Oral history interview with Chais McCurry, 2018

Richard: Okay, could you please start by saying and spelling your name?

Chais: My name is Chais McCurry and spelled C-H-A-I-S, M-C-C-U-R-R-Y.

Richard: Okay, and today is Tuesday June 26, 2018 and we are at Haw River Farmhouse Ales in Saxapahaw, North Carolina. I'm Richard Cox, talking today with Chais McCurry, head brewer, as part of the Well Crafted North Carolina Project.

Richard: To start, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Chais: Sure. I am the head brewer here. I started January of this year. I've been here about three years. I at home have a family of three boys, that's pretty much it.

Richard: Are they brewers?

Chais: Not yet. They have home brewed with me quite a bit.

Richard: How did you get first interested in the brewing industry?

Chais: Got interested really started in college. I had a roommate that just went to the grocery store and saw a bunch of beer on the shelf and said, "Hey, let's try it all." We started at that point in just going through everything on the shelf. After college I got into home brewing, my wife bought me a home brew kit one year either for my birthday or Christmas, I can't remember what it was. And just started brewing and brewed pretty much every day. Every open chance I got. I was doing that for about eight years before I got into professional.

Richard: About what year was that?

Chais: Oh, that was probably 2005.

Richard: Okay. Once you got into brewing, how long did it take you to become a professional? Eight years, but-

Chais: I was brewing around eight years before ... Doing home brewing for about eight years and then really got super interested in getting into the 00:02:00professional side around ... Was that 2014, 2015? Sometime in that range.

Richard: So right about when things were escalating around North Carolina.

Chais: Yes, yep.

Richard: So good timing.

Chais: Oh yeah. Yeah, it was starting to jump off.

Richard: How did you get started professionally?

Chais: At that point we had just had our second child and my wife wanted to be a stay at home mom. So she decided to get out of her job as a computer programmer and I was doing landscaping, lawn care and we both kind of wanted to change what we were doing. So we both quit our jobs and sold our house in Durham and bought an old farmhouse out in the country. At that point we decided we could do whatever we want.

Chais: I went back to school, went to Wake Tech for the craft beer brewing course there. After that I talked to Ben quite a bit and started down here.

Richard: Cool, awesome. What resources have you drawn upon to help you grow as a brewer?

Chais: Well, I mean the Wake Tech thing was great. That's a great course over there to get as much education as possible. Prior to that, I mean I'd been brewing for eight years. I'd listen to podcasts, read as many of the books as I could read, went over just as much learning as I could do in order to know as much as possible going into professional.

Richard: Cool. Moving on in to Haw River, how would you describe Haw River to people who are unaware of the brewery?

Chais: Well, we're physically we're kind of hidden down here in the basement at the river mill, but for the most part, we're a Belgian style brewery using as many local and farm grown ingredients as possible.

Richard: What would you say based upon that, is the main mission or theme of Haw River?

Chais: Basically, that. Is to use as much local ingredients and as many of our 00:04:00friends in the surrounding area ... We're out here in the country so we can use as many of the farmers as we want, for the local ingredients. And to explore and just be as creative as possible with any of the beers that we wanna make. We pair a lot of our beer with food, so we use a good bit of thought whenever we start brewing a beer. We come up with what we wanna pair that with food-wise and then we go from there and figure out our ingredients and who we can get it from. Who locally grows that and then start sourcing things.

Richard: Since you're talking about pairing it with food, do you think ahead about doing food pairings as a part of what you do here, or is that just-

Chais: Not necessarily doing the actual food pairings since we don't have a restaurant here, but we do dinners and we pair that a lot with ... Whenever we do a dinner up at The Eddy or out in other places, we definitely think about how our beers would pair with that. For the most part, most of our beers just pair well with food anyway, 'cause we think about that ahead of time.

Richard: Exactly. Is the proximity to the farms and farmers one of the reasons that Saxapahaw was selected as the location?

Chais: Yeah, Ben our owner, whenever he was home brewing before he opened the brewery. When he sold his previous business and decided to open the brewery, they were living in the apartments down the hill and Saxapahaw was just one of those places that they really liked a lot. This was right when they were starting to renovate everything up here and they jumped in as quick as they could to get it open in here.

