Standard Brewing owner Justin Gerardy has had a busy summer, fiddling with yeast strains, training a new brewer, planning for expanded open hours, and, of course, working the taps.
After a very busy grand opening March, Gerardy spent a lot of time catching up, making sure his staple offerings of hoppy beers were stocked. Now, he’s “doing a lot more playing around,” he says.
This summer, expect to see a saison, a bright beer with a slightly funky edge. That’s been on tap for two weeks. Using that same yeast strain, Gerardy is making a Belgian farmhouse IPA, due out in a few weeks. He’s also brewing a summer stout, and “a
few lighter bodied, easier drinking beers.”
Gerardy just tapped another batch of Tepache, similar to his Bee’s Wine ginger beer. “It’s a Mexican folk beverage that’s big in Sonora, Mexico. Most often it’s fermented with wild yeast but there aren’t really hard, set rules as to how you put it together,” he says. Rather than dabble with unpredictable wild yeast, he’s using water kefir, a symbiotic culture similar to what he’s used to make ginger beer and kombucha. It’s an “adult soda,” made with cinnamon, clove, brown sugar, for a refreshing, fizzy, slightly alcoholic, and with some healthful probiotics.
Gerardy is currently training a brewer to help shoulder some of the load behind the counter.
“The pinch point when you’re operating on this scale is the fermenters. When you have a smaller system you have to brew more often and I’ve been operating without any days off,” he says. “If I could have somebody around to pick up a few pieces, first of all I might be able to take a vacation at some point but more importantly it will allow me to increase production a little bit so I can open up more.”
Sundays might soon be added to the line-up, and you can also expect Standard Brewing to open at noon or 2 p.m. on Saturdays once the new brewer gets his sea legs.
Cheers!
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