Brewmaster profile - Michael Altman

Today marks the inaugural celebration of International Brewers Day, a holiday of sorts inspired by the graphic that greets you as you enter San Francisco's 21st Amendment brewpub, a logo that asks: Have you hugged a brewmaster today? Conceived by local beer writer Jay Brooks to coincide with the feast of the brewer's patron saint, St. Arnold, the idea is to simply take a day to give credit where credit is due: "celebrating the contributions to society of the men and women who brew beer." In honor of the occasion, I thought it would be fun to participate by profiling our friend, fellow Fairfaxian, and local publican, the inimitable Mike Altman.

However, not only have I not indulged in a straight up Q&A interview since 1997 (having then proven quite conclusively that it's not a strong point of mine), we also decided to eschew the typical format as he's been the subject of similar interviews by the local press in recent years. Something besides beer that Mike and I have in common, however, is a love of music. Mike hosts free live music at the pub at least once, if not twice a week, has named his brews after local musical luminaries, and has decorated the pub with various musicalia. For those reasons, it seemed like a strangely appropriate idea to have this profile revolve around music by stealing recontextualizing the format popularized by The A.V. Club in their Random Rules feature. Simply put, we sat down with Mike's iPod, hit shuffle, and chatted about the tunes that came up - while drinking beer, of course. (An Altman's alt, to be exact.)

The Freight Hoppers, "Trouble"



Rob: So, this makes it easy to start talking about bluegrass, eh? Did you pick up on your love for
bluegrass when you were working in Colorado?
Mike Altman: The last year I was in Portland, there was a guy that I was working with who was really into bluegrass, got me into Bill Monroe, and then when I got to Colorado that's when it really exploded, I started playing banjo...
R:And when you went to Colorado, you went to brew for...
MA: Actually, when we'd gone out there, it was for Rockygrass, just going out for the festival. I'd just made the call, gotten all the passes and everything for the festival, put the phone down, and then like fifteen minutes later, I got a call about some guys out in Boulder looking for a brewer, and I thought, that's funny, I'm headed out there next week for a bluesgrass festival. I wasn't planning on going to Boulder, but decided to go out for an interview, the best interview of my life, and got the job at Mountain Sun. There was a really strong tie between Mountain Sun and Planet Bluegrass, their office used to be right next door in downtown Boulder, and it was a connection I really jumped into and took to another level. The last two years I was there we were doing all the backstage catering for them.
R: So what was it about bluegrass that got you so into it?
MA: The fun, the rhythm, the music. It's just good, good dance music.

Paul Simon, "Crazy Love, Vol. II"



MA: That's a good story. I was the private chef for Paul Simon's record producer, Phil Ramone. And Simon and Garfunkel, I was listening to them when I was like four or five years old. Bridge over Troubled Water, he had the 8-track.
R: It's pretty obvious you've taken music from when you were growing up and still play it in the pub, follow the musicians... Was there anything like that for you with beer, anything you've brought with you from growing up?
MA: Actually, no. All my friends who've known me since high school think it's hysterical that I became a brewer. I was always the first one out in quarters games, throwing up, the one who couldn't really handle his beer.
R: So when did it happen, then?
MA: When I moved from New York, I was a private chef, we moved to Portland. I was going to school, I was going to be a teacher. McMenamins was just getting off the ground, just as Edgefield was getting built...
R: You were going to be a teacher? Is that why you do so much here at the pub for YES?
MA: Oh, absolutely. It's a profession that's so crucial, yet they get paid nothing. And teachers get so little recognition.
R: What did you want to teach?
MA: 4th and 5th grade. 6th grade at the latest, before they start hitting puberty. So I was going to school, working as a chef, and I started getting into the brewing world. I had so many credits to go, having gone to cooking school and then needing the undergraduates degree and the teaching degree, I just didn't have the patience.


Ozomatli, "Super Bowl Sundae"

MA: Hey, this is a good mix.
R: I need a refresher on this one. This is an interesting one to show up on here, because for me, Ozomatli always walked the line between being a band that was really trendy and one that was going to fall into the jam band circuit.
MA: They're kinda like the Beastie Boys, mixing a lot of different genres, being very salsa, Latin-based, with rap, and hip hop, and rock to create a fun, eclectic music. Sublime is like that, too. I got to see them up last year at the Mystic, whenever they come around I try to see them.
R: What kind of live music do you like to see the most?
MA: It varies, it depends. We're going up tonight to see David Bromberg. We get to go out so rarely.* I'm sort of done with the jam band thing, there's just not a band out there that really excites me in that genre right now. But I like to go out to see this kind of thing, really upbeat, good dancing music.

