Chewing the Fat: The Brooklyn Brewery's Garrett Oliver

The SAVOR Beer and Food Festival takes place this weekend and for the past week, D.C. has been crawling with several top figures in the beer crafting industry. To kick off this week's beer festivities, DCist got a chance to sit down and talk with Garrett Oliver, Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster, food and beer pairing expert, author, and — though maybe not as glamorous as the St. Pauli girl — the face of top-notch, traditional beer brewing. We caught up with him before an Italian beer tasting at the National Geographic.

So you've got your book, The Brewmaster's Table...

Yes, and now I'm working on the next one, which is the Oxford Companion to Beer, from Oxford University Press.

I know in the first book, you mentioned that you had received some beer and food pairing recipes from some well-known chefs: are those going to be in this book?

Those will probably end up somewhere else. This is a really massive project: I don't know if you've ever seen the Oxford Companion to Wine, but it's about 800 pages of relatively small type. This is basically a big reference book on thousands of topics that have to do with beer. Everything from technical topics to things like beer pairing, etc. So it'll take at least three years, I'm the editor-in-chief. Nobody writes one of these books by themselves since it's like an encyclopedia. In the wine guide there were 40 writers... typically the editor-in-chief writes maybe a third of it, and then edits everything to make sure that it all makes sense. So yeah, I kind of threw myself under the bus, but when the guys who do the Oxford English Dictionary come to you and say they want you to do the definitive book about beer, you can't say 'no.' I kinda tried to, but they got me.

Recently the hop shortage has been driving beer prices up, and other economic factors like higher fuel costs and higher grain costs (barley) will probably compound that price increase. Do you think the economic situation will start to inspire more people to drink even more local beer, similar to the locavore movement in food? And further, do you think local breweries will start brewing more Belgian or German styles to supplant the fact that those imported beers at going to be skyrocketing in price?

What you're going to find, I think, is upward pressure on all beer prices. That's coming from overseas and from, like you said, the hop shortage: hops costing 600-700 percent what they cost this time last year. It's pretty crazy. So I think food miles, as they call it, is definitely an issue as well. However, on the east coast and on the west coast, for more than 100 years, we've gotten our grain from the middle of the country. So it's been a long time since anyone in D.C. was very close to a field of barley. And I don't remember if there were ever hops grown down here, although I doubt it, since it's very humid. So you're going to have some of those issues regardless. I do think that, independently of the economic pressures, people are going to look to eat things and drink things that come from their local breweries. And look at us: we're in 22 states, but I always say 'Support your local brewery first. If you've got a Brooklyn tap on, that's great that you're getting our beer. But if your local brewery is making good beer, get your first pint from them. I'll take the third pint.'

Photo by Eric Denman

I just wanted to touch on a few seasonal beers that you guys have started sending down into the D.C. market: stuff like the Brooklyn Local One, and the Brooklyner Hopfen-Weisse.

There's always new stuff coming down the pipe, every two months there's a new beer available on draft. That's under a program we call "Brewmaster's Reserve": the last one was the Brooklynator Doppelbock. The next one is going to be a Keller-Helles. Some people that think a specialty beer has to be 8 percent will be disappointed, but I think that Helles is a really great style, and you basically never see it here. It has a very distinctive flavor, and if you ever spent time in beer gardens in Germany, you'll recognize it. Keller means that it's the unfiltered version that you would normally only get at the brewery. It's a 5 percent lager, but I think it's got tons of flavor and it's really interesting. Local One is actually a year-round beer for us. A lot of people thought it was a special release because they'd never seen us do that before, but it is actually a year-round regular beer. The Hopfen-Weisse actually started out as part of the Brewmaster's Reserve program last year: it was originally draft-only. We made 300 kegs and no bottles. It was a big hit here, but it was also a big hit in Germany, where we brewed the other half of it. The one we brewed here is the Brooklyner-Schneider Hopfen-Weisse, and the one we brewed in Germany is the Schneider-Brooklyner Hopfen-Weisse. I chose the hops for their beer, and they chose the hops for my beer. But I did the base recipe for both. This time around, we did 2500 cases only, 100 percent bottle-refermentation. We blended in some champagne yeast with the Schneider-Weisse yeast to get a fuller refermentation, and we're really happy with it. I think it turned out quite well. There are always people I'd love to work with... we've done beers with the guys from A'Chouffe, from a couple of British breweries like Thornbridge and Kelham Island. There are a few people we're talking to, so we'll see. We've also been doing some barrel-aged beers that so far we've pretty much just kept to ourselves, but we're thinking about what we might release to the public as well. We're always talking about what the next thing is.

