Oral history interview with Christopher McGarvey, 2022

Erin Lawrimore:

Today is Wednesday, October 26th, 2022. I'm at Front Street Brewery in Wilmington, North Carolina. My name is Erin Lawrimore, and I'm doing an interview for our Well Crafted NC project with Christopher McGarvey. See, I messed up the Christopher part. So to start, can we have you say and spell your name?

Christopher McGarvey:

Yeah, so I'm Christopher McGarvey. That is C-H-R-I-S-TO-P-H-E-R M-C capital G-A-R-V-E-Y.

Erin Lawrimore:

Awesome. So Christopher, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from and what was the road that got you here?

Christopher McGarvey:

It was a winding road. I am from Peoria, Illinois. I had never heard of Wilmington, North Carolina. I have a Bachelor's in English and Creative Writing. 00:01:00I have a Master of Divinity from St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, and that's how I ended up in Wilmington. I moved here with one of my classmates, Father Peter Robichau, to help found St. Basil's Orthodox Church, and I was the choir director and music guy for about five years there. I was also a home brewer, and I taught myself straight out of college.

Erin Lawrimore:

Do you remember how you got started on home brewing?

Christopher McGarvey:

Oh, yeah. I got interested in beer. I didn't like beer, actually. I like to tell people I'm the Brewmaster. I didn't like beer. When I turned 21, I was studying abroad, and I got to take a Spring Break trip across the continent, and we went 00:02:00to Munich. I knew it's a big beer town, Oktoberfest, so I said, "Okay, I'll try one of the beers," had a big liter of Helles. I thought beer was too bitter up to that point, but that just tasted like a nice sweet white bread. I was like, "Oh wow. Maybe I do like beer," so when I came back from that trip, I started noticing there were good beer stores in Peoria and all over the place. They would have these mix a six pack sections. I thought, "Well, I'll try some different stuff."

I happened to be mixing a six pack at Friar Tuck Beverage in Peoria, Illinois when I turned around and noticed the other half of the aisle was home brew supplies. That astounded me. I was like, "Wait a minute. You can make your own beer because beer seems like one of those things that only the Wizard of Oz could do," at least back then. This is 2004 or 5. I didn't even probably know 00:03:00one beer was made from at that point. So, there were home brewing books, and I bought one of the prepackaged kits with all the malt extract and hops and everything you needed and some buckets and stuff and went home and started right then, so that's how I got into brewing.

Erin Lawrimore:

How many times did it take you before you got one you wanted to drink?

Christopher McGarvey:

Well, the first one turned out okay. It was drinkable.

Erin Lawrimore:

Oh, good!

Christopher McGarvey:

Yeah, I'm a pretty thorough person, a perfectionist, so I got the memo on sanitation pretty quick, but the package had been sitting around. It was kind of old. It was a Scottish ale, I remember, a Scottish Export ale, and it was okay. There was nothing wrong with it. There was nothing great about it. My second batch of beer that I brewed was supposed to be a Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout Clone, and it turned out more like a brown ale, but it was good. My third batch was an attempt to clone a New Holland Raspberry Porter, one of my favorite beers 00:04:00I had at the beginning of when I got interested. I added raspberry extract to that, and we were tasting it from the bucket like, "Oh, it could use a little more." We kept thinking it could use a little more because we'd blown out our taste buds, and when we actually opened one bottle it turned out that's all you could taste. It was an overwhelming blast of raspberry, so it probably took us two years to drink our way through that, like 50 bottles.

Erin Lawrimore:

Probably not wanting it to go to waste?

Christopher McGarvey:

Yeah. I had one friend that would drink it. He liked it. He's the one that we were sitting there mixing it together, so every time he came over, we'd have one. Then I think right about after that, it clicked into place. I had started studying online more and reading more books. Yeah, I think that's around the time I discovered northernbrewer.com and started ordering kits from them, and 00:05:00the quality went up significantly.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah, so you mentioned you came to Wilmington because of the church, but how did you make the leap from home brewer who came here because of the church to brewing here?

Christopher McGarvey:

Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah. How did that? Yeah, It doesn't explain how I ended up a brewer in Wilmington.

Erin Lawrimore:

It's not a one-to-one transition.

Christopher McGarvey:

So at that time, Front Street Brewery was the only brewery in town, and as an avid home brewer and beer lover, I had to stop by and check it out. It was funny because when my friend from seminary, Father Peter, the priest was trying to recruit me here, he flew me out and we came and visited here together. He's like, "Yeah, you're a single guy. You don't know what you're going to do next. Come here, maybe work a brewery and help me out with the choir." I'm like, "Work 00:06:00in a brewery?" There's one brewery, and it has two people that work at it, and all positions are taken, so that's a little bit of a pipe dream. So funny enough, it turned out to be prophetic. So I came here and on that very first visit, he happened to spot the brewmaster, Kevin Kozak. He said, "Oh, that's the brewer. I met him before. You should go talk to him," so I went and talked to him, and it turned out we got along really well. Now that was a surprise because Kevin did not normally stay after a shift to have a beer. He's a real introvert like myself, so the work is done, out of here. He happened to be lingering that day, and he didn't normally. He hated talking to home brewers.

Erin Lawrimore:

As the only place in town, that was probably-

Christopher McGarvey:

Yeah, and you'd get a lot more of that back then. We used to have to give three 00:07:00brewery tours a day, so I understand, but anyway, we found out that we both loved literature. He's a big Hemingway fan. I don't know. We were talking about books and movies, and it turned out he needed a roommate. I ended up moving in with him, and he got me a job here starting at the host stand.

Erin Lawrimore:

A true entry level job.

Christopher McGarvey:

Actually, yeah. Everyone told me, "What are you going to do with that English degree, be a waiter?" Well, it turned out I wasn't even qualified for that. I had to start at the host stand, so anyway, I got my foot in the door. He knew I liked making beer, and he knew that I was a pretty serious home brewer. He tasted some of my stuff. In fact, I remember I brought him some samples of a couple of my beers, one of which we'll probably be talking about. It's called 00:08:00Tomb Rocker. It's a beer I created for celebrating Pascha, Easter in the Orthodox church. I brought him a sample of that and he tasted it in the brewhouse. He took one sip, and then without saying a word, he just turned and walked out the door and left.

I thought, "Oh, he hated it. He's going to go pour it down the drain or something. What?" He just left me standing there, but it turned out he took it straight to the kitchen. He took it to the kitchen manager and said, "You have to try this. He made this beer with heather and honey." The kitchen manager, Josh, our now General Manager was like, "Wow, what is this? Is there some flowers in this or something," which is exactly what it is. So, he liked it so much, he took it straight to someone else to try. I ended up entering a beer into the annual home brew competition that we used to host back at that time. I 00:09:00won that competition Best In Show with Belgian Quadruple based on Westvleteren 12, the Trappist Monastery beer that everyone regarded as the best beer in the world at that time.

Erin Lawrimore:

It's not bad.

Christopher McGarvey:

It's not bad. I consider that the point that I pretty much secured the job, but they hired me a couple months later. When the assistant brewer moved out to Hollywood to chase some film dreams, I took over and basically became the apprentice. So yeah, that's my story. I didn't ever expect to be a professional brewer, nor did I pursue it. It just happened to me, and it happened to coincide with a hobby that I already loved, so I got really fortunate. It might be providence.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah, so you mentioned when you first moved here that there was basically Front 00:10:00Street and that was your craft brewery choice. Thinking about the beer scene as a whole in the whole area, what was the scene like then here in Wilmington?

Christopher McGarvey:

There was no scene. There was Front Street Brewery and there was Cape Fear Wine & Beer was your one good beer bar. Then I think there was one in Carolina Beach, but I never got that far afield hardly. I think there's still, it exists, something Pelican. I forget, but yeah, there really wasn't a good beer scene at all here. Lighthouse Beer & Wine. That store did exist back then, but that was it. It was like you got one store. There was no big store. We finally just got a Total Wine & Beer this year.

Erin Lawrimore:

Wow.

Christopher McGarvey:

There was not any consolidated place in Wilmington to go buy a big selection. 00:11:00Eventually a lot of bottle shops sprang up, but still even if I want to go find some classic world beer styles, I have to hit eight different places, so I always look forward to going to Asheville or Boone or somewhere, Raleigh, that would have a good beer store, but anyway. Yeah, this was the only brewery, and Wilmington itself was not a town that was really interested in craft beer. I moved here in 2010, and I was used to craft beer being just everywhere having lived in Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York. It was a little bit niche, but everywhere had that niche. You always felt like you're going to be like-minded 00:12:00people. Well, the South was behind and a lot of that had to do with restrictive laws that made it really difficult to start a brewery. I mean, North Carolina at the time I moved here was only a year or two past when they passed what was it called?

Erin Lawrimore:

Pop the Cap.

Christopher McGarvey:

Pop the Cap legislation, so you could brew beer stronger than 6% or whatever it was, which is half of most people's menu these days. This was basically a Bud Light, PBR town. It's fishing beer, so this place to me represented the classic brew pub modeled from the '90s that evolved out of English oriented brewing and eventually encompassed representing world beer styles, but it was a little bit 00:13:00lonely. You had a home brew club, so I got involved in the home brew club in town, the Port City Brewers, or they were called the Wort City Brewers. Yeah, so that kept me engaged.

Erin Lawrimore:

Is that group still around?

Christopher McGarvey:

I believe so. I'm not active in it anymore. Eventually, when you do brewing for your job full-time, you don't want to do it on your weekends as well. Yeah, there was just enough beer scene to keep me going, but I was always at the same three places. There was no other brewers to trade notes with, so it was always really exciting to go to a beer festival and meet up with someone else or to drive to another town and go visit a brewery. I mean, back then there was not a brewery on every corner.

