Interview with New Glarus’ Dan Carey
New Glarus Brewing Company, located in the Wisconsin town of the same name, is a brewery whose reputation speaks for itself.
Founded in 1993 by husband and wife team Dan and Deb Carey, the brewery
has evolved from a makeshift dairy farm brewery into a world class 
operation that is a must visit for true lovers of hand crafted beer.
Bolstered by a word of mouth reputation and an unbridled passion for
what they do, New Glarus produce a spectrum of beer styles that have
garnered the acclaim of the international brewing community. Perhaps
most notable of New Glarus’ repertoire are the Belgian and Germanic
beers that add to the rich European heritage of the area. The brewery’s
Wisconsin Belgian Red is a tart and sweet kriekbier
brewed with whole Montmorency cherries, Wisconsin wheat, and Belgian
roasted barleys is a little slice of heaven tucked away in the rolling
hills of the Dairyland.
While most folks are encouraged to take advantage of the self-guided tours 
10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, we were fortunate enough to set up a private tour with Dan himself. A walking brewing encyclopedia, Dan was so down to earth and unpretentious, it was quite refreshing to meet someone so accomplished with such a down to earth
approach to people while maintaining the highest standards of his
craft. While most folks refer to head brewers as brewmasters, Dan
really is that, graduating at the top of his class as the valedictorian of Siebels Institute of Technology’s
brewing program in 1987. He could have used his knowledge and powers
for self-adulation, but from talking to others around him and from our
own experience, it was evident that his primary focus was to make the
best beer possible while bringing people together in the process. His
hard work and focus is the reason why New Glarus is so well known
around the world despite not being well promoted or sold outside of the
state of Wisconsin. He attributes others to his success and humbly
strives to expand his palate and the palate of others. If only more
brewers were like Dan, the brew public would be a better place.
Here is an interview we conducted with Dan Carey of New Glarus Brewing, a undeniably true American original.
What inspired you to open a brewery in New Glarus, Wisconsin?
Dan Carey:
Well, I’ve worked in the food business all my life. I’ve studied
brewing at UC Davis. I graduated in 1983 and I’ve worked for other
people, and I was working for Anheuser-Busch in Fort Collins, Colorado.
My wife (Deb) is originally from Milwaukee and she really wanted to
come home to Wisconsin. So, we thought about building a brewery in
Wisconsin, and we looked at different 
areas
around the country because in 1993, in your area (Portland, Oregon),
there was already a lot of breweries. There was probably twenty
breweries in the Portland area, and maybe a handful in Seattle. So, we
looked at three areas. We looked at Bellingham, Washington, we looked
at Atlanta, Georgia, and Madison, Wisconsin. The reason we looked at
all of those places is because there wasn’t a lot of breweries, there
was a well educated population with kind of chauvinistic buying
tendencies-”buy local, local ingredients, local products.” We thought
Madison was a really great market, but we didn’t want to live right in
town, so Deb drew a radius around Madison of thirty miles around town
and said “Go find somewhere to live.” So I came out here and drove
around, and found New Glarus and thought this was a really cool little
town. It reminded me of when I was an apprentice brewer in a small town
near Munich that was a lot like that. So we packed up like the Beverly
Hillbillies and moved to Madison, moved to New Glarus. I am originally
from the city of San Francisco, and I really like it here. It’s very
peaceful.
How’s the winters treat you being that you are from California?
DC:
I like the cold. I like the cold more than the heat. And really, it’s
not as bad as people think. Like when it’s really really cold…I think
last year the coldest it got was about 4 below at around 5 o’clock in
the morning. It’s not really that bad. We used to live in Montana and I
remember one day it was like 52 below, no wind, just perfectly
still…so, it’s not that bad. I like it. I like the cold weather. Deb
says it keeps the whiners out. I don’t mind it at all, it’s a small
price to pay.
How did the Belgian
style beers like the Wisconsin Belgian Red made with Montmorency
cherries and the Raspberry Tart become beer geek staples for New Glarus?
