Hi there, my name is John, and I’m a brewer.
You can call me Brewer John if you want, as that’s how a lot of people know me now. But it hasn’t always been this way, and man, it sure feels like its been a long road that’s brought me here.
At the moment I’m about to begin what could be the great task of my life. It feels like the culmination of years of hard work and toil, pain and suffering, joy and accomplishment, heartache and loss. At the same time if feels like a new beginning, the day when my life will really begin, every day before being a preparation. Soon, and largely thanks to the hard work and generosity of my four amazing partners, we will be opening our own brewery.
Perhaps because of what this means to me I’ve found myself reflecting on my many brewing memories.
I’m remembering when I used to wake up in the morning and the first thing I thought about was how to perfect my recipe for Imperial Stout. When I closed my eyes in bed I would ponder why my Bohemian Pilsener had only placed second in a recent homebrewing competition.
I’m remembering spending eleven straight hours in my sweltering upstairs apartment in mid July on my day off to brew two new homebrew recipes, when everyone else I knew was at the beach.
I’m remembering the sense of accomplishment I felt my first day promoted to brewer, standing on the brewer’s platform with a smile on my face and looking out across the brewery floor.
Remembering these moments, and many others, one question comes to mind. Have I become what I hated most?
I don’t wake up and fall asleep thinking about brewing very often anymore, and when I do I’m usually not thinking about recipes, I’m thinking about how best to organise the many mundane tasks around the brewery. I can’t remember the last time I homebrewed a beer, although its an art I plan to rediscover soon. Often now when I stand on the brewer’s platform looking out across the brewery floor my face is stern, my thoughts troubled by the endless worries of a head brewer.
I used to scoff at brewers who spent all day on their computers and never put on their boots anymore. Guys who knew more about effective floor drainage than how to tease melanoidin complexity out of a crisp Oktoberfest. Oldtimers who could talk your ear off about the amazing wheat beer they used to turn out in four days in the 80’s but who had never heard of dry hopping. Granted I’m not that far gone yet, but is that the road that I’m walking?
I don’t know the answer to that question, to be honest, and I still spend a lot of time thinking about it, but Im pretty sure the answer is no. I think this is just part of the journey of my life in brewing, the end of an old age of unbridled passion and the beginning of a new one. A new era that is no less passionate, but one tempered by an understanding of what I’m getting myself into. Maybe keeping going armed with that knowledge takes the most passion of all.
Anyways, all this began years ago, and I never saw it coming.
If you went back ten years, when I used to plant trees and fight forest fires for a living and told me I would make a living in beer, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you went back six years, when I was struggling to cut it on a bottling line, and told me I would be a brewer one day, I probably would have shook my head figuring it was never going to happen. If you went back four years, to when I first became a brewer and told me that in six months I’d be a head brewer, I would have scoffed. And if you went back one measly year and told me that I’d be a brewery owner, I would have laughed.
But here I am.
You just never know where life is going to take you.
Where life has taken me this year is far away from the Island I call home. First to a Belgian-style brewery in the north of Scotland. Sounds odd, I know, but like I said you just don’t know where you’ll end up. For most of the past year I was head brewer at 6 Degrees North, in the town of Stonehaven, home to about 12,000 residents in the sometimes forgotten northeastern corner of Great Britain. But after more than half a year shivering in the wind that blew off the North Sea and trying to tease knowledge, and beer, from uncooperative yeast cells it was time to move on. It was time to head back to the Island to start a new brewery in the town of Sooke, home to about 12,000 residents in the sometimes forgotten southwestern corner of Vancouver Island.
And the name of the brewery?
Well… Sooke Brewing of course.
Silly question.