Erin Lawrimore:

It would be a decent drive from here.

Christopher McGarvey:

Brewers were a lot more excited to meet each other in those days. If you went to another brewery, you would get a royal treatment. They'd show you around. They'd give you free stuff to take with you. We still have that as an honorary code, but nowadays you get a brewer to your brewery, and you're like, "Ah, I have to go talk to these guys. I'm trying to do my job here." Back then it was like, "Oh, wow. Another brewer." Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. No, I understand. We archivists act the same way when one of our kind wanders through. So, can you talk a little bit about what Front Street was like when you first started and if you were even aware when you got here of the history of this place?

Christopher McGarvey:

Yeah. Well, Front Street I think is an anchor of the downtown here, and one of the great things about it is it's more or less maintained its identity and it's 00:15:00been pretty consistent. So we've been a thriving brew pub restaurant where we get a lot of tourists. We get a lot of people who have not had a lot of exposure to craft beer. We are still to this day on the vanguard and front lines of making new craft beer drinkers, introducing people to the breadth and variety of world beer styles. That's pretty much the mission that I continue to pursue. I like to represent world classics and make it a safe and comfortable place for people to explore new flavors. I'm all about balance and nuance. We do some 00:16:00creative experimentation and just uncharted water stuff, but even when I'm doing those, I'm always thinking like a chef about no one element that's out of balance with the rest. What was different about the brewery back then? We had even less stuff than now. It was a really bare bones system. I mean, it was the absolute minimum.

Erin Lawrimore:

Do you remember what size system you had?

Christopher McGarvey:

Well, it's the same. It's still the same.

Erin Lawrimore:

Oh, it's the same. Okay.

Christopher McGarvey:

It's just that we've made additions to it. We've souped it up a little bit here and there. Back then we had no mill for grains, so we had to order pre-milled bags of malt. Now we have the mill, so we control our grind. We didn't have 00:17:00carbonation stones in our serving tanks, so we had to do this fire from the hip, just blast CO2 through a hose, through the serving arm from the bottom. We didn't have a lot of money back then. It was during the great recession. We were still trying to recover from that, so I think the biggest difference is back then we had a lot less gear. It was more survival mentality and we were desperate to get people through the door. We had just figured out a formula back then.

This place had tried several different business approaches. It had tried to go high end experience at one point. At one point, it went for late night. This 00:18:00upstairs room, they'd have music and you could play Wii video games, We bowling and golf and stuff. They tried to make it a late night young people hang out. I think we hit our stride in those days right about when I arrived here a lot through the efforts of Kevin and Ellie and our general manager Crystal back at that time, just figuring out let's do good quality but affordable, approachable pub fare with a slight Southern emphasis and make balanced beers that reflect world brewing tradition. We've more or less stuck with that formula effectively since then. I think we've just gotten better at it and we've also realized we can charge what our beer is worth now instead of selling everything in a $1.99 00:19:00mug. Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah, so can you talk about some of the beers you were making during those early years, especially ones you considered the core, but maybe some that have evolved and changed over the years?

Christopher McGarvey:

Okay. Well, we're still making some of the same beers we made back then. Dram Tree Scottish Ale is our longest running recipe. I believe that goes way back. I actually can't remember if Kevin created that one when he came in 2006. That and the Raspberry Wheat, we both make still to this day. The recipes are pretty close. I didn't change those a lot. Particularly the Scottish Ale I thought was iconic. Our Scottish Ale is weird. It's not a standard Scottish Ale. It's 00:20:00basically a hybrid between a Scottish strong ale/Wee Heavy and more of a Porter. It's darker than most Scottish ales, a little more roasty, and I thought that's something special. We used to go to beer festivals around the state, and I would get people coming up to the booth. "Oh, Front Street Brewery. You guys make that Scottish Ale," and they would remember the Dram Tree. So we still make that and it's pretty unchanged. The Raspberry Wheat, regrettably, we still make that too.

Erin Lawrimore:

It's a solid beer.

Christopher McGarvey:

No, it's actually. I have to say that was one of my things I'm really proud of is that we brew a very respectable fruit beer. It's not just for people that don't like beer. You can still taste the beer. It's not just burying it with a 00:21:00smoothie flavor.

Erin Lawrimore:

It's not the one you made with your home brew kit.

Christopher McGarvey:

Yeah. It's not my home brew, and it's always gratifying to walk past a table of Marines drinking the Raspberry Wheat. You're like, "See. It's good enough for the Marines."

Erin Lawrimore:

Oh.

Christopher McGarvey:

There's a few things that have fallen off since then. By the way, we also make an ESB still, Amberjack English Ale. I'm really proud that we still make an ESB because basically American craft brewing was launched out of interest and influence from the English beer scene. That's our core DNA in craft brewing of why it happened, and everyone's almost totally abandoned that. I'm a big fan of English beer to this day, and that's something I really stick to my guns on, so we're not giving that one up, but there's some other things that we've had to 00:22:00hang up our hats and say, "Okay, we've tried enough of this." The Schwarzbier style just I can't sell to save my life here. I still make one every couple of years just to represent it, but part of the problem might be that we named it Swamp Lager.

Erin Lawrimore:

That probably didn't help.

Christopher McGarvey:

That might be related, but it's really hard to try to sell. Dark beers in general are a little bit of a hard sell these days.

Erin Lawrimore:

I would assume doubly so here in Wilmington.

Christopher McGarvey:

Yes, it's a hot and humid climate. They've just fallen out of popularity in general, so we've had to back off on the dark beers, which makes me sad because I'm a huge Porter fan. My entire philosophy of ordering beer is just order the Porter. So, if there's a Porter on the menu, that's what I'm getting, especially 00:23:00if it's just a regular Porter, and that's become a rare bird. I make one of those now and then, too. We used to have some kind of Porter or Stout in the lineup every quarter, and we've had to pull that back to basically just the winter months, which makes me a little sad. I still try to sneak one in sometimes. Yeah, that's some of the continuities and changes.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah, so you mentioned that you started. Well, first as the host but then going into assistant brewer. Can you talk about what it was like to go from assistant brewer to brewmaster and both how that happened and how that changed what you were doing?

Christopher McGarvey:

Okay, yeah. Well, once again, my story is winding and circuitous. I was 00:24:00assistant here for two and a half, three years, 2010 to 2013. In 2013 I got my first love and dream girl back, my college sweetheart that was the first girl I ever dated. We broke up at graduation in 2005. In 2012 on my birthday, we started talking again, and about three months later we were engaged, and about nine months after that point, we were married. She's an English professor and she had a dream job teaching at a mountain retreat off campus semester in Oregon, so I moved out there and left Front Street Brewery. I passed the baton. 00:25:00I hand picked my replacement, Kelsie Cole, who went on to become one of the first women brewmasters in the state, so I was gone for three years. In 2016, she decided to step down and they called me back and said, "Would you like a job?"

I was actually in Atlanta at that time, struggling. Ever since I left here, I didn't have quite enough experience to be a brewmaster, and I got lost in no man's land of canning and bottling lines. I was working in a liquor store, and it was dark days for me. Again, there weren't that many breweries back then, so you couldn't just move to any town anywhere and get a brewing job. Ashland, Oregon had one brewery and a couple little garage setups, so I almost gave up. I 00:26:00was really at the point. I remember saying to my wife, I'm like, "I think I'm pretty much done with brewing unless I could get a job at some place like Front Street Brewery where it's a brew pub where you have creative control and you don't have to do packaging and production and they don't need a guy who's really mechanical," because I'm a mechanical idiot. I was like, "If someone gives me total creative range and I don't have to do packing line and they have maintenance covered, which is basically an impossible request list, then I would consider it. Otherwise, I'm done."

I actually had just started a brand new job about a week before they called me, and they called me. I was like, "Oh! Well, this is awesome." Also, it's going to be really awkward to tell my new boss, but it is. It's a dream job, so this is 00:27:00about the only place that I would have considered coming back to and I did, so I took over in 2016 as brewmaster. I was ready for it because I knew the system well. I knew the types of beers, I knew the market and what worked. Now I had creative freedom to set the vision and explore, so it was a pretty smooth transition.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. Was there a particular beer that stands out in your brain when you first came back that you're like, "This is my baby. This is the one." You have creative control?

Christopher McGarvey:

Yeah. I think there's a good example of that. We do a lot of classics, so I continued with that trajectory and I like to do a lot of research, but I thought 00:28:00Front Street also needs to prove that we can be creative and daring. We were never the beer geek hub of attention in this town. We'd been around forever. We were a known entity, and we were doing a lot of very classic styles, and it's just not where the attention was in the scene. So I thought, "Let me try something that both fits my philosophy and is something a little more adventurous." I've created a total original based on a type of Russian bread that you used to be able to get at this little Russian bakery in town.

I think it was called Tatyana's on Kerr, but it's called Borodinsky Bread. It is 00:29:00a dark, sweet rye red baked with molasses and coriander. I'm not normally the person that gets excited about bread, but when I discovered this stuff, I couldn't stop eating it. I would have it every day for breakfast, just toast with butter and apricot jam, so I thought, man. I remember from the first time I tasted it. I was like, "Wow, this bread tastes malty. This would make a great beard flavor," so I did some research on the bread recipe and the type of grains and just the quantities and balanced portion of molasses and coriander. I constructed a beer grain mill and spice regimen that is closely matched to that as possible. We named that here, Napoleon Rhinamite. It was something like 50 to 00:30:0060% malted rye, which is a huge, insane amount of rye. That's every brewer's nightmare because rye creates a sticky gummy mash that can clog up during runoff, but for whatever reason, our brewing system here handles rye really well, and I like to use it in quite a few recipes. It's actually in our IPA, although we don't advertise it as such. It's about 25% rye in our IPA. I've done 50% rye lagers. I find it adds a nice fullness and softness to the texture and a nice whole grain rustic flavor.