DC:
Well, only about three percent of our beers are the fruit beer. We
don’t make a lot of it. We’re known out of Wisconsin for our fruit
beer, but in Wisconsin, it’s a small part of our business. And where
the whole idea for that came from is that I was an apprentice brewer at a small brewery near Munich-the Ayinger Brewery-I think people know that brewery. When we were there, we went on vacation 
to
Belgium and we went to visit breweries around Brussels. I really liked
the Liefmans and Lindemans fruit beers. It took about six years of
pilot brewing and homebrewing to make a recipe that really worked. It’s
a unique process. It’s not really how other people make fruit beer. It
kind of all came together, and that was one of the reasons we built the
brewery. But it’s not really a huge seller for us. People outside of
Wisconsin think about us as fruit beer brewers, but… We actually have
a Lambic beer that we are making. It’s still in the fermenter and we’re
going to transfer it. We have two 3,000 gallon oak tanks and we’re
going to transfer it into them. We’re thinking about making a gueuze,
a framboise, a cherry, and maybe an apple or grape. It’s a traditional
spontaneous fermented sour beer. That’s still very young, but we can go
out and taste it later. It’s not there yet, but it’s showing potential.
I spoke with Karl
Ockert, brewmaster of BridgePort Brewing, during the bottling of
Stumptown Tart (Marionberry beer aged in Pinot Noir casks), and he said
he had spoken with you about regarding getting ideas for a tart beer.
He said “Dan told me ‘You can ask me about anything in the brewhouse,
just not about the Belgian Red.’”
Seems like a lot of
people are coming around. It would seem now that you were ahead of the
curve as far as Belgian-style beers are concerned. When you were doing
it early on, there wasn’t a lot of other brewers doing it.
DC:
That’s the funny thing. When I read about such-and-such a brewery being
the first to make sour beers in whatever 1996, or 1998…And I am
thinking: we were making sour beers in 1993. When we first opened we
were doing sour beers. So it goes. We don’t have a marketing wing or
whatever.
How far are your beers distributed? Is it Wisconsin only?
DC: Yeah, only Wisconsin. We try to stay small.
How did you develop the yeast for your Belgians?
DC:
It’s a blend, a bacterial fermentation. Our yeast is a standard ale
yeast but it’s a souring fermentation. So it’s more akin to like a Rodenbach
type of a beer. But, like I said, we’ve got a Lambic that’s started
with two types of Brettanomyces, an ale yeast and a couple of different
bacteria. That’s only going to be sold out of the brewery, though. That
will be a kind of secret series where we only do a small amount-200
barrels. We’ll bottle it up and sell it out of the gift shop. That’ll
be out this summer probably.
So this new series, this is different from the Unplugged series?
DC: Yeah. It’s a step up from that. It’s called the R+D Series because about a year ago we hired Randy Thiel. He was the brewmaster at Ommegang. He’s now our lab manager. So he and I are working together.
What is your production size?
DC: We’ll go through about 80,000 barrels this year, maybe 85,000.
It was seem evident that you are a destination for craft beer geeks. What is the most unique place a visitor has traveled from to see your brewery?
DC: As you know by now, we are out in the middle of nowhere. We had a guy from Nigeria, a brewer, from Tusker Brewery.
That’s pretty wild. Lot’s of people have come from Switzerland because
this is a Swiss town. There is a brewing group, they have a master
brewer’s class in Madison. They give seminars and there are people from
all over the world like Japan, Japanese brewers, Australian, New
Zealand. That’s probably the farthest away-guys from New Zealand,
Australia.
Being a brewery that only has distribution in Wisconsin, how do you attain worldly acclaim?
DC:
I don’t know. Because we don’t really advertise. If you notice, we’re
not in the trade journals. We don’t have pictures in…I think you guys
must know a lot of that come from press releases. People like me go to
or do beer dinners, beer shows or tastings. We really don’t do that.