Richard: What's your space like in here? Tanks and that sort of thing.

Chais: We have a 10 barrel premier system brewhouse that we double brew on into 20 barrel tanks. We have three 20 barrel fermenters, one 20 barrel brite. Then we have a 2 barrel stout pilot system that we make just basically taproom only stuff. A couple of 2 barrel fermenters and a 2 barrel brite.

Richard: You do bourbon barrel aging as well?

Chais: We do barrel aging. We have a barrel warehouse where we keep our sours. We have about 200 barrels right now and then we have two 25 barrel oak foeders.

Richard: Great. When as you mentioned before, you were moving into ... Well, the brewery was opening here in Saxapahaw, what was the area like. 'Cause you talked about there was some renovations that were starting here at the mill.

Chais: Well, there was a good bit going on at that point. The apartments had already been renovated, the ballroom was built out and the general store was open there. I think the school was already open at that point. Basically it was the coffee shop, The Eddy upstairs, and us being filled in those last few spots. Saxapahaw was always a tiny town. It's a little what they call a nice little hamlet in the middle of the rural area. So where we don't have a lot in 00:07:00Saxapahaw, there's basically the river mill and a couple other things across the road, but the people who are here really make the place.

Richard: Sure. And like you say, I mean it gives you access to the farming but it also puts you basically between the proper triad and triangle, so the location-

Chais: Right, it's right in the middle. It's about 30 minutes to the triad and about 30 minutes to the triangle. It's easy to get to us. A lot of people don't know where we are, but it's fairly easy coming down 54 to get to us.

Richard: While the opening was happening, do you know of any specific challenges that were faced in getting the brewery open?

Chais: It was prior to my time actually starting here, but I remember seeing some of the pictures of digging out the trench drains, completely renovating the whole space because they had to cut out walls. The window space here, if you see outside, there's a big slab that's about 24 inches thick, but they just had to 00:08:00cut out of the wall and couldn't really do anything with. There was a lot of construction issues with getting things in here. We're in a small space, so even fitting all the tanks through the doors and getting all the stuff moved in was a challenge.

Richard: Oh I'm sure, right. Okay. Kickstarter was chosen as a micro funding platform to raise funds and help create a more responsible, more sustainable brewery, to quote you all. Can you talk a little bit about the process and why you chose to go that route?

Chais: Well, using Kickstarter at that point, was a little bit fresher than it is now. So it was a good way to get the marketing out and to let everybody know that we were opening and to get a lot of people interested in what we were doing. Doing that, we raised a good bit of funds that we put towards our solar tanks and our solar hot water heaters, to be more sustainable. We got solar panels on top of the roof that help heat either the floor glycol in the back of the production space or our hot water heaters, so we can reclaim hot water from the brewing process and not have to use as much water.

Richard: It's interesting, because you used Kickstarter not like it seems like a lot of the other breweries do, which is to open your doors. The brewery was happening, it was just a matter of making the place more sustainable.

Chais: Right. We used those funds to make it a little bit more environmentally friendly as we could.

Richard: You also mentioned too that when you started the Kickstarter, Kickstarter was a fresher idea. Can you go a little bit more into that and how things have changed?

Chais: Well, I think since that time, it was about five years ago, since that point there's been a lot of breweries that have come along and used Kickstarter to open. Which is great, but a lot of people have started looking at that as well we don't really ... Why do you need us to open your brewery? Or there's been a few that I've actually heard about that got a lot of money and never did anything with it, never opened. So a lot of those things as negative things from Kickstarter is why a lot of people don't really go into funding that anymore. At that point I think it was a lot more of a like I said, a fresher idea of 00:10:00somebody, "Oh, I can help out this brewery that wants to open. That's great." But at this point I think a lot of people are starting to not want to do that.

Richard: Right. And you all had like I said, a different approach as well. That's awesome. When you first got to Haw River, come in, what were your first impressions of the brewery?

Chais: I'm the stainless addict so I love this space. Just everything aesthetically pleasing, everything set up the way you would want a brewery set up. All the bells and whistles were put into the brewhouse. It's one of the top of the line brewhouses, the fermentation tanks. Everything is pretty much the way you would want a space set up. I think a lot of thought went into that before we ever opened. Ben, our owner's a graphic designer, so he put a lot of mental thought into how the space should be set up, how it should look, how he wanted the feel of everything to flow. I think he did a really good job on that.

