Bison Brewery

Organic Beer Maker Boils Down to the Basics

PAUL THORNTON Daily Californian 1oct03

Tyke Romios, brewer at Bison Brewery, stirs a vat of the sludge that will eventually become beer. Bison Brewery is the only beer maker in Berkeley that prepares beer without the technological advances other brew factories use.
Photo/Brad Aldridge

"This is about as authentic as it gets," says Tyke Romios, watching over what will be a batch of organic Belgian beer, boiling in a large metal drum.

At South Berkeley's Bison Brewery—the lone organic beer maker in the city, located near Telegraph Avenue—workers don't have the luxuries staff at larger brew factories enjoy: touch-screen computers and automated valves and machines that do most of the actual labor.

"They don't necessarily need to get dirty," says Romios, a brewer at Bison Brewery.

Preparing a batch of beer at Bison Brewery is done without technology's help. In a humid room that smells similar to a horse stall, Romios sometimes has to stir boiling beer with a large wooden paddle, standing over a metal vat spewing steam in his face.

And all the work is done in a cramped, musty room strewn with hops and grain—a clear contrast from the towering metallic silos that characterize most major breweries.

1 Soak grain in 150-degree [F] water for 30 minutes. 2 Transfer liquid into kettle and boil for 70 minutes.      Add hops and any other special ingredients for beer varieties. 3 Transfer liquid into fermentation tanks. Store for 2 to 3 weeks.

Romios often begins his day at 4 a.m., shoveling heaps of grain into a large metal drum to prepare for the infusion mash, the first stage in brewing beer.

After mixing 150-degree water and grain to make a sort of oatmeal sludge, the grain is separated and the liquid flows into a tank where it is boiled for about 70 minutes.

In this second stage, Romios adds hops and periodically stirs what in a few weeks will become beer.

The mix is then piped through a heat exchange that lowers its temperature to about 70 degrees, and into a fermentation tank, where it is stored for two to three weeks.

But owner Dan Del Grande is particularly proud of his brewery's distinction as Berkeley's sole producer of organic beer.

"The belief is that every citizen needs to do their little part," Del Grande says.

By brewing organic beer, Bison is doing its part to sustain depleting farmlands, he says.

But the costs of brewing this environmentally conscious beer could be keeping other breweries from making the switch to organic, Del Grande says. Consumers have to pay about a dollar extra for every six-pack of organic beer, he says.

There is even a debate within the brewing community about the quality of organic brews, Romios says, although he adds that the ingredients for organic beer and nonorganic beer are essentially the same.

Del Grande hopes his brewery will eventually produce only organic beer to offer an alternative to socially conscious beer drinkers.

Even though working as a brewer at Bison Brewery demands 10-hour workdays on some occasions, Romios says the experience provides him with much more satisfaction than most typical office jobs.

"It's a fun job—you can see the results," Romios says, adding hops to a boiling drum of beer. "Instead of turning in a report, I get to taste the results."

source: http://www.dailycal.org/article.asp?id=12932 1oct03