So this beer came out tasting just exactly like that bread. I mean, it really 00:31:00was right on the money. It wasn't a giant commercial popular success because it's a dark malty beer in a hot town, but it did really express I think my vision. The people that tried it that liked it really got it, but that's one of the great things about Front Street Brewery is that we don't have to follow trends closely. Because we have a great location and because we're a restaurant and people are coming in to try the food and because they don't tend to be dogmatic craft beer drinkers, they are ironically more open-minded. They don't know what they want already, so our servers are able to make suggestions and bring them samples and they try things. We still brew your obligatory IPA.

Christopher McGarvey:

We still brew your obligatory IPA. We have a Pilsner and an IPA. We cover the essential bases, but we have enough draft space that I'm able also to keep on some less popular world classics and to do some experimental things without any concern that we're not going to sell as much beer by doing that. So I love that about this place that we can... Bear the torch for traditional unpopular beer styles like an English mild or a brown ale or a porter, a Schwartz beer, English bitters. But... We're going to stay financially afloat.

So I don't have to just make trend beers, which is liberating. It used to make me upset that we weren't getting more critical attention because why don't people recognize the quality of the beer we make here? And I eventually realized, who cares? It's more, are the people happy? Are they enjoying what 00:33:00they're having? And they are, am I satisfied with my work, because I'm actually the hardest to please. We've won gold medals and I've been like pfft, I'm not happy with this recipe. So if I'm happy with the recipe, I know that I can be satisfied at the end of the day and I don't have to worry about are we going to sell a million of them? We've got a good, dependable audience and they enjoy the beer. They're having a great time. So, I've stopped chasing the accolades. And have learned to be more satisfied with the work itself.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. And one of the things that I think is interesting and unique here is the way that, on your menus and everything, there are these pairings. Both the food pairings and whiskey pairings too. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that process works? Is it a chicken egg situation where one comes first and you 00:34:00pair... Basically how do those pairings come about?

Christopher McGarvey:

Sure. Yeah. Well, both Kevin, the brewmaster who trained me and myself are also big fans of cooking. We love to cook. We've spent a lot of time in the kitchen. We used to compete with each other in friendly cooking competitions.

Erin Lawrimore:

Chopped at home.

Christopher McGarvey:

Yeah. And we used to do whole pairing dinner events. So I think one of the things about Front Street Brewery being a brew pub restaurant is that we're about a whole experience, a flavor experience and not just have this beer, then have that beer. We're trying to shape something a little bit different and memorable. And I mean there are a lot of breweries and there are a lot of restaurants with beer that make pub food. It's a crowded market. So what can we 00:35:00do that stands out a little bit. And I thought, let's introduce a wholesale pairing program. So we started by adding beer pairings to the food menu. And I had a lot of experience doing that already because we had done individual one off events and I was just always thinking about it myself. What would I like to have with my meal? So with the food and beer pairings, the menu is set.

So what beer works with what's on the menu is how we go about that. And I would usually sit down and I would order myself for lunch, one of our staples. And I would pour a flight, a taster flight and just kind of go through them one by one. I had intuitions for what might work, but I say there's no such thing as a theoretical pairing. A lot of people talk about, oh this has this such and such spicy flavor, therefore it's, pairings are a lot more unpredictable than you 00:36:00might think. So it's got to be field tested and it has to be not just that works, but these make each other better. That works really well.

And I thought, well a lot of places have beer and food pairings, but we have this giant whiskey collection. I'm also a whiskey fanatic or just brown liquor in general. I love all barrel aged spirits. And I had started playing around at home since I have good beer on hand every now and then be sipping a whiskey. I wonder if there's a beer that would complement these flavors. Nobody does that, like liquid pairings. And I had actually started a document on my computer, a file where I was saving the successful ones. And I thought, well we have this giant whiskey collection. And I think at the time it was the biggest in the state. It's still one of the biggest in the states, the biggest in town, 00:37:00hundreds of whiskeys. And I thought, well why don't we try to pair some of these with the beers, there's something people have never experienced.

And if you find the right combo, there's sort this sun is setting moon is rising kind of crossover. The light of the two trees of Valinor, for the Tolkien nerds, and the mingling of the two creates a third new flavor. And it can be pretty dazzling when you get that right. It's also horrific if you mess up. So those come about when we put a new beer out. In fact, I was just doing this morning, it's like, let's see if we can find a whiskey pairing. So I go around and I smell the beer, I have some intuitions for what might work.

I start by smelling and you can tell probably 80% of what you need to know by 00:38:00doing that. At least the definite rejects. And then you get a couple that you think might work. So pour, tiny little taste. And what I usually do is sip of beer, sip of whiskey, pause about five to eight seconds until you get into the aftertaste, sip a beer again. And it has to work in both directions. It's pretty interesting. It's much easier to get something to work from beer to whiskey than from whiskey to beer.

Erin Lawrimore:

That makes sense. Just because the whiskey's going to be so powerful.

Christopher McGarvey:

Right, right. But it's a different experience going each way. And that's one of the cool things for our guests that are trying this out for the first time. The server lets them know, make sure you try it in both directions because it's a different experience and you might like it one way better than the other. We've tentatively begun exploring the three-way pairing, beer, food and whiskey. We just had a whiskey dinner about a month ago where we tried that and I was 00:39:00nervous about whiskey and food. I thought whiskey might be too strong to go with food. It actually worked surprisingly well, but we did have to test everything out. So yeah, pairings is our specialty. That's something that is a unique offering here and I would love more people to come in and experience that.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. Can you talk about... Maybe some of the challenges that you faced with brewing? Some things that maybe didn't work as well as you would've liked. You said you're a hard man to please, but there's a difference between not being pleased and just going, Oh no, I'm never doing that again.

Christopher McGarvey:

No. So stories of failures is what we're looking for here?

Erin Lawrimore:

Those are always, that's how you learn.

Christopher McGarvey:

Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore:

I call them challenges.

Christopher McGarvey:

There's a separate question here that's what's challenges of the facility.

Erin Lawrimore:

That's true.

Christopher McGarvey:

Being a Civil War era building into which a brewery was later retrofitted.

Erin Lawrimore:

I would assume the pipes are not ideal for-

Christopher McGarvey:

It's a bit of a strange setup and things are shotgun scattered throughout the entire campus. I mean there's three or four major production areas on three different floors plus one down the alley. So just moving a beer physically from point A to point B is a little bit more of cartwheels and back flips here than most other breweries that were set up to be breweries. So there's just physical, I'll take the physical challenge on making the beer here, but in terms of things 00:41:00I've learned, mistakes we've made or what just didn't work out brewing wise-

Erin Lawrimore:

Other than the Schwartz beer.

Christopher McGarvey:

Well yeah, you can't name it Swamp Lager and expect it to sell fast. The reason it got that name was because at the time Discovery Channel was filming the reality TV show Swamp Loggers in the next county over. And one of our servers at the time was cousins with the Star of the show. So it sort of made sense a decade ago, made less sense when no one's heard of the show anymore. But yeah, you shouldn't name something after the swamp and expect it to sell. I think it sells well at Teach because it's got a good pirate name. But I'm trying to think of actual beers that just didn't work out here. I usually don't brew something 00:42:00if I'm sure it's not going to be at least a base hit.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah.

Christopher McGarvey:

We've had a few, I've only dumped one or two batches in my career that I can remember. And... Some of those had to do with hurricanes. So with power outages and-

Erin Lawrimore:

That's a nice unique segue and that's a nice segue into uniquely Wilmington. You don't have the hurricanes in Asheville that will, you know.

Christopher McGarvey:

Yeah. Every August, September, October, I kind of have to sit around and watch the weather carefully. And then if you get one of those ones where you're not sure if the track might come through here, it actually does completely alter the production skills. Well, we better not brew a whole new batch that might be in the middle of fermentation when the power goes out.

Erin Lawrimore:

Did y'all have much in the way of problems with Florence, like some of the other places in the area did?

Christopher McGarvey:

Well we definitely lost some batches then. I mean power was out for a long time. I was evacuated from town and couldn't get back for a week or more. And we were one of the first places to reopen because there were enough people onsite in town to sort of piece something together. We didn't have much damage to the building, thankfully. I think we had to dump a couple beers that were at vulnerable states and the power was out too long and it got too hot during fermentation or something.

But I think Front Street was mercifully spared, the worst of that. I mean the courthouse next door has been under renovation ever since to this day, nonstop. 00:44:00And there were tarps on roofs for a long time. I mean, it's something that just affect the whole town and you almost start forgetting the long term impacts. At a certain point they become part of life. So I can't even remember. I'm sure we probably had to adapt things for sure. It took us a while to get business. I mean, just people in the door again. So... You were trying to transition to something about Wilmington in general?

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah.

Christopher McGarvey:

Question more about that?

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah, just thinking about Wilmington and the beer scene here, what do you see as unique here? Or do you see something unique here versus other parts of the state, for instance?

Christopher McGarvey:

Uh, yeah. Well I think over the years, craft beer has spread everywhere to every 00:45:00corner. And so there's a certain sameness everywhere. Just everywhere has a brewery on every corner and they're all making hazy IPAs and dessert stouts. And there's a lamentable sameness across craft brewing in general I would say at this point. But I think Wilmington still does have some unique traits to its beer scene. For one thing, I think we punch above our weight in terms of number of breweries for the size of the town. I mean, every town has a lot of breweries nowadays, but we have near 20 or something. It's hard to even keep track.