Do you get palate fatigue? You're doing all these events, beer tastings, beer dinners... do you ever yearn for a nice cold glass of macro-brew beer? You know, something that just doesn't taste like anything?

I know people think it's such a cop-out, but I actually never drink that stuff. If I go to a party and that's the only beer there is, then I won't have any beer. I genuinely don't like it: I'm not casting aspersion upon anybody who does like it sometimes. But yeah, my lawnmower beer is stuff like witbier, weissbier... beers that are just as light, but a lot more interesting, a lot more flavor. But I'm also into wine, I'm into cocktails; many of my friends are cocktail experts. You know, I make a mean manhattan.

Out of seven days a week, I probably drink wine at least two or three of them. I sit on the wine panel for the New York Times, and I have friends who are winemakers or own wine shops. I think by keeping things interesting — I'm into sake as well — it's not just beer all the time, and that helps.

Back to beer and food... do you have any recent pairings that have been revelations? Anything that really made your eyes open?

I recently did a fun tasting at the University for Culinary Education in New York, and it was beers paired with cured meats, rillettes, pates, and things like that. Speck from Germany, Prosciutto from Italy, Parma and Serrano hams and the difference between those and an American country ham. They all went nicely with beer, which wasn't a surprise, but the interesting thing was how each one worked slightly differently with the beer. It was a really fun tasting. I think if anything, the thing I found fascinating (and it's weird that it's taken me this long to realize it) is that your average person walking in off the street, who is not a beer expert or aficionado, really can handle completely outlandish stuff. And it used to be that things like the smoked beer Schlenkerla from Germany. It'd be one thing if it was this [National Geographic] crowd, but if it were just regular people coming to a recreational beer tasting, I wouldn't spring something like that on them. And I've come to realize that people have really good taste. They may not know what to expect, but if you tell them 'Hey, this is going to taste like Slim-Jims and campfires' and get them ready for it, people have great taste. And it used to be that I was holding back on them, which in a way is like a function of your own ego telling you that you're special and you can appreciate it, but they can't. But I've started putting on a much more varied lineup out there for tastings that might not be beer aficionados because you're finding that people are hungry for new flavors, they're glad to learn new things, and they're just as adventurous as the rest of us.

What you recommend pairing with big, huge American IPAs and strong ales... stuff that typically seems to be really difficult to pair things with.

Many of these big hoppy beers are great with spicy food: where almost nothing else can really handle the heat. In terms of impact, the average beer kind of disappears in front of, say, a Indian Vindaloo or fiery fish tacos with a lot of jalapeños. You certainly can't have wine... a margarita can handle it in a way, but you don't really get a match out of that. But a lot of big hoppy beers are really, really great with food that is beyond a certain level of spice. A lot of Thai food for example.

One last question: you tend to be one of the better-dressed brewers. Typically most brewers are the t-shirt and jeans guys, or maybe a polo. Do you dress up to appeal more to the wine audience, or is it generally because you just like wearing suits?

You do get a chance to dress up, and that's fun, but I remember one time, some years back, when I saw a wine tasting. The winemaker Angelo Gaja. I didn't know him at the time, I only knew that his wine cost like $200/bottle. When Angelo showed up, the guy is like 75, but he looked like a million dollars. Crests of gray hair, a great suit on, and you look at that guy and say, 'His wines are worth $200' because he looked like it. A lot of the people you're in front of, they're thinking about beer as something that is this mass-market product. They're thinking of the guy in a t-shirt in front of the television set with a can in his hand When I show up to do something, I do want to change that image. And one thing that a couple of Italians said to me... 'If you're making something and you want people to understand that it's delicious, show up looking delicious.' Now, you may not think I showed up looking delicious, but this is as delicious as I get. So people just have to accept what I manage to do.

Garrett Oliver is hosting a five-course beer dinner at the Capital Ale House in Richmond on Thursday, May 15, 7 p.m. He returns to D.C. for a SAVOR Cheese & Beer seminar on Friday, May 16, 7 p.m., and beer pouring on Saturday.