Much like Enzo’s the first baby to hang out in the taproom, Triangular Nature will be the first bottle to leave it.The first time I visited Jester King Brewery out in the Texas Hill Country, it happened.
We sourced the pristine fruit from @rosehillferments @rosehillfarm_NY. 5/30 // hi guys— the suareztogo.com site is currently live with many exciting beer options (we’ve got a bunch of fruit beer and we added more palatine and crispy cans too).
“I’m not a natural entrepreneur.
Hill took him there in 2012, and they visited a bunch of beer makers—De Dolle, Cantillon, Blaugies, Drie Fonteinen, Fantome—that, at the time, seemed “larger than life” to a guy who’d never visited the country.
The policy was that if anybody brought a homebrew, they’d make time to critique it. Suarez smiles when he says the phrase “crispy little beers.” He calls his Wheat Pale Ale, Crispy Little, the “flagship in that category.” It’s a category he made up, but despite—or perhaps because of—that, it's a thriving category at Suarez Family Brewery. I smiled and immediately texted Dan after first tasting his beers. “For now. Title says it all. But after a week or so, I recall thinking, ‘Who is this guy that sounds like a stoner but knows so much?’”“We were great collaborators,” Hill tells GBH.
Here’s Enzo on my lap, happily gnawing and drooling away on my knuckle as Dan tastes us through a bottle of the stunning Triangular Nature, a mixed-fermentation Saison made with buckwheat. At least there’ll be snacks.“I still haven’t launched the website, or written a newsletter to the few thousand people on our email list, or printed up t-shirts, or put a light on our sign outside so people can find us more easily when it’s dark out,” Taylor says. (Granted, those had all been informed by the five boroughs, but still.)
They would pull yeast out of the fermenters for you, they’d sell you hops and grains at wholesale.
But those consistently low alcohol levels are no accident, either.“It was built in the ‘30s, and this is its fourth life,” Suarez says. Can I scrub the floors? She’d traveled around Europe, seeing, tasting, and experiencing all the food and drink worlds had to offer there—wine, cheese, cured meat, pasta, olive oil, breweries, bakeries, and more. He’s just making crispy little beers. Sometimes that gets through, sometimes it doesn’t.”So when Hill visited New York in November of that year for some Hill Farmstead events at Spuyten Duyvil and the Blind Tiger, he stayed at Suarez’s place in Brooklyn. She says that it’s one thing to keep up with the day-to-day operations—selling beer, coordinating deliveries, invoicing, bookkeeping, stuff like that—of the brewery, but another altogether to look beyond to bigger-picture items, especially with such a small staff.But more than just the beers and creativity, Hill learned something about himself as a person that sticks with him to this day.Did I mention that Dan Suarez has a lot of ideas? I was proud!
I accepted résumés for a period of time, but had formally offered the position to Dan.
“Instead, they brew what the consumer wants.
I’m just a brewer.
Food recs near Suarez Family Brewery. Most mornings in the brewery would begin with either Dan or myself saying to the other, ‘So, last night I was reading/thinking about ___ and wondering if we could do ___.’ It was a time when ideas seemed original and every week we were brewing a new beer.”“There’s this group of brothers in their seventies who grew up in Red Hook, which is two towns from here,” Suarez says. I’ve also come to like peaches as a beer fruit for their water content—weird I know.
It was great.
Or to feel like I had a not-so-small part of inflicting pain on him or reducing the pleasure he gets from making beer. No big deal.“I was surprised upon visiting all of these places that they were all modest, family-run operations making relatively tiny amounts of beer,” Suarez says. He’d been drinking their beers for a while, but experiencing them in person was revelatory.For now, six months in, it seems like it’s working—at least from the outside. “Dan was looking for an opportunity that would expand his knowledge.
He’s the best brewer in the world.”Suarez stayed at Hill’s house and the pair spent time “sampling beers and getting to know each other.” He left an impression. ' They came in here the first time and said, 'This is what we dreamed about in the ‘70s. “After Dan arrived, we found focus in pioneering the early phase of the citrus obsession—we brewed Mimosa, Juicy, and citrus-zested IPAs. They would work together for nearly three years, and the experience was extremely rewarding for both. … 697 Likes, 27 Comments - suarez family brewery (@suarezfamilybrewery) on Instagram: “Staff outing to little pepper in queens for some Szechuan food, before we hit up our event at Beer…” I’m very thankful that that was the culture there. Limit 4 per person.Send a message to Suarez Family Brewery:One of the largest resources on the Internet for finding food & beverage services and related businesses, worldwide.NOW TAKING PICKUP ORDERS FOR FRI. 5/29 & SAT.
5, 2016. Brewer owned and operated.