There's a new brewery that opened, Drum Trout that I still haven't been to yet. I need to get over there. And I think there's also being a beach town, a different vibe to our scene and to the lineup of beers that you see here. I do think that our scene is a little bit more laid back and a little bit more focused on light and refreshing summer and beachy beers and a little less geared towards pretentious and trendy. And I think that also reflects the nature of the people that live here and that come here. We're all serving a tourist town, not all of whom are beer geeks. And they all want something refreshing to drink and they want to have several of them when they're relaxing on vacation. 00:46:00So I see a lot more Kölschs and pilsners and lighter wheat beers and stuff around here than were maybe popular everywhere. And I just think there's a little more easy going attitude. I'm happy to say that there are at least a decent kind of quorum of other breweries in town here that seem to have a similar philosophy about preserving the traditions of European and world beer styles. And I see a couple other breweries that always have some German lagers, some English ales that are unflavored and there's at least four or five breweries in town that kind of cover those bases and that makes me happy.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, no, that makes sense. I'm assuming no one wants to sit on the beach with a imperial pastry stout.

Christopher McGarvey: Right.

Erin Lawrimore: That would not be fun. So if you were going to describe Front Street to somebody who has never been here, how would you describe this place?

Christopher McGarvey: I would say cozy, traditional pub atmosphere with a...really well priced quality food. It's affordable, it's comfortable, it's a good place to bring friends and just hang out and have a meal. We're one of the most popular spots for lunch and dinner downtown. And we have a very broad and diverse beer lineup where there's something for every taste. We really try to make sure we've got something for everybody.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher McGarvey: So it's really approachable, but the quality is high. I want to say it's almost like we don't want you to notice how good it is until it just disappears. And it's not like we don't want you to notice, it's just we want to make it effortless for you to spend time with your loved ones and not to have a-

Erin Lawrimore: So I think the piece where it cut off was when I asked about the size of barrel-age and staffing.

Christopher McGarvey: Oh good. So we're pretty much up to recent. So the question was about the physical facilities and the staff in production. Right?

Erin Lawrimore: Right.

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah. Okay. Well good, that's an easy answer. Straightforward. So we are a 10 barrel brewery and always have been. I believe when it very first opened there were only four fermenters and four serving tanks and that was expanded to 10 fermenters and 10 serving tanks. Each serving tank holds a 10 barrel batch. And we also expanded our draft system to include five keg lines. So we can serve 14 different beers on draft, nine of which are full scale, 10 barrel batches. And that gives us a lot of capacity, especially since we're not a production brewery, we're just sort of spoiled here with tank capacity. And that means I don't have to scramble to do a lot of calculations about exactly when we need to get one tank empty and put the next thing in there. 00:50:00It makes my life a lot easier and more enjoyable and it allows us to have new seasonal beers ready to go the moment that something runs out. So that's nice. We are really spoiled as a brew pub. A lot of the production breweries in town don't even have that much tank capacity. That allows us to keep this nice big diverse lineup without a lot of stress. I have also got the best brewing crew that I've ever had right now. I've typically had one full-time assistant brewer and one part time cellar man. And in the covid years it was down to just me. I was like-

Erin Lawrimore: We'll come back to those happy times in a minute.

Christopher McGarvey: I was the only brewery employee for about a year and a half. But I now have a full-time assistant who is also really handy and does a lot of maintenance in the building. I have a time assistant who just graduated from App State with a marketing degree and so he's able to help us engage with younger audience and keep our social media fresh and up to date. And he's really expanded what we've been doing on social media brilliantly. So we're doing a lot more creative work there and that allows, that's part of what's allowed us to have more full-time help is that they're also working in other departments and splitting their time a little bit. 00:52:00And then I have a part-time, I would call him a lead brewer. He is a veteran of the brewing scene as well as a Military Veteran who served as a medic in special forces and he brewed at Ironclad. His name is Tyler Campbell and he is, in my opinion, the best brewer in Wilmington. So we're really honored to have him. He only works two days a week right now while he's in school, but in the summer he'll probably work full time and he helps us get through those busier months. He's been the one behind really keeping our current trendy recipes good. So he's done tons of research on hazy IPAs and has really implemented a great lineup of hazy IPAs and you just have to have those now. And so he's done an excellent job at making I think, really respectable versions of those. He's also taken the helm at creating some more modern style fruit sour beers. And he's done a great job with both of those, which I didn't have as much knowledge about or interest to pursue. 00:53:00So it's something that you really need and I think he's done the best possible job at that while also, I have to give him credit for his love of classic lagers. And so he's also really... thrown some great recipes on draft for the summer with the lighter lager lineup. He did a really authentic Munich Hellis that he just researched to death and it showed, And then he also had just more of a, well it was a very low ABB, a Licht beer that we called Saltwater Cowboy. And that was your good easy summer drinker for the masses, but it was of high quality. So.

Erin Lawrimore: That's a good beer name.

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah. Especially in a beach town.

Erin Lawrimore: So can you talk a little bit about your flagship beers here?

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah, we still have flagship beers is the first thing I should say because we're that old school. There's a lot of places that even don't have any anymore. And we have a lot of them. We have five beers on draft at all times. So one of those is Czech Pilsner, we just call it original Pilsner that used to be a Kölsch and before that it was a Hellis. So we've changed what the light beer is, but we always have a light lager at this point. A pilsner that's I think of exceptional quality and is possibly my favorite beer here. We have our raspberry wheat, Riptide Raspberry Wheat Ale. We're still flying the flag of the nineties. The dream of the nineties is still alive at Front Street.

Erin Lawrimore: If you did it well then-

Christopher McGarvey: 1890s and 1990s. Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, if it was done well then.

Christopher McGarvey: And so that is just an American wheat ale with raspberry juice concentrate. So it's real raspberry and it's dosed so that it's not overly sweet and it stays a respectable beer where you can still taste the beer in it. And that is a perennial favorite. That's still one of the best sellers here. I would love to actually do something else, but it's by popular demand, we're going to keep making that one. And I'm proud that we have a respectable fruit beer. I like it. We have our Amberjack English Ale, which has faced the struggle of every ESB through the years, both to attract sales but also especially in just what to call it. Because we always get the question, what's the ESB stand for? And you say extra special bitter and then they're like, Oh I don't want that. So the goal is eventually to rename it the FSB, Front Street best. 00:56:00And I'm still tweaking the recipe. After all these years I'm still screwing around with it in search of the perfect holy grail English ale. And eventually I'll get there, I think. It's good, but I don't want to change the name when we're still tweaking the recipe. It will be consistent with it's tradition. But anyway, we make that one. We have our Port City IPA, which is a hybrid between West Coast IPA and newer New England influences. It's more inspired by things like Deschutes Fresh Squeezed, Cigar City Jai Alai, Bear Public Racer Five and for some North Carolina shout out, Foothills Jade IPA. 00:57:00So the going for a refreshing, a fruity but refreshing and dry IPA, it has some rye in it that we don't tell anybody about because the moment you say the word rye, you're marketing, your sales is plummet. Because I guess everyone thinks caraway seeds or something, I don't know. But I find that people love drinking rye beers as long as they don't tell them that's what they're drinking, and that, the rye seems to hold onto the hops a little bit. But we also make our Dram Tree Scottish Ale that we've been making forever. And I would consider that our most iconic beer. It's not the best seller, but I think it's the thing that sticks in people's memory and has this long tradition of just being reliable here.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Christopher McGarvey: So that's a lot of flagships for a brewery in this day and age.

Erin Lawrimore: No, it is. But that also, I mean... To me it seems like if you're going to be thinking of the beer in terms of going with food, that makes sense that you would have some things people could consistently-

Christopher McGarvey: Well yeah and we can only print the menu so often. So it's going to mainly be the flagships that are the pairings.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: So you mentioned in passing, and I promise we would get back to the joys of 2020. Can you talk a little bit about... How did everything go down here? Did you do anything in preparation before the shutdown happened? Or like most folks were you like, this is going to be two weeks?

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah, yeah. Well our owner was doing everything possible to try to stay open. He did have the foresight to his credit, to see this coming from a long way off. December and January he was saying, this is going to be the greatest challenge the brewery has ever faced. So he was a prophet and he had already implemented spaced seating and so forth before that was required. He was pretty upset when we were forced to shut down because he was like, We're trying to operate. I think we're trying to operate in a way that is safe and takes all those concerns in account. I mean, ultimately I think that everyone had to do, had to shut down. There was really no way for restaurants to be open and be totally safe. But I would say it hit me by much more, by surprise. I hadn't been paying as close attention to the news. I wasn't that well informed. And so we had a very sad St. Patrick's Day here. 01:01:0001:00:00That's the day we shut down. I called my wife and said, "Come have a beer." And then when she got here, I said, "And by the way, I'm laid off." Which is not the way to do it, by the way. So we cried into our beer on St. Patrick's Day, like good Irish people. And yeah, everyone at that point was saying two weeks. But I think we knew as a restaurant that it was a lot more uncertain than that. I did not feel like we were coming back in two weeks. It was a maybe, we'll see. And it quickly evolved to... The owner wondering if we needed to... Just not make beer anymore, buy kegs from someone, which we're just not set up for. I had to actually crunch numbers and show him that that was not a good decision. 01:02:00There was a point where I was told if we reopened, I probably wouldn't be full time again. I wasn't sure if I had a career anymore. And thankfully we were able to survive. But even when I was laid off, I still was coming. I was basically the only employee still coming to the building. And I would come once a week, check things out, clean draft lines. We still had beer in tanks that I was preserving for when we might reopen. We had batches that I transferred throughout the summer while laid off. 01:03:00And at a certain point it became clear that we were going to, they were going to bring me back, but... I was trying to save the company money and I had unemployment and it was like they couldn't, it wasn't busy enough for me to come back full time. I basically waited until we could support me full time and unemployment was coming to an end. And that's when I returned. And then we were just very slow. It made life really difficult as a brewer. I couldn't brew often enough to keep yeast strains alive. And so while we normally had our favorite house ale strain, the Timothy Taylor yeast, that isn't commonly used in production breweries, I couldn't brew often enough to keep that alive. So we had to switch yeast strains to dry yeast, which gives you a much more limited spectrum of options and flavors. And that was a challenge to the recipes.