Richard: Great. How would you say Haw River reflects your brewing approach, interests or philosophy?

Chais: That's one of those funny things. I'm an IPA drinker and IPA brewer prior to coming to Haw River. We don't do a lot of IPAs, we have a few. I've implemented a few more hoppy things, but for the most part whenever I started it was a lot of learning about Belgian beer. I had brewed a few saisons, a few Belgian style beers. I wasn't overly interested in it. But whenever I got here I started learning a lot more about the traditional styles, traditional ways of brewing, all the methods. Especially with sours, how to go about making barrel aged beers, what yeast to use and all that stuff.

Chais: It was really whenever I got here, learn as much as possible about Belgian styles. Prior to that, like I said, I was making IPAs all day long, that was what I was brewing all the time.

Richard: How much of a learning curve would you say that was for you?

Chais: Well it was kind of a short learning curve. Wherever I started, I started as an assistant brewer. I was doing a lot of keg washing, learning everything in the back on the cellar side. Then our head brewer at the time, Nathan, about eight months after I started decided to move on. He lived in Raleigh, it was a bit of a drive for him to get out here so he wanted to move a little bit closer. Wherever he moved on, there was about a month period between him leaving and us finding a new head brewer. I was thrown into the fire as you would say, and started brewing on the big system pretty much learning that system in about two and a half, three weeks. It was quite an adventure at that point.

Chais: I mean, my learning curve was kind of steep. I got there as quick as I could, but every day's a new learning, every day there's a new process, every day there's a new ingredient, every day there's a new something to figure out. 00:13:00And figure out how to make it work.

Richard: Playing off that, how would you describe your average week? I know brewing's so much more of a process that an average day is ...

Chais: Our weeks are typically set up about one to two brew days. We double brew so it's me and my sister Rebecca. I'll usually do the first shift 'cause I got kids and it's a little bit harder for me to get to be here late. I'll do the first shift, I'll come in and start the brew around 8:00 a.m., 9:00 a.m. Then she will come in around 1:00 p.m. or 2:00 p.m. and finish out through the night and do the clean. We'll brew one or two times a week. Typically outside of that, there's a lot of cellar work, there's a lot of packaging. Prior to about three or four months ago, we were doing all hand bottling through our bottling line, which takes a lot of time.

Chais: We recently started canning our beer using Tap Hopper out of Greensboro. And with those guys it goes much quicker, so it opened up a lot more time for 00:14:00focusing on getting our cellar straight, making sure we're keeping everything as clean as possible, doing stuff like that. Outside of that, we do a lot of fruit processing. Last week we were processing watermelons which took all day of one of those days of the week. We do a lot of juicing fruits to use in the finished beers and stuff like that. There's a good bit of fruit processing that goes on with us too.

Richard: Haw River ales have been described as "traditional with a little southern flair." What does that mean?

Chais: I think the southern flair is using the local ingredients as much as we can. Using the southern grown ... Our pilsner we have on draft right now, we use corn that was grown about five miles from us. The watermelons that we processed last week were North Carolina grown watermelons. The cucumbers that we're gonna get towards the end of this week that's going into the pickle beer, North 00:15:00Carolina ingredient. Using as much southern stuff with the traditional style. All the styles that we brew are for the most part, traditional Belgian style beers. We just add the southern ingredients to bring them to where we want them to be as Haw River.

Richard: Tell me about this pickle beer.

Chais: Probably the past three years, there's been a PickleFest in downtown Durham. They do it at the Rickhouse. We made a pickle beer before, we had made a collaboration with Steel String called Picklemania, they still make it over there. We decided we wanted to make a pickle beer for the PickleFest. So for the past two years we've been doing it on the two barrel system and just making a small batch and sending it over there. It's a saison. It was a saison with pickling spices and cucumbers and dill, all the traditional pickle stuff. This year we're doing it as our Cultural Divide Series, which is a yogurt kettle 00:16:00soured saison that we're adding cucumbers and pickling spices and dill to the finish of. So it's gonna be a little bit tart, it's got a little bit of that ... We're calling it Farm Stand Pickle, so it's more of like something you would get at a farmer's market versus something you would buy off the store shelf.