The Grateful Dead, "Sugaree"


R: Speaking of jam bands...
MA: But that's a classic. This place is here because of Jerry, I'm here because of Jerry. It's such an obvious connection. He's been such a huge influence on my life. I feel like I missed the boat by just a short time. I can guarantee that if Jerry were still alive, he would have played at this pub at some point or another.
R: Is Jerry one of the reasons you're in Fairfax?
MA: No, that's just random. It goes back to the karma thing. We were meant to be in Fairfax, being in touch with the whole Phil community. It has a lot to do with the Phil circles, very small circles.
R: I keep waiting for the "Phil-named" beer. When you named the beers after Barry and J.C., how did they react to it?
MA: Oh, Barry loved it, they both loved it. Well, it started actually with the Chazz Cats, and everybody then wanted a beer named after them. But when I came out here, one of the first beers I brewed was the Yonder Mountain stout, but it just wasn't fitting, it needed a new name, and Sless was on board.

The Vern Williams Band, "Roll On Buddy"


MA: I think that's a Bill Monroe tune, originally.
R: You like the traditional stuff, don't you? Do you think that's reflected in the way you make your beers? You work within fairly traditional parameters; there's nothing bizarre, experimental, strange stuff coming out of the brewhouse.
MA: That's fairly true. I did lots more experimenting when it was on someone else's nickel and we were going through the beers quicker. We have a bigger system here, producing twenty kegs at a time, that only lends itself to being experimented or taken off the deep end once in a while. And for me, with all my back surgeries, my time hands-on in the brewhouse has been a lot less, where I leave that to the brewer to take charge. That's one of the things about bringing Christian on board, I think he's going to do a lot more experimenting. At the beginning, he just wants to brew the beers we've got here, get ensconced in the system, get comfortable. But one of the reasons we brought him on board is we really want to see him build up the cask program and do some bottle conditioning.
R: So what's your traditional favorite, then? What's your Bill Monroe of the beer world?
MA: Traditional? Well, the Epiphany is probably my all-time favorite drinking beer, but it doesn't really fall within a guideline. It's a beer that I've been making since 1990. It was the Hammerhead at McMenamins and was transferred to Mountain Sun as the Colorado Kind Ale, and here I was, having brewed this beer for 15 years, driving out here, my head's spinning, taking notes while driving, recording notes into a portable recorder about opening up the brewpub because there was so much information, so much information that needed to get absorbed. I had to start my contacts all over again, my purveyors, going into a strange community, essentially. And I was on this tangent, on this beer, somewhere in between Utah and Nevada on this stretch of road, and my head is reeling... I was just like, I'm going to make this beer when we get out there, it's going to be our flagship beer, it's going to need a good name, a really good name. I'm going to need an epiphany to come up with a really good name for our flagship beer. Epiphany? That's a great name... I called Anne right away. "I got a name for our flagship beer. It's called Epiphany." And she says, "I like it."

Happy International Brewers Day!

Mike Altman is the co-proprietor, along with his wife Anne, of the Iron Springs Pub and Brewery in Fairfax, CA, and not to be confused with the son of film producer Robert Altman, lyricist of the M*A*S*H theme song.

* On top of their full-time careers, Mike and Anne are quite busy raising the next generation Altman brewer, their 16-month old son Joey.

Proof that teh internets loves us and wants us to be happy

For those of you who have long dubbed the online forum, the chat room and the blog as vast wastes of time, those of you who deride others for their instant messaging, Facebooking, MySpacing, Craigslist-missed-connectioning and cat-macroing, those of you who think we all oughta stop with the googlebits and the tubes and the pron and go outside, get some fresh air, lose some weight, maybe kiss a girl... I give you this:

Sure, it's not like we can control the weather or end world hunger or calculate the last digit of pi or find proof of terrestrial visits by aliens, but we can make beer. Or better yet: We can inspire beer. De Regenboog's BBBourgondier is Johan Brandt's commemorative ale (and pretty scarce with a limited production of a mere 50 cases per year) brewed in honor of the Burgundian Babble Belt, the definitive and singular online community of Belgian beer nuts. And it's not the only one: Dany Prignon also once produced a tribute beer under the Fantôme label BBB Babillard. How much input the members of the forum actually had on the recipe is pretty debatable, but one thing's for sure: It's a damn fine beverage and the folks at the BBB are most certainly proud to be associated with it.

A hazy, yeasty, slighty wild concoction, this. Figgy dark fruits, sweetly evident dark sugars, and harboring a slightly yeasty bitterness that gives way to a vinous and dry finish, the Bourgondier is like the farm-raised bastard child of a Belgian strong ale and a British barley wine. Way less effervescent than a typical Belgian, and only truly giving up its secrets once warmed to a good 60 degrees, the caramel layer becomes balanced by a certain herbal brightness which could either be coming from the hops or intriguing addition of valerian root - a not-so-coded reference to this truly being a nightcap of a drink.