Christopher McGarvey: ... options and flavors. And that was a challenge. So the recipes themselves were different. We had to source our raspberry wheat. We couldn't source, we couldn't afford to buy the juice concentrate because we have to buy it in bulk. So it became a Blackberry beer for a while and a blackcurrant, it was called Bramble on for a minute. And we were not selling beer fast enough. I had some batches spoil before. We went through the whole thing. Although a lot of times I was able to just pivot them into barrels and turn them into sour beers instead. So we managed to salvage some of that. The beer that was getting too old and repurpose it. But yeah, it wasn't a good time.

Erin Lawrimore: Were there any of the changes that you were forced to make during that time that kind of thinking about it now have stuck around for better? The silver lining question?

Christopher McGarvey: Well, the pandemic forced a lot of business decisions and restaurant management and menu decisions that I think we're great. They resulted in great and better approaches. I guess it forced us to ask some really good questions. I don't think it changed a lot about how we brew. My department is probably the least affected by all that. When we got enough customers, we kind of went back to what we were doing. The difference is we started charging people what the beer was worth. We got rid of the free giveaways. There's not going to be a $1.99 mug anymore because we need to make margins on things. So we raised our prices to match what all the other breweries around town are charging, or at least be competitive. We were giving stuff away a lot of times. We streamlined our menu quite a bit. And then I think have had a much greater focus on picking good people, training good people, keeping good people. Turnover is killer in this era. And we have made a great shift to really just cohering as a team and making sure everybody's happy. Making sure we hire people that we get along with. We're hiring for personality and training for skills, which is the right way to do it, I think here.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about Front Street? The business as a whole, not necessarily just the brewery side. But feel free to take it however you want. Front Street's role in terms of its place in Wilmington or even its place here in downtown.

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah, I can I talk about that. So the history of Front Street's bigger and longer than my experience with it, which is one of the unique things about working here. I mean, it's been open since I was in sixth grade and I had no part in shaping that. But-

Erin Lawrimore: You weren't a savant sixth grader with your brewery experience?

Christopher McGarvey: You can ask just about any long-term Wilmington resident and they'll tell you that Front Street Brewery is one of the pillars of the downtown business community and scene. And it was one of the really important anchors in turning around the downtown from a very C, D place that nobody went to, to a bustling, walkable destination where you can go hop and you go to all sorts of quality restaurants. We were one of the first places here that was like, here's a place you can come with family and have a good experience. And started to shift from a sort of derelict downtown to the vacation destination it is now. And in the business community, we remain really active, especially our owner and our marketing manager, Ellie Craig, really stay abreast of Downtown Business Association. 01:09:0001:08:00They're involved in shaping policy, they're in dialogue with local politicians. We do a lot in the community as well. We're usually involved in a couple charitable efforts throughout the year. We really keep an ear to the ground on what's going on in Wilmington and we're very active in the community. So there's that. And then as far as the brewing scene, I mean we were just sort of the godfather and granddaddy of the whole thing here. And I think we try to bear the torch of tradition and we're always happy to see new breweries in town. I've always supported everyone. The first generation of new breweries here, I was friends with almost all of them. Flytrap and Wilmington Brewing. I had home brewed in the garage with Mike Barlas on his original, glorious home brew setup. And back when Wilmington Brewing Company was just Wilmington Home Brew Supply shop. I sent them sort of some of their first wave of customers when we were having a home brew competition among local churches for charity that we called What Would Jesus Brew, right when they had opened. So I love our scene here and it delights me that we have pretty good rapport with the other brewers.

Erin Lawrimore: And we're going to come back to What Would Jesus Brew, because I love that so much.

Christopher McGarvey: Did you know about already?

Erin Lawrimore: I saw an article about it.

Christopher McGarvey: Okay.

Erin Lawrimore: And it was one of my favorite things that I have seen. But prior to our technical snafu, one of the questions that did not, I think it cut off, was talking about the flagship beers, the five flagships.

Christopher McGarvey: Oh, flagship beers. So I'm getting confused because I was like, did it, I thought I just answered that. But anyway, I'm happy to talk about the flagship beers. So the first thing I should say is that we have flagship beers, which is not a given in the modern beer scene. I mean, there's a lot of breweries that just rotate through new things, and frankly, that's what the market wants. It's almost hard to have a flagship in certain situations. If you're the trend brewery that does Hazy IPAs, it's hard to have a flagship. Everyone wants the next new thing. So I'm pleased that we get to make five solid, consistent things that we think are some of the best recipes. So we have, for our staple, drinkable, approachable light beer, we have Original Pilsner, which is a check style pilsner. 01:12:00I'm kind of a malt guy. I always veer slightly towards the malty interpretation of anything. So we're doing sort of the check slightly malt heavy and hoppy pilsner. Not too hoppy, but balance of both. Then we have our very beloved Riptide Raspberry Wheat because the dream of the '90s is still alive at Front Street. So we're brewing the 1990s style American wheat ale with fruit. And in this case, I'm proud of that one because it is not overly sweet. It's a fruit beer where it can still taste the beer and the manly marines feel comfortable drinking it at their table. That always gives me a little bit of a chuckle, but I love that. And that's still one of the most popular beers, one of the biggest sellers. 01:13:00Then we have Port City IPA, which I've put countless hours into refining and revising that recipe over the years. And it leans more West Coast, but a fruity take on that with a little bit of influence from New England IPA water chemistry. So it's inspired by things like Deschutes' Fresh Squeezed, Cigar City Jai Alai, Bear Republic Racer 5, you could say Bell's Hopslam. I guess, the what I would consider the first wave of fruity IPAs, but they were more West Coast style and they were exploring this kind of pineapple and mango tangerine type flavors, but with a dry finish and still some bitterness and bite to it, just not as bitter and piney and resiny as the old school West Coast stuff. 01:14:00So that's sort of my sweet spot for IPAs and that's what that beer is, and over the years had a lot of success with that one. A lot of people who come through our doors, especially back when we used to do brewery tours, were not IPA drinkers and they were scared of them. And I'd say, "Well, give ours a chance because it's not as bitter as what you may have experienced." And we had a lot of people that would say, "I don't like IPAs, but this is the first one I've ever liked." And that's probably my favorite thing to hear as a brewer is I don't normally like beer, but I like this one. We get that a lot. Which leads us to our last beer, which is one of the best for beginners, but also just a real beloved favorite. And that's our Dram Tree Scottish Ale. I think it's the beer we've been making consistently for the longest time. And it's definitely one of our most iconic, it's what people remember because they've often never had something like that. It's dark, but it's smooth. It's semi-sweet. It's kind of caramelly and gently roasty. And it doesn't really fit in any classic style. It's a hybrid between a wee heavy and a porter, when it really comes down to it. And so it's a great beer, but... I have won some medals with it, but I always can't figure out what category to enter it into. It's too roasty for a Scottish Ale, and it's too heavy for a malty and not roasty enough for porter. So its one medal is in some weird categories like Old Hill and English Strong Ale and weird stuff like that.

Erin Lawrimore: It's a category in and of itself.

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. It's a good beer there. So can you talk about, or do you remember your very first intro to craft beer back in Peoria or wherever you were?

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah. Well I went to Hope College in Holland, Michigan, and blocks away from campus was New Holland Brewing. And my first introduction when I learned I liked beer was in Munich when I tried a stein of Helles and I went to Augustiner-Keller. And I think I also had a Hefeweizen. But when I came back to America, I was curious to see what we had here and to explore. And I remember going on, I just was Googling stuff and I found BeerAdvocate. And I looked up to see if there were any breweries or what were the good places to go in my college town of Holland, Michigan. And there was New Holland Brewing. And I remember seeing, they had this thing called Dragon's Milk. I was like, "Well, that's a cool name. What is that?" And I remember looking down the list on BeerAdvocate and I was on summer break, and I was sitting there making a list of what I should try when I got back to school. And I remember this one called Pilgrim's Dole was a barleywine. I was like, "Barleywine? That sounds cool. What is that?" Probably no one knows what that is today either.

Erin Lawrimore: Delicious is what it is.

Christopher McGarvey: And I remember my... Not sophomore year. I guess it would've been senior year because I had to be 21. So I came back from that European study abroad thing and my friends all went out to the store and we went to Walmart and got these big steins because New Holland had Stein Night on Wednesdays. And it was like, we'll fill any size stein for... I want to say it was $3. It was something like just stupid cheap, and we'd get a liter of beer. But you didn't get to pick. They were like, "This is what it is tonight." So one week, this was my first IPA experience. 01:18:00I remember I never had an IPA and it was Mad Hatter IPA for Stein Night that week. And so I took my stein up and they filled it up. I remember I took it back to the table and smelled it, I was like, "This smells like a Christmas tree." I was like, "This smells like the water in the base of a Christmas tree." And I took a sip and I'm like, "Yeah, it's like drinking pine sap." And I was like, well, it was so bitter, just lingered in the back of my throat. And I was like, "God, I have a whole liter of this to get through." That was one of the biggest chores of my early drinking career, was finishing the whole stein of Matt Hatter IPA. And it's a good IPA, but I was just not prepared for that.