Richard: Great, very cool, very cool. Pulling into a lot of the things that you've been saying so far, what do you see as unique about southern beer and specifically, North Carolina beer?

Chais: Well North Carolina beer is growing to the point of being ... There's a lot of different places doing a lot of different styles. There's Red Oak doing their lagers and Mason Jar Lager Company doing lagers. There's a lot of people doing the New England styles right now. It is a little bit of a run the gamut for North Carolina beers. Specifically southern beers, I think southern beer like with what we do, Fullsteam does, Fonta Flora, we go out and find the forage 00:17:00for the ingredients that we're want to go in the beers. I think that that's what brings the southern aspect into it. Is trying to make it as local and as personable as possible.

Richard: Can you tell us a little bit about the Farmhand Exchange and what that is?

Chais: The Farmhand Exchange is a program that we started doing before we opened. Was essentially we get an ingredient that we wanna use in a beer and we put it on social media. We let people know that we have the packs of seeds for people to come in and grab the packs of seeds. We do it early in season. We ask people to take the seeds that we're gonna give them and grow the ingredients. We've asked for gooseberries, white strawberries, there's been a few other things, I can't remember them all. We just say, "Hey, grow what you wanna grow, what you can grow. Bring us those ingredients whenever they get ripe and we'll put them in a beer."

Chais: We want people to go out and grow our ingredients for us. We wanna be as 00:18:00friendly as possible about it, but it's a way of interacting with our consumer and saying they can have a little bit of ownership over the beer. "Hey, I grew that ingredient that they put into this beer that I'm drinking across the bar."

Richard: Has it been successful insofar of the amount you get back of the gooseberries, for example?

Chais: Success is rated different ways.

Richard: Well, sure.

Chais: We don't get a lot of fruit back. There's been a few times I know I've grown as much as I can grow, but there's been a few times that even with trying to grow it at my house, they just didn't take. We get as much as we can get back. It's not something we get a ton of. And if we don't get a lot of it we have other sources for those ingredients. Some other farmers that have already grown them, and then we supplement with the stuff that we get from the home grown people.

Richard: This may be a difficult question, but in a fruit beer about how many pounds of fruit as an average would-

Chais: It really depends on the fruit. With the watermelons that we did last week, we got 1,000 pounds of watermelons, we used about 350 pounds in Citramelon, the rinds we used in Pound of Flesh, one of our sour beers. We got about 350 pounds out of that. With the blueberries prior to that, that we're doing in Javaberry, we did 200 pounds in the kettle and then another 300 pounds in the finish, so about 500 pounds of blueberries went into that beer. It's really a variation on how much flavor you can get out of certain ingredients. We keep track of that on each time we use it so we know for the next time we brew it, how much we're gonna put into that.

Richard: Great. We've talked about local ingredients a lot so far. What would you say are some of the benefits of locally sourcing your ingredients and how do you feel they impact the flavor of the beer as opposed to perhaps importing it from somewhere else?

Chais: Well, it's all about your local community. It's about using the resources 00:20:00that you have close to you, so you're not impacting and having to buy stuff out of market. We could go down to Florida and get as many citrus fruit as we want. Or we could go up to Virginia and get all the cherries we want. It's a matter of wanting to keep it all as local as possible, which keeps the money in the community and keeps our farmers happy. Keeps them producing so that ... Local agriculture is something that needs to be sustained. We're just trying to do our part to keep it going.

Richard: Great. Slide to the side a little bit. How do you see Haw River growing in the future?

Chais: I think we're going to be looking at expanding within a short amount of time. Adding some extra tanks to get some more production in. Continuing with our cans, get more stuff in cans to get more stuff in front of the consumer. I 00:21:00think as far as the space here, I think we wanna get a little bit more seating, as much as we can get. We're in a tiny little space so it's hard to get a lot more people in here. But trying to get as many people in here as we can. Then our growth for the future is just trying to be more productive.

Richard: Right, great. Expanding our scope here a little bit. What would you say it's like to work in the craft brewing industry today? Of course, you started in 2014. Actually, there's been a lot that's happened in that amount of time.

