This is the second in the series, an interview conducted with Brad Sancho from Original Gravity. The rest of the interviews will be posted here and at http://www.heritage.com/ in the coming week leading up to beer fest (video clips from each interview to come soon as well), and excerpts from all of the interviews will be published in Heritage Newspapers' July 22 edition on Page 2-B. Enjoy and cheers!
Check back here Thursday for my interview with Ron Jeffries
Brad Sancho
Owner, head brewer of Original Gravity Brewing Company, 440 County St., Milan
Age: 35
Lives in: Originally from Belleville, now lives in Ypsilanti Township
How did you get started brewing?
Sancho: I got started just by reading a lot of books and I started homebrewing in 2002. I spent a couple hundred bucks on the equipment and started making it on my stove, eventually I graduated from there to the garage.
Actually it was my brother-in-law who really got me started. He was homebrewing with some friends, just kind of messing around. None of them were really pros at it.
So I went over there (when they were brewing) and I really wasn’t even into drinking good beer at the time, I just thought I would go over there drink some beers and it was fun and it was interesting. We tried it a few weeks later and it was horrible.
But it was interesting to me, so I bought some books and started and thought, ‘Hey I want to try this.’ So I read through the books and saw that we didn’t do this and we didn’t do that…and that’s kind of what sparked it. After that I bought some limited stuff to make it on my stove and it kind of started from there.
(So, what led you to eventually opening Original Gravity?)
Sancho: It’s kind of weird. I said to myself, ‘Well I would like to do this some day,’ and after that I started working on a business plan…so I started dabbling around with my business plan and worked on that for several months. And then I just started getting a little more serious about it, I started doing a lot more research about it, started getting a little more excited, and eventually I said to myself, ‘Wow, I’m really going to do this, this was actually happening.’
And even after that, after I had the business plan and started meeting with banks, even after I got my loan and started building, it really didn’t sink in until we started doing construction and I was about to quit my job. Then it really started hitting me like, ‘Wow this isn’t a joke. I’m really going to do this.’
I went to school to be a mechanical engineer. I was doing diesel emission testing for companies for almost 10 years, and in the middle of all this my wife was pregnant. So I started questioning myself like, ‘Is this really the fatherly thing to do, to quit a secure job?’
But I think what really pushed it over the edge for me is that I was really, really enjoying the homebrewing hobby coupled that with the fact that I wasn’t enjoying my job anymore. This wasn’t what I wanted to do every day, I said I think I wanted to make beer every day or close to it. And most days (brewing) is fun…this really is a cool thing to be doing, I enjoy it.
What continues to get you out of bed in the morning?
Sancho: It’s kind of the whole thing. It’s really a combination of things.
I really enjoy making beer, but to be honest sometimes I don’t get all that excited about making another batch of IPA (India Pale Ale) like I did today because I have so many times before. But we have the rotating taps and we have the small-batch system, so I still have other avenues to have fun and I think the customers feel the same way. The like to try something new, just the creative aspect of coming in and doing those things that’s what gets me out of bed.
And the other aspect, which is not specific to owning a brewery, with owning your own business, you’ve got a little more freedom. I’ve got a wife who is pregnant again and a little boy that’s 3-years-old, so I can kind of move my schedule around to spend more time with the family more so than at a regular job.
What is your opinion of the craft beer market?
Sancho: I like it, it’s supporting my business. It’s kind of weird, I started homebrewing 2002 and really it’s been a short period of time that there has been a big surge of microbreweries. I think in the early to mid-1990s, there was a big surge and that was before I was even 21, and now there is a big surge of craft breweries.
I think a lot of that is because there has been a big movement to try to support local so that definitely helps. That’s what we’re all about here too (supporting local businesses)…before prohibition there were more breweries than there are today and that’s because they didn’t have the transportation like they do now, so people got their beer from the local watering hole. The whole thing is really cyclical.
(Do you feel like there has been a shift in craft beer where drinkers are seeking out more creative beers?)
You definitely have to have the beers that people want to drink. In my case there are lot of beers that people haven’t tried before, so maybe they don’t know what they want.
And I say in my case because we did open in Milan, it’s a rural neighborhood and there are lot of people who come in here just to see what we’re all about.
I’ve heard it a million times before, somebody will come in and say that they drink Budweiser, so you need to help them understand that there are definitely other styles of beer out there.
I think to help educate them and offer them something different is important.
(How long have you been distributing to local bars and restaurants?)
We’ve been distributing for about a year, a little over a year now and we just had a two-year anniversary last month. Right now there are between 10 to 12 places have our beer and we are growing into that.
I don’t have plans to bottle, we do the take-out, we do growlers here but as far as bottling I really don’t want to have to get into that if I don’t have to. So far we have been fortunate to have been able to pay the bills and run the business without having to do that. It’s a whole other investment…it’s a whole other transferring of the beer so it’s another opportunity for something to go wrong with the beer. I am sure you have had six-packs from some of your favorite breweries where you know it’s sometimes it doesn’t taste just right, but some places do it better than others. You know, it’s just really something I don’t want to get into.
If we do any bottling, it will be small batches that we would sell here. We just started doing some barrel-aged stuff so in the fall and the winter we will have that out. We have a scotch ale that’s aging in a Bourbon barrel and I have a imperial IPA that’s aging in a Bourbon barrel. I’ve got a hard ginger ale that’s aging in a bourbon barrel, there are no hops in the brewing process for that other than some dry hops that are placed in the server tank with it. I thought that would be really fun to have a Bourbon ginger-ale kind of thing,
What have you got planned for the Brewers’ Guild Fest?
Sancho: We’re going to be bringing some of our full-timers. I think it’s important to bring your full-time beers, some of those people identify your business with those beers and they always want that beer.
What is your favorite style of beer to drink?
Sancho: I definitely go for the hop-forward kind of beers. I really like hops, which is almost getting clichéd at this point because everybody loves the hoppy beers…the big citrusy, floral IPA’s. I really like those.
(What is your favorite style of beer to brew?)
Sancho: It doesn’t make that much difference to me. I don’t do anything too abstract. I do like beers that I dry-hop. I dry-hop a lot of my beers like my IPA, my amber, my bitter and even my ginger ale.
(Dry hopping is) adding hops after fermentation, either in the server tanks or in the conditioning tank. Like today, I transferred a new batch of the amber, when I did that, I basically have a big sack that I fill with hops and I tie it up in there.
How important is the Brewers Guild Festival?
Sancho: It’s got a purpose for me personally for my brewery especially since we’re kind of young, I don’t really advertise…it’s a way for me to advertise my business.
It’s also being part of the Brewer’s Guild, it’s a good event to bring us all together so we can get together and socialize and we have that networking and social aspect.
It also kind of has that ‘Wow’ factor, that "Ah" factor. Bringing all the breweries in Michigan together, not all of them are members of the Guild but most of them are, and a big majority actually attend the festival. So I think that helps all of us do better to see all of these great breweries come together for one big festival, and to be known as one of the better beer festivals in the country.
No comments:
Post a Comment