Erin Lawrimore: It's when you work up to.

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah, and I think actually working through that whole liter made a lifetime adjustment to how I calculate bitterness intensity. And then after that, everything else seemed a lot less bitter. So it sort of moved the needle on that. And I remember Kevin, our brewmaster here, used to tell people, if you can force yourself through one pint of IPA, you'll actually start to be able to notice what else is going on. And eventually your taste might shift. And I think that's an important reminder, actually. I really think beer in general is an acquired taste. And most beer drinking cultures sort of encourage people like, "Yeah, you want to be grown up and cool adult, you are going to learn to this stuff." And it takes a little work because alcohol is inherently bitter. 01:19:00Usually, you're more sensitive that when you're first trying it out. So people naturally gravitate towards sweeter stuff. One of the big criticisms I have about the craft brewing scene is we've kind of given up on graduating people through the steps of acquiring that taste for more challenging beers. And we have kind of turned it into candy beer. It's like everything possible that we can do to cover up the flavor of beer is what people want now. And I mean, I'm pretty sure this is a question on your sheet, so I might as well get into it. What are my biggest complaints about the beer scene? Well, the beer scene has evolved away from nuance and tradition and respect for, I think just careful attention to the ingredients themselves, malt, hops, yeast water, and the infinite variations you can do with just those four things, which is my passion. 01:20:00And I think we're in an era, an unfortunate era right now that I would summarize as big dumb flavor. Big dumb flavors. I actually want to name a beer, Big Dumb Flavor, and just dump all kinds of chocolate and fruit and you know what, it's guaranteed to be a hit. And I'm just going to call it what it is. And people will think it's funny. And I'm like, "Yeah, but I'm mad at you." I'm mad that you like this. So that's my biggest concern about the entire scene is that I believe we are training an entire generation of drinkers to not like beer, but to like flavors. 01:21:00And seeing breweries, adopting things like seltzer instead of beer. And I mean, the market demands it. And if you're trying to make money... I mean, to some degree I'm isolated from this because we are a successful, thriving restaurant with an enviable location at the heart of downtown. And so we're drawing people that aren't the untapped beer geek. We just don't have to play to those trends as much, thankfully. But I think that that is somewhat shortsighted. I think in some ways we're shooting ourselves in the foot because we're just basically teaching people beer isn't worth drinking unless you cover it up with something else. So that concerns me.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, no, that makes sense.

Christopher McGarvey: I should answer the other half because I know the other half of the question. You want to state the other half of the question?

Erin Lawrimore: Go. Right. You go ahead.

Christopher McGarvey: The other half is, what are the good parts or some trends that I am encouraged by?

Erin Lawrimore: Yes.

Christopher McGarvey: And so I have to temper my criticism there with the encouraging return towards lagers that's happening throughout the industry. When I got into brewing, you were really looked down upon for brewing a traditional lager. I mean, no one cared about any of that stuff, including the classics like Helles and Pilsner, which is what made me a beer drinker. It was just like, "Ah, why bother with that stuff?" We took flack back then for having those things, I remember. And I myself wasn't very interested in them. I mean, I enjoyed a Helles and so forth, but I wasn't developing recipes for those things back then. It was kind of taken for granted. And so I am encouraged to see that there's, for whatever reason, some momentum towards classic lagers. I am not wanting to see every brewery making a Mexican lager. That's annoying, and I don't-

Erin Lawrimore: There's so many lagers styles you could try.

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah. I'd want to see more German lagers. I want to see the European classics that have been overlooked get some love, and that is happening. So that's encouraging, and it's respectable to make those things. And it's not just, well, Paycheck pilsner. Someone actually makes that, I forget who.

Erin Lawrimore: Fullsteam.

Christopher McGarvey: Fullsteam, okay, Paycheck pilsner. The mentality has shifted from just, we do this to survive to we really are passionate about this. And people respect that. It's not just the one for the masses. People are gaining interest in all that. So that's encouraging. I wish we could see that same thing with traditional malty beers. Return to malt. Malt is the heart of beer. So why is it that America has a hatred of malt? Come on.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Well, and especially here in North Carolina where we've got multiple malt houses. Here in the state, too.

Christopher McGarvey: I'd like to see more attention to malt and yeast again. And my pipe dream is to see English beer get its turn in the limelight again. But I may be waiting a long time for that one.

Erin Lawrimore: Unfortunately. I agree. So I want to go back to something you mentioned in passing that I promised we get back to, What Would Jesus Brew, and some of the ways that you've combined your church and in-depth background with the brewery and the work you do here. I think it's fascinating.

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah. A lot of people seem to think there's some kind of conflict between being a brewer and being religious. And if you know anything about the history of brewing, that doesn't make any sense because the brewing traditions we've inherited were basically the full domain of the church in medieval Europe. And to this day, some of the best beers in the world are made by Trappists monks. And there are patron saints of brewers. So when I was in seminary, in fact, I had a group of friends that would get together after liturgy in the afternoon. We called ourselves the St. Boniface Society. St. Boniface is the patron saint of brewers and sort of like the St. Patrick of Germany, basically, one of the early missionaries there. And we would pick a beer style for the week and everyone would bring one example, and then we'd try them in succession and compare them. And it was just a nice way to spend after liturgy getting together in good fellowship. 01:26:00But some things I've done here, well, I brew a beer that I created as a home brewer for Paska, which is Easter in the Orthodox Church. It's called Tomb Rocker. And I tried to think of something that would be thematically related to empty tomb and resurrection. I thought flowers. And so one of the historical brewing ingredients you could brew with before hops was heather, heather flowers, which grow all over Scotland. And so I decided to brew a sort of Scottish Wee Heavy, with heather tips and honey. And the heather gives it a sort of purple, floral, grapey kind of almost wine-like flavor, especially when the honey plays into that and ferments out. It dries the beer out. It adds a little bit of tanginess, and it ends up coming across instead of being a very heavy, caramelly, sweet Wee Heavy, it lightens the body and it comes across more like a little bit more like a Zinfandel or Ruby Port or something. 01:28:0001:27:00And it's always been one of my original unique creations. It's one of my proudest recipes. So I was brewing that as a home brewer. And when I started here as assistant brewer, that's one of the first things I made. And we've done that every year that I've been here since. And it actually gets released after the midnight vigil for Easter at my church. And then it gets released here Sunday during business hours. So the next day we would bring the choir over and my priest would come, and we would do an official prayer for blessing of the beer. And we would sing Easter hymns and sprinkle it with holy water. And the beer actually usually is made with a little bit of holy water too. So that's been an annual event. 01:29:00We actually had some articles written on us about that. Actually, very cynical articles I think that appeared in the... Oh shoot, forgot the name of the paper. But anyway, it was interpreted as a desperate attempt for attention. "Oh, the things craft breweries will do these days to get attention." And that's not at all where that came from. That evolved out of a natural devotion. And in my life, I wanted to make something worthy to share at the biggest celebration of the year. And I wanted the church to bless it. I mean, it's part of the Orthodox Church's vision that the entire world and all of creation is being redeemed and transfigured. And it's part of our job to reveal the potential of creation and turn it back to its true purpose. 01:30:00And so I have a whole prayer that I wrote for the blessing of this beer, for it to be for fellowship and joy and warmth and companionship, and not for, I believe the phrase is "drunkenness or revelry". That sounded like a liturgical way of putting it. But yeah, brew something really special for Easter. We did do the What Would Jesus Brew event, I think we did it twice. And that was when I was an assistant and I had a good relationship with a lot of the clergy around town. And I was friends with a couple Episcopal priests. And one of the parishioners at... Oh, there's two different Episcopal parishes near downtown. I keep getting them confused, St. James and St. Paul's. I forget. 01:31:00Anyway, someone approached us with this idea. He's like, "I would like to propose a charitable home brew competition among local church teams." The idea was to try to raise money for hospice who take care of the dying and towards end of life concerns, that you have companionship and someone to talk to. So we thought that's a great cause. And so they sort of rallied about a dozen different congregations around town to put together teams, most of whom had no experienced brewing. And so this began actually as a four-week lecture and dinner series where I taught them all the principles of brewing up here in this event space. And each week, I also talked a little bit about the history of brewing as it relates to the history of Christianity. 01:32:00I taught them everything I could about how to brew, and then they went home and brewed a practice round. That I judged a real home brew competition, gave them feedback. And I gave them one chance to try out their new skills and work out a few kinks. And then their second batch, they turned in as an actual entry to the competition. And the winner was selected to be brewed on our system in a full scale batch. We had a sort of big release party that was a ticketed event that raised some funds, and then I believe it was a dollar from every pint sold of that beer went onto hospice. 01:33:00So that was a pretty cool community, interactive, fun event. That might have been the highlight of my career, was actually teaching that class, to those church guys. And then I was really impressed and very gratified that when they turned in their beers, there was nothing terrible. There was nothing undrinkable, nothing had a horrible flaw. They had listened and paid attention and we managed to steer them away from the pitfalls. Because I've judged a lot of home brew competitions and that's not typical.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Do you remember who won? Which of the churches around here brewed best?

Christopher McGarvey: Oh, well, it was some of the Episcopalians. I forget again which parish it was.

Erin Lawrimore: Of course, it's the ones who started the idea.