We’ve always just tried really hard to make the best beer that we can
and hope that things will follow from that. So…I don’t know why. But I
would hope that the beers speak for themselves. Because, one thing that
I think we do really well is we make a whole range of beers all the way
from a light lager, an American style lager, all the
way to a Lambic and everything in between. And we try really hard to
make all of them really good. I think that with this age on the
Internet that things can travel very quickly. We have two draft horses,
two big Fresian draft horses. They are huge, huge horses. They used to
live out here, but now they are at the new brewery. When we were
wanting to get them here, we had actually bought the horses and didn’t
realize that the village would have a problem with it because we’re out
in the country. All of a sudden, the village said “You don’t have a
permit to keep these horses.” So it was this big fight. These guys in
town who make swords, armory in town. They make swords and helmets
for…whatever. They are all into kind of medieval things and they
thought (the horses) were really cool. They would come to the
meetings. A lot of people were behind us. It was kind of a big fight.
Finally we won. They gave us a permit to have horses in the village
limits and I was over in Bamberg (Germany) at this
little random brewpub. I was sitting there just by myself. It wasn’t a
beer festival or nothing. I was just drinking beer, and this guy walked
up to me in lederhosen and stops and looks and me and says “I heard the
village okayed the horses. Good job.” And he said it in perfect
English. This was at this little brewpub with a five hundred year old
brewery in Bamberg and it made me laugh because here I am kind of
hiding out as far as you can be from New Glarus and somebody recognized
me. And I said “How did you know this?” And he said “Oh, I saw it on
the Internet.” The power of the Internet-the world is very small.
Do you have a sense of
what the microbrew community in Wisconsin is all about? Is there a
Wisconsin Guild, club or something of this nature here?
DC: Of course there’s homebrew clubs. The biggest one is in Madison, the Brewers and Tasters Guild, and they put on a beer festival every year that is a lot like the one you guys have in Portland (Oregon Brewers Festival) down by the river. This one is by Lake Monona, which is a big lake by Madison. It’s called The Great Taste of the Midwest.
It’s really cool. All of the Midwest breweries are there. There’s…I
don’t know…maybe 5,000 people. It’s a one day festival. That’s a big
deal and a lot of fun. There is a brewers guild, but they mainly deal
with political issues. Wisconsin is changing a lot, a lot like the rest
of America. One thing about Wisconsin, it’s this little island and
people on the coast don’t really know that much about Wisconsin. It’s
flyover country. Everybody’s kind of heavyset. It’s a little bit dull,
they eat Velveeta cheese and they’re not very sharp and they vote
Republican. But Wisconsin is a little island of progressiveness. In
fact, I think Wisconsin had a socialist governor for a really long
time. It’s a very progressive state that has been historically
progressive. The people in WIsconsin are very highly educated. They’re
very well traveled but it’s like this secret little place that nobody
knows about. People are very open minded but they are parochial in
their buying habits. When we first came here, Miller Lite
was by far the biggest seller. Every bar had Miller Lite. But that’s
changing. Portland’s been not like that for twenty years. You walk into
any pub in Portland and you can pretty much have a whole genre of
beers. And that is starting to happen here in Wisconsin. Since we
started, we’ve seen people’s palates become much more adventurous.
People in Wisconsin have generally liked a sweeter tasting beer, but
that’s changing. It’s changing very rapidly. Everybody in Wisconsin is of German ancestry, so one of the problems with having Pilsners is that when people want a Pilsner, they will buy Spaten or Paulaner.
When you make a Pilsner here, you’re competing against people’s
perceptions of what a beer should be. For example, we make a range of
weissbiers-heavy weissbiers-and we’re considered on Ratebeer.com as
doing well with our wheat beers. Our wheat beers are a little bit
stronger than German wheat beers. When you make a German beer, you
don’t start at the starting line, you start about ten yards back
because the perception is always a little bit skewed. Let me give you
an example. I read an article where someone wrote in to Wine Spectator,
I think it was, saying “We were just over in Tuscany and we had this
red wine sitting in a veranda overlooking the vineyard and the wine was
just absolutely the best wine we’ve ever had.” So we bought a case, and
we brought it home, and it’s not that good. So we were wondering if
something happened while the beer was in the hold of the airplane.