It's refreshing, too, considering the spate of beer-related groups cropping up all over the net now, seeing as it's become de rigueur for folks to build their own topic-specific social networks via sites like Ning. Two newer ones in specific - Democracy's Drink and The Aleuminati - both have professional and home brewers, BJCP judges and PBR acolytes, published beer writers and *ahem* paltry beer bloggers counted amidst their ranks. And when I find myself feeling a little guilty about taking a minute to check on the forum discussions or upload some ridiculously dorky photo of a nice-looking pour, I just have to tell myself: Hey, maybe there is a greater symbiotic relationship between brewer and taster than ever before. And who knows? It's not distributed computing by any means, but if the lowly discussion forum can create give rise to the Bourgondier, anything is possible.

A completely hopless situation

My good friend Christopher - a dedicated habitué of hops, baron of bitterness, cuckoo for beaucoup IBU - is feeling the pinch this season as our good friend humulus lupulus is in short and desperate supply. Still brewing his stable of homebrew favorites but having to substitute AAs from lesser gods of the hop pantheon with previously unknown varieties, he's feeling the pinch like the rest of us. Gone are the Fuggles, the Willamette, the Hallertauer and Hersbrucker, the Cascade and Chinook, the Saaz and Tetnang; in their place one finds Simcoe and Sorachi Ace, Cluster and Centennial, Millenium and Magnum. If they're green and bitter, we're resignedly throwing them in our kettles - even if they do sound like they were manufactured by Monsanto.

So what's the enterprising yet frugal brewer to do? Well, one option is to take a stroll in The Man's Garden and examine some bittering and flavoring options often overlooked in deference to the Reinheitsgebot that most homebrewers feel some sort of weird allegiance towards. If you're the type of homebrewer that decided to first start making a mess of your kitchen for reasons that had nothing to do with the gist of an antiquated set of laws designed to protect the use of winter wheat for use in bread-making, you've probably got a touch of the aleatoric in you. With the global harvest situation looking dire and prices climbing exponentially, it may just be the right time to let your freak flag fly.

There's plenty of reading material out there to get yourself started, too. To get started, The Homebrewer's Garden has an entire section devoted to alternative bittering and aroma herbs. You can also see this as an opportunity to try your hand at some historical styles, like gruit (yes, the beer that supposedly increases sexual drive - enjoy).

If, on the other hand, you're a more risk-averse brewer, you may just want to check what's coming down the pike from your local craft breweries to see if there's a style you'd like to emulate. (I'd bet good money that we're all going to see more low- or no-hop beers on store shelves sooner rather than later, while everyone tries to figure out some slick marketing trick that will allow them to pass the 100% increase in production costs on to us consumers.) The exceptional Williams Brothers brewery in Scotland makes a full roster of delectable historic ales (again with stimulated "animal instincts"!) the that use little or no hops. And big man on campus Sam Calagione has built almost his entire reputation upon some of Dogfish Head's crazy (yet scientifically crazy!) interpretations of ancient beers.

Meanwhile, it might be worth your while to rekindle those friendships of yours that may garner access to their sun-drenched backyards. Perhaps you could even send them a fun, conversation-starting present...

Event - The San Francisco Beer Story

For those of you who've always wanted to ask your friends if they'd like to accompany you to the Commonwealth Club for a discussion forum but were afraid they wouldn't have beer, here's your chance. And no, I'm not referring to either "Conscious Capitalism: Resolving the Conflict Between Consumerism and Progressive Innovation" or "Gratitude: The Science and Spirit of Emotional Prosperity", but rather this:

The San Francisco Beer Story: History, Culture, Taste, Cuisine
The American craft beer explosion currently enlivening the gastronomic scene has long had its epicenter in San Francisco, where brewing traditions and techniques have been thriving since before the Gold Rush. Join the San Francisco Brewers Guild and a panel of industry experts to learn about beer pairings with a variety of cuisine and explore the colorful history and culture of the area's brewing scene. The program will conclude with a tasting of exquisite artisan cheese paired with delicious beers from these brewers: 21st Amendment, Anchor Brewing Co., Beach Chalet/Park Chalet, Gordon Biersch, Magnolia, San Francisco Brewing Company, Speakeasy Ales and Lagers, ThirstyBear Restaurant and Brewery, and Wunder Brewing Co.

Friday, January 25th - 5:30 p.m., Check-in | 6:00 p.m., Program | 7:00 p.m., Tasting | Club office, 595 Market St., 2nd Floor, San Francisco | $12 for Members, $18 for Non-Member

Tickets available here.

There can’t be good living where there is not good drinking.

So sayeth big Ben. Happy President's Day, everyone. Just one more day of vacation, I promise. It's been a wild ride the past month or so, but there hasn't been any shortage beery goodness of which to speak.
In the meantime, a little article on the true architectural grandeur of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello - the brewery!
(via beertown.org)