Christopher McGarvey: I don't think it was. I think it was their rivals.

Erin Lawrimore: Oh, the other Episcopalians?

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah. I do remember that what they brewed was an attempt to clone Pliny the Elder by Russian River. So it was a double IPA and they had done a really good job. And I remember it was a really close contest between that and the runner-up, which was a smoked porter.

Erin Lawrimore: So they went in completely, like everyone went in completely different direction.

Christopher McGarvey: Oh, yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: It sounds like.

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah, there was a lot of different stuff. And I believe we ended up deciding to brew both because we liked it both so much.

Erin Lawrimore: Interesting. Well, I was told earlier this morning that, I don't know if it's the same priest, is coming back for a Day of the Dead blessing.

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah. Right. Father Stephen, St. Nicholas Creek Orthodox, is my priest, and he did bless the Tomb Rocker this year. He's coming back on November 1st, which is All Saints' Day, which is actually the day that the church remembers all the departed, especially. And it happens to be the anniversary of the day that Henry Wenzel, a German painter, fell to his death in this building in the 1890s.

Christopher McGarvey: This building in the 1890s. There's a skylight over here. We're in the third story already and then there's a skylight that's basically a story up. And he was on scaffolding and had been warned that the scaffolding looked problematic and insufficient and had been warned several times apparently, or that whole team had, to do something about it and unfortunately didn't. And so it collapsed and he fell and landed on a metal cash register and broke his back and died on the spot. And so over the years, there's been a lot of paranormal activity in the building. Many, many witnesses here who have heard footsteps in weird places where no one could walk, whistling in the staircases when no one was in the building. We've had the elevator gate close itself. Numerous people have seen apparitions. The brewer that I passed the baton on when I first left, saw in the basement a chair just spinning, a swivel chair just spinning. 01:37:00My own assistants currently have had a sort of little... spat of incidents lately from one of them in the malt room over here was milling and had stacked his empty malt bags and a light went out in the ceiling and he went looking at the light, what is going on? And while that happened, the bags behind him were flung all over the room. That same brewer one other morning, was walking across the basement with another... in the middle of the morning, like 10:30 AM or something, he's walking across the basement and goes [inaudible 01:38:15] all of a sudden. And the other guy is like, "What are you doing? What happened?" He's like, "Something just grabbed me right above the butt." And that was kind of where I was like, "That's it. You're getting touchy-feely with my brewers, I'm drawing the line." 01:38:00We've had a lot of ghost stories here. Almost everyone that's been in the building for a long time except me, has had some direct sort of story. And my other assistant has had quite a few, including the pots and pans banging in the kitchen when it was only him and me in the building. And it's just, I've had enough. So I've asked our priest to come in and bless the whole building, do exorcism prayers on the building, and we're going to pray particularly for the repose of Henry Wentzel in case this is his soul not at rest. It's sort of hard to know what causes these things, but the church actually has been dealing with this kind of stuff for its entire existence. So it's actually not really uncommon. You don't have to go that far before you meet someone with a story. And our culture doesn't really acknowledge immaterial... principles, but I don't know. It's a situation we have here and I have a priest willing to come and do something about it. So we're going to pray for the dead. Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. And hopefully, Henry will find his peace.

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah, hopefully, things can be restored to peace here.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. So thinking about the brewing industry as a whole. This could be two different questions. One would be where do you foresee the industry going in the next five years? And the other vein is where would you like to see the... I mean, I think they could be the same thing, but...

Christopher McGarvey: Probably not.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Christopher McGarvey: Because what I would like to see is a return to English cask ale and for people to actually discover a well made nuanced, easy drinking, lower alcohol beer, but flavorful and something other than Pilsners. So I would love for people to develop a taste and interest in cellar conditioned, served cool, but not cold and balanced semi malty English beers. That's just maybe what I want to drink. But there's a place for that that people don't understand. You can have several with friends, you have a good time. They're not as carbonated so you don't get as bloated and burp so much, and it just is less filling. So there's untapped potential in the return to the English tradition, whether I'll ever see that, I don't know. But that's what I'd love to see. 01:41:00Just in general, I'd love to see the recovery of an interest in classic beer styles and particularly just a return to the basics of curiosity and nuance with the four main brewing ingredients. And there's a lot of unexplored combinations of traditional ingredients. There's a lot that could be done in the lager world that's never been tried. I don't know why it is, but when people do lagers, they tend to just do the classics. And I'm all about that, but there's a lot of uncharted territory. What happens when you brew with golden naked oats in a lager? What is a wheat lager like? I mean, for some reason no one ever does these things. 01:42:00Where [inaudible 01:42:12] industry actually goes is hard to predict. I'm not good at that, but I think we'll see more of the same for a while. I do think people are going to get burned out on... really big flavors in big chewy beers. And I think that's partly why we're seeing the lager renaissance. But it's been really unpredictable. One interesting question to ask would be, what are some of the biggest surprises that I wouldn't have predicted in the twist and turns of the craft brewing scene? And the biggest one is the explosion of popularity of Gose, which was probably the most obscure beer style in the world and basically extinct until it suddenly blew up in the late teens, mid teens. And then all of a sudden, people are drinking salty, sour beers. And I mean, sour beers used to be the stinky cheese of the beer world and all of a sudden, you can't do without them. 01:43:00Unfortunately we've moved past the moment where barrel sours were cool, which is where the real art is. And now we're just turning things sour however we can and dumping a lot of fruit in and back to big dumb flavors. So hopefully, big dumb flavors die down to nuanced, balanced, drinkable, middle gravity. There's always a place for big dumb flavor and I like some of those myself. But there's been some wild twists and turns. I mean no one could have predicted the explosion of popularity in sour beers before it happened. So hopefully, there's a few twists and turns waiting for us that I can't predict.

Erin Lawrimore: Maybe the cask ales will come back after.

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah, well, we'll see. I wouldn't count on it.

Erin Lawrimore: Cask ale, the next Gose.

Christopher McGarvey: Right.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. So when you think about the beers you have here at Front Street, and this could either be one of your flagships, something that you keep on on a regular basis or just something you've brewed once or twice, but do you personally have a favorite? I know it's picking between children.

Christopher McGarvey: Well, I like to use that phrase, so you stole it right from me. But yeah, very mood and season dependent. But I can honestly answer, I thought about this question because it's the hardest question and there is one answer I can give you. The beer I look forward to most and I think is my best and my favorite is our Octoberfest. And I just love the balance. Our Octoberfest is inspired by Sierra Nevada and what they were doing in the teens. They were doing a collaboration every year with a German brewery, and they were kind of exploring the Fest beer, lighter end of... They were sort of straddling the Fest beer in the merits and the style and then they were putting their own unique... turn up the volume on the hops a little bit, but using noble hops and all the classic ingredients. And I fell in love with that approach and over a couple years, developed the recipe that I consider perfect. 01:45:00So ours is kind of a light orange, deep gold with some honey and graham cracker maltiness. It had just this gentle touch of sweetness, it kind of teases you. And then there's a pivot towards Hallertau, noble hops, sort of that really hard to describe, gentle resin sort of sweet hop flavor. It's an addictive balance to me. A little bit of malt, a little bit of hops. It starts sweet, ends gently bitter. It's really drinkable. I don't know why we don't drink Octoberfest all year long because to me, it's just one of the perfect beers.

Erin Lawrimore: I agree.

Christopher McGarvey: I might brew it this year and just call it Every Fest or-

Erin Lawrimore: Annual Fest.

Christopher McGarvey: ... something like that and put it out multiple times. We'll see.

Erin Lawrimore: If people can celebrate Christmas in July, you can celebrate Octoberfest in March.

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: So thinking outside of here, what are some of your favorite beers from other places in the area, local or throughout the state?

Christopher McGarvey: Well, since we were alone for so long here, I have to first give a shout out to my old favorites from the days when there was no other brewery in Wilmington, and Foothills has been one of my long term favorites. To me, they're the bells of North Carolina. They do a nice range of beers. They're all really solid, and their Peoples Porter and their Jade IPA are two of my favorites in the state. So locally around town... I love the Schwartz beer at Edward Teach. It is just nice to see a dark lager on draft somewhere. So that's always been go-to. I think their Octoberfest, when I'm not drinking mine, is... it really rivals it. They have a classic approach as well. Theirs is more direct Meritson in, but I love that beer. 01:48:0001:47:00I love to go to the breweries where... And I don't get out enough because we're brewers and we get stuck at our own brewery and then you get tired and go home, but... I'm still happy to visit Mike Barlas at Flytrap and John and Michelle at Wilmington Brewing, and you can't argue with Tropical Lightning for a really solid ipa that's very... You can get anywhere. It's a go-to. Bill's Brewing and I, I think we just seem to think in similar ways, and even one of my assistants went on to brew there as well, Harrison Parker. So we've got a good relationship with them, and they're kind of a similar brew pub with a classic lineup as well as some modern stuff, so I feel like we jive. Yeah. But I don't get out enough and there are new breweries in town I haven't even been to yet, so I'm getting stuck in my ways.

Erin Lawrimore: Yes. Well, and new one's open all the time it seems like these days, so it's hard to even keep track of who exists, much less get to all of them.

Christopher McGarvey: Right.

Erin Lawrimore: [Inaudible 01:49:20].

Christopher McGarvey: Oh, and I have to also say one of the more original and cool takes in town, Waterline Coffee and Cream. So everyone does a coffee stout or porter, they put their coffee into more of a golden, sort of malty golden beer. I'm not sure if it's a lager or what, but it's like a little bit of malty honey richness and it's a lighter beer and it lets the coffee shine really clearly. And it's a beautiful beer. I can't remember if it has lactose maybe, for a coffee cream, but man, that's one of my favorite beers in town. It's something no one else is doing.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, interesting. So that hits the end of my prepared questions. Is there anything we didn't talk about that would help flesh out your story and your place here?