Could the change in altitude have screwed up the wine? Then we realize,
“Hello! You’re sitting in a 500 year old vineyard with a castle in the
background eating fresh oven-baked pizza! Of course the wine tasted
wonderful! So, you have to deal with people’s perceptions. When you
make a Germanic-style beer, you have to be better just to be equal. So,
our weissbiers are generally a little bit bigger than what you would
find in Bavaria. So then people say “Yeah, that’s just like the beer in
Bavaria.” But they don’t realize that it’s about four degrees Plato
heavier. But it’s their perception. As another point to that, I had a
beer that was a bourbon barrel stout at the Great Taste of the Midwest
where someone said “Here, taste this.” I thought “Oh my god. This beer
is absolutely the best beer I’ve ever had. It’s just wonderful. Wow.”
And the brewer was like “Well, you like it so much, here, take a
bottle.” Cool, so I took a twelve ounce bottle home, put it in the
refrigerator. Okay, it’s Friday night, I’m gonna drink my beer. I
brought it out, let it sit on the counter for thirty minutes. Got it 55
degrees, just perfect, open it. I got about half way through the bottle
and I thought “You know I don’t think I can drink any more of this.
It’s just too much.” But the one sip was like “Wow!” That’s the other
problem with beer-drinkability and complexity. Drinkability is one
thing and complexity is one thing. They both have their merits. This
stout was eminently complex but lacked drinkability but you go to a
beer like Coors Light or Bud Light and I can drink it because it tastes
like water but I really don’t want to. In the middle is where, I think,
you find the best beers. Often those are the ones that the beer geeks
don’t often note. Because to drink beer, you have to be in the
environment and there has to be more to it than just drinking beer.
What exactly is the thought behind your Unplugged Series and how did it come about?
DC:
In order for a brewery to be a viable entity, it has to be profitable,
there’s no question about it. When we brew beers, we don't particularly
push one over another. 
But
some beers sell more than others. That’s not our fault because we don’t
advertise. We have like zero advertising budget, I mean, look around.
We have none. So, certain beers sell over others and it’s the lighter
beers that sell. Most people don’t like the taste of beer. They
gravitate toward the lighter beers and they sell. When that happens,
you are in danger of losing the respect of the geekdom. Two things
happen. One, I like to brew different kinds of beer. I like to brew
different beer styles. Beer geeks like different beer styles. So we
said, the further we go toward the light styles of beer, we have to
bring it back in balance by making beers that are kind of interesting
and relevant to the beer geeks. It’s a good learning experience for us
because it helps us become better brewers. The idea behind the Unplugged
was having no concern for marketability of the beer. So, it’s sort of a
personal statement and the term “Unplugged” means like when Neil
Young…when you go to a Neil Young concert and hear “Southern Man” and
whatever, but if you go and hear him play at a little half moon bay in
California in the middle of nowhere, and he’s with thirty people in the
audience, he’s playing whatever strikes him. That’s the idea behind the
name “Unplugged.” It’s whatever strikes us to make something
interesting. When we first started making it, we made the Double IPA
and everybody’s making double IPAs. So then we said, “We’re really
gonna do our own thing.” So we went off in our own little world and
made our own beers. For example, I made a beer called Bohemian Lager,
and, well, it’s not double, triple anything. It’s not 400 bitterness
units. It’s not 25 degrees Plato. It’s just a beer, but what’s unique
about it, we made it will real undermodified Moravian barley and Saaz
hops. It’s a triple decoction. It’s fermented in unlined oak tanks.
