distributing our own beer back in 1990 because nobody else would distribute it. You went to the major distribution houses who have Heineken and whatever else, and they were like, “What the hell is this? We don’t know what it is and we don’t want it.” So we started distributing our own beer. Then other microbrewers started coming to us saying “we’re having the same problem, could you please distribute us too?”. It kind of snowballed from there. We now carry 300 plus brands available through us.
LC: So what’s a typical day like? You’re not creating a new beer every single day, though that would be cool.
GO: Recipes are the fun creative part. But another part is getting the recipes where you want them and keeping them there. It’s a natural process. You have natural ingredients, and natural ingredients change. You’ve got to have an idea in your mind what the beer is supposed to taste like and go with it. Of course, in your mind, no beer is ever “perfect”, unless you’re an idiot. Everyday is your new attempt to make it perfect. Things are always being tweaked, so it never gets boring. When I come in the morning, my two assistants and I start the brewing process – the mash – we mill in the grains for the next day, we’re filtering another beer, we’re cleaning tanks. We’re all doing three or four things at once. I’m doing Lab work.
LC: Lab work?
GO: Lab work. Making sure there’s nothing in there but our yeast, so that the beer doesn’t spoil. It’s hard work. You’re getting burned, you’re getting wet, we’re carrying hoses… but it has to be done. A lot of the work isn’t glamorous.
LC: So what’s your favorite beer you make? You can reveal it…
GO: I don’t have a single favorite. It depends on what mood I’m in, where I am. If I were at the beach it’d be something like this (pointing to our Blanche). In front of a fire in wintertime it would be Black Chocolate Stout or a Monster. If I’m just out sitting in the grass I might like to have a German style Wheat beer. It depends.
LC: Did you ever make a beer where the minute you created it you were like, “ohmigawd”, this is IT.
GO: Well, Black Chocolate Stout was pretty exciting. It’s still, in some ways, our most famous beer. I think people hadn’t encountered anything like it. It’s stout at eight and a half- percent alcohol, but people really liked it. Standard beer is four and half to five percent alcohol. It was a real gamble, but it was almost like my resume for coming to Brooklyn Brewery.
LC: So what does your family think of the course you’ve taken – from big law firm to brewmaster?
GO: Oh they think it’s great – now. When I was still living in my mom’s house covering her stove with a sticky mess, she might’ve thought differently. Now the only thing my mom wouldn’t like is if I’m on TV and forget to tell her.
LC: Any previews of your upcoming beers?
GO: Our first new beer will be Octoberfest. It’s the first time we’re doing that. We’re using all German malt, all German hops. It’s a great style of beer and even the Germans have dumbed down their Octoberfest a bit. We want to make it the way I tasted it 15 years ago.
LC: It seems to us you like your job.
GO: I LOVE my job! Most days…
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