Christopher McGarvey: Well, I know we did miss one, actually, that is on your prepared list, and that was a collaboration question.

Erin Lawrimore: Yes, yes, yes.

Christopher McGarvey: So it was sort of like who have you collaborated with, what collaborations you've enjoyed with other breweries and then with other businesses?

Erin Lawrimore: Yes.

Christopher McGarvey: Well, I tend to be jealous about developing recipes and so I don't actually like to collaborate with other brewers usually. And there's only a certain number of brewers that are on the same philosophy or interested in the same beers I'm interested in maybe because I like nerdy old stuff, or as they call it in England, Brown and Twiggy. To me, the biggest joy of brewing is developing a new recipe and I don't get to do it as often as I'd like, or it comes as an afterthought. So the one collaboration we've done a lot in brewing that I enjoy is an oyster stout that we do with NoDa in Charlotte. We've done that many years. We supply the oysters. We worked on the recipe together. We brew it there and we split it. But that may have run its course. It's a lot of work. And again, dark beer is just... They're not the thing anymore. 01:51:00So we have done a lot more on the collaborations with other businesses and that's what I'm really excited about these days is these outside collaborations. So I'll name a couple. The coolest one that I'm really excited about presently is a collaboration with End of Days Distillery. And we've taken my Tomb Rocker recipe, which is already a really unique beer, and we've distilled it to turn it into a whiskey, an American single malt. And that is currently about one year old in the barrel. And I haven't tasted it since the day we distilled it, but coming off the still, it was drinkable at foolproof and all the guys over there were like, "This is one of the best new spirit just off the still that we've ever..." It tasted good just raw. So I'm really looking forward to that one. I had an inkling-

Erin Lawrimore: How long were y'all going to let it age?

Christopher McGarvey: Well it's going to have to tell us when it's ready. I would like to give it at least three years, which would be your minimum Scotch Irish age. It's going to age a little faster here in this climate, but I need to go taste it before I make any determinations. And it was in one of their earlier barrels, they have switched barrel suppliers, and I think the batches from the earlier... It might be a little woodier than what they're using now, so I'm a little concerned about the oak levels. I sort of hope to make this an annual thing where we lay down some sort of distilled beer, probably Tomb Rocker. And that way we'd be able to let some barrels go for a while and put some out younger just to get things going. 01:53:00The other big collaboration that we did that I thought was incredibly cool and I learned a lot was our collaboration with Port City Java right next door. It's fascinating that both Port City Java and we opened in the same year in 1995. And so we're both kind of pioneers of craft beverages in this town. And we're right next door to each other. So many brew days here have begun by grabbing a coffee from next door. And it just made sense for us to do something to celebrate our 25th anniversary together, which unfortunately was 2020. So we got started strong in January and February and then it sort of slowed down, but we wanted to do not just one beer, but a whole series of coffee beers with them. And we kind of wanted to do one a month. And so we brought a whole bunch of our beers over to their roasting and tasting lab. This was one of the coolest things I've done in my career. So they did a cupping for us of all their different single origin beans. It was like nine or 10 different coffees. And we first sipped all the coffees and took tasting notes on the coffees. And I was not a coffee person at that point. I really didn't know that much. And so it was kind of an eye opener just to taste the diversity... 01:54:00As brewers, we have well developed palate's, but I hadn't really paid attention to coffee in a serious way. It's just something I would add to beer sometimes. And the range of flavor was pretty impressive. And then we sat there sort of in this open experiment where everyone was just splashing a little bit of this and that coffee into the different beers we brought and seeing what worked. And it was a real eye opening experience to see how important getting the right bean was for the different beers. I mean, just to give one example, we really loved their Brazil bean, which had a unique almond nuttiness. It was a very nutty coffee. And we thought, "Well that might be great in our Octoberfest because you've got this graham cracker and honey malt profile, and nuts and honey, that seems like a great idea.

Erin Lawrimore: It works for cereal.

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah. But when we splashed the Brazil coffee into the Octoberfest, some weird chemistry happened and it ended up tasting like green beans. And we did manage to find a coffee that worked with the Octoberfest. It ended up being the coffee we hadn't paid much attention to that was sort of just what you might think of as a generic coffee flavor. I can't remember if it was Columbia or where that one was from, but when we tasted it, it didn't have any really unique personality traits. It just seemed like this is the platonic normal of coffee. And when we put that one in the Octoberfest, it just really lit up. It was like, "Oh wow." Kind of like that coffee and cream from Waterline, you're going into a lighter beer and the coffee flavor can really come through. And it worked better without any sort of overbearing... big personality traits, just having a smooth, gentle coffee worked in that lager. So we came up with coffee pairings for about eight or nine different beers and we successively put those out through the year. 01:57:0001:56:00And we ended up with some very original things that people wouldn't normally add coffee to. I remember one of them, there was a sour beer that worked with coffee. It was a fruited barrel aged sour. I can't remember what fruit it was, but we tried to find a coffee for every beer in our lineup and managed to do it for the vast majority of them. And so that was a really cool collaboration. I love collaborating with people that are in a different art form, that add a new perspective. And I definitely learned a lot from that to the point that I now make my own cold brew nitro coffee at home, and I love trying different beans, so yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: So they recruited you over to their side as well, basically?

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah. Right.

Erin Lawrimore: And that also kind of leans on another question that I always like to ask brewers, which is, what is your favorite way to go about developing a new beer, a recipe? Do you start with a food you like or do you start with the flavor you like or another beer that you like?

Christopher McGarvey: Well, there's two ways I do it and one I sort of already talked about, which is when I get inspiration from food... and the Borodinsky bread was a great example of that when I tasted a flavor in another food then I thought, how could I translate this into a beer? And that was just the perfect scenario. I mean, it was, like I said, sort of a malty tasting bread. So sometimes, I'll get ideas just from flavors that I think would work together and I'll sit there and kind of like a chef creating a new dish, I'll just be like, "Well, what flavors would go well together?" And this is totally independent of any traditional styles. I really do enjoy creating from scratch, using only the traditional ingredients, a new form of beer that no one's ever tried before. Now in that case, I used coriander and molasses, so it's not technically that, but I've done rye lagers here that way. I have just a whole kind of data bank of recipes I've dreamed up like that. And I've also done some for End of Days, just different malt bill ideas that I think will be fun to distill. 01:59:00But the other way to do it is when I want to brew a particular style of beer, I tend to be really research heavy, and I'll go try as many examples of that style as I can. I'll read books on the history of it. I'll look up award-winning recipes. And then I usually... I'll have several different books open with different recipes. I kind of take what I like about the things that I see and I adjust it to my own personal taste, which often involves slightly more malt than other people use. I like beers slightly fat and chewy, but in balance, just I lean slightly that way. A lot of brewers lean slightly hoppy. I lean slightly malty.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Do you have any of those ideas that you have in the back of your head that you would desperately want to do, but you also know... like the cask ale styles that you probably aren't going to be doing it...

Christopher McGarvey: I would really love Tyler to have an opportunity to brew his Doppelbock. He has a world class Doppelbock that he brewed at Ironclad, and I feel like it's a gold metal beer, but we already have a couple strong malty dark beers for the winter months. It's hard to figure out where to fit that in the lineup. 02:01:00And then, I don't know as far as original things of my own that I'd like to put out, I mean, I already just went ahead and did it with a dark mild because I can. And then of course, it's not selling well, but that's fine. It's still good. It's on draft and some people are enjoying it. And we don't need every beer to sell at the same rate. In fact, I found here that it's pointless to try to make every beer sell well. It's actually better... I think we sell more beer overall when we have a diversity. I mean, eventually when you brew five IPAs, they cannibalize each other's sales and they all just sit there too long and lose their freshness. 02:02:00There's got to be some crazy stuff I want to make, I can't think of off the top of my head. The Borodinsky beer was a beer like that, that I thought about and for a long time. I was like, "Ah, it's not going to work. It's going to clog up the system." And I eventually went for it and did it and it worked great. But yeah, I want to give you an example of an original creation, but I can't think of one off the top of my head.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, well I will say, on Monday, the mild... They were out of cans downstairs, so... it's gone somewhere.

Christopher McGarvey: Someone bought some. That's good.

Erin Lawrimore: Anything else?

Christopher McGarvey: The example that I've wanted to do, I've never quite pulled off. I've always wanted to design a beer for the white wine drinker and one for the red wine drinker and kind of create the most wine like thing you can with normal and beer ingredients. And so this would involve selecting actually a wine yeast that can ferment beer. And we've actually done that in the past. We've fermented some beers with wine yeast here. It would probably involve some oak aging. I'd love to get that nice round vanilla buttercream oaky flavor you get in a good California Zinfandel or whatever. And then maybe we add some fruit, but it's not going to be a fruit beer. It's trying to go for more of a wine flavor. And then, yeah, I'd like to do a red wine version and a white wine version. I don't know what that would be. But yeah, those are my sort of kooky ideas that I think would be really cool to explore, probably wouldn't sell that well here, but we'll get around to it eventually.

Erin Lawrimore: Well, and I think if you paired them together that's a story to tell.

Christopher McGarvey: Right.

Erin Lawrimore: Awesome. Anything else?

Christopher McGarvey: No, we've covered everything and then some.

Erin Lawrimore: I always say there's always more to tell. But anyways, thank you so much for your time. I really do appreciate it.

Christopher McGarvey: Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.