Chais: There's been a lot that's happened in that amount of time. At that point, I think it was more focused on putting beer out to bottle shops and grocery stores and trying to get shelf space and doing that. I think the shift has come when a lot of the breweries realized we're making a lot more money off our tasting rooms, and trying to drive a lot more traffic through your own personal space. I just heard this week Hi-Wire's opening a second location in Durham. 00:22:00It's a lot about trying to get your own name, your own building, your own tasting rooms in different markets, so that you're not having to put as much stuff on shelves. You're trying to bring the consumer in to you versus putting things in front of the consumer.

Richard: How would you say ... it's a similar question. How would you say the brewing scene has changed since Haw River-

Chais: I mean, the New England IPAs have taken over the world. There's a lot of those kind of things. It's just the trend. As a brewer, you have to be able to move along with the trends that are coming. If you get stuck in one space, then you get left behind. People will come back to you, but you're not pushing the market, you're not driving where you need to go. A lot of stuff is the trends are driving the market and where breweries are going. New England IPAs obviously, now they're coming ... There's more stuff on the horizon that's 00:23:00coming up that a lot of breweries are gonna be chasing. I feel like with Haw River we have our traditional beers, we have our everyday line up, our Newlin's, our St. Bene's. They're all progressive style beers, but we also are capable of doing the trendy thing and getting some of those beers out and maintaining our market share, I guess. Maintaining our face in front of people.

Richard: Great. What role will you feel Haw River's played in any changes in Saxapahaw as ...

Chais: I mean, it's hard to say. 'Cause everybody here is such a community that it's hard to say we've affected anything, we are the reason for it. I feel like we've expanded more people coming to Saxapahaw. I feel like The Eddy has really drawn a lot of people in, the ballroom's drawn a lot of people in. I hope that we have drawn some people in. When we get more people coming down, it's a lot 00:24:00more people that realize, "Oh, this is a great little community. We got a river, we can go kayaking down, we got the Saturdays' in Sax that we can go do." I feel like we've helped everyone in the community with trying to draw more people out to Saxapahaw.

Richard: Where do you see the brewing industry going in the next five years? 'Cause we were just talking about New England IPAs being the current.

Chais: Right. I don't know. What I'm seeing from a lot of craft breweries is a lot more lagers. So I'm hoping that that's a trend that's coming on, is a lot more craft breweries using local ingredients, using the better ingredients to make some nice clean lagers. But also, IPAs are not going away. IPAs are gonna drive the market always. I think the next trendy thing that I've seen coming up for IPAs is the brut IPA, which is a champagne-like IPA that's nice and dry and crisp, but a ton of hop flavor and aroma. Those are the two that I've been 00:25:00watching how they're going.

Richard: What would you say is your favorite beer or style I suppose, from a North Carolina brewery other than Haw River?

Chais: I don't do favorites very well. I like to try as much of everything as I can. I drink a lot of North Carolina beer. Right now I've been drinking a lot of Sycamore, their Mountain Candy IPA. I love Burial's stuff, Burial Surf Wax, their IPA that they have in cans. That one's delicious. Really, I do a lot of exploring whenever I'm drinking outside of Haw River. I try as many different North Carolina beers as I can.

Richard: Great. What would you say is Haw River's flagship or signature beer?

Chais: That would definitely have to be Newlin's Original, Belgian pale ale. That's been our best seller probably since day one. It's a nice, dry, crisp Belgian pale ale. Dry hop with Galaxy, which is this nice fruity New Zealand 00:26:00hop. It's really delicious.

Richard: Awesome, amazing. What would you say is your favorite beer from Haw River?

Chais: My favorite beer is one of the beers we actually currently have in the lineup. Our Sun Hands is our double dry hopped Belgian golden strong. Like I said, I'm a hop head, so I try to get the hoppy beers as I can. But it's a 10% golden strong that we brew at least once a year, sometimes twice a year depending. This year is the first year we put it in cans, so it's been my go to for a while.

Richard: Great. That's all I have.

Chais: Cool.

Richard: Is there anything you'd like to add?

Chais: Not that I can think of.

Richard: Thank you very much.

Chais: Yeah, man.