It’s krausened. It’s a real traditional old fashioned Bohemian lager
like was brewed before the fall of Communism. That was kind of cool
because when you drink it, it’s not like this rush of Cascade hops or
alcohol or whatever, but its not something that you normally see. We
try to do things that are a little bit different, a little bit weird to
shock people. So, to make a Bohemian Lager and say this is an extreme
beer, it kind of makes people think “well wait a minute, this is a
Pilsner. How can a Pilsner be an extreme beer? It’s not 100 bitterness
units. It’s not dry hopped with ten pounds per barrel. Why is it
extreme?” Well, nobody makes beer like that anymore. So, in other
words, what I am trying to say, it is a way to experiment and really be
outside the box. Not the “outside of the box” as defined by…
Extremism.
DC: Exactly.
If you are New Glarus, what is Old Glarus?
DC: Good question. Glarus is a canton of Switzerland. The Swiss are kind of 
a unique people. They were having hard times in the 1840s and the government of Glarus sponsored some families to move to America because this was the frontier. They set up a homestead
in this area. So they came over and built the village of New Glarus
from Old Glarus, and those families still live here. This has very
strong ties to Switzerland. There’s a lot of Swiss people who live
here. A lot of immigrants come here from Switzerland. In fact, a lot of
the old people still speak and old dialect of Swiss. It used to be that
Swiss people would come here to study the language because when they
came here, the Swiss that was spoken had sort of stopped growing. So
they have that old “Methinks thou ist..” Kind of like a Biblical
English type of Swiss. It’s kind of like that town in Central
Washington, Leavenworth with that sort of Bavarian
look. It’s somewhat like that. These people are the original Swiss
families that moved here 150 years ago. They are the great great
grandchildren of those people. They came here to start dairy farms.
That’s all the questions for now, Dan. Thanks so much for the interview!
DC:
Okay. Why don’t we go taste some beers and walk around this brewery and
then we’ll go over to the new brewery because the new brewery is pretty
much state of the art.
Following our sit
down question and answer session with Dan and the original Riverside
brewhouse, he led us back to the facility’s laboratory where he lined
up and impressive assortment of year-round offering, one-offs, and
Unplugged series brews. He asked “Which ones do you want to try?”
Without hesitation I replied “All of ‘em.” Then we went down the line
and quaffed away as he graciously described each brew. Here is what he
had to say:
Totally Naked:
A summertime favorite in Wisconsin. Dan describes it as “a very light
beer, but a hard beer to make that shows the whole range. It’s a light
American lager, like 8 bitterness units.” As for adjunct, this beer’s
malt bill is made up ten percent of corn. Dan says “When this beer
comes out in the summer, the Bud Light drinkers take to this beer. It’s
for those people who really want to join the microbrew movement but
can’t stomach an IPA.”
Spotted Cow:
“Our number one selling beer. It’s unfiltered, light, sweet, kind of
fruity ale.” You will find this beer at most taverns in Wisconsin.
Stone Soup: “An abbey single.”
Berliner Weiss: “It’s a Berliner Weiss. Kind of sour, tart, easy drinking beer.”
Dancing Man Wheat: From the Unplugged Series. “This is a summer hefeweiss.”
Cracked Wheat:
Also an Unplugged brew, Dan says “I’ve never had (Three Floyds)
Gumball(head), but I’ve heard it somewhat compared to Gumball. Brewed
in open fermenters, this is about 30 bitterness units and dry-hopped
with Amarillo, so it’s pretty wild.”
Fat Squirrel: “A nut brown ale.”
Hearty Hop:
A Wisconsin-style IPA if ever there was one. “The West Coast IPAs are
very bitter. Ours is purposefully not. It’s dry-hopped and it’s
aromatic, but it’s a little bit more malty. People here are like ‘Wow.
It’s nice not to be kind of slapped in the face with hops.’”
Coffee Stout: “You know, a coffee stout.”
Imperial Saison:
“It’s pretty wild. That’s our new beer that is made with ginger,
corriander. It’s a lactic beer made with a special yeast strain from
Belgium that is very much like apricot.
After our little
tasting session with Dan, we headed up the road to the brand new
production facility.It is projected that a tasting room and beer garden
will be open to the public some time this summer. There at this one of a kind, state of the art brewery, 
we're shown around by the friendly 
Scott Noll,
a charismatic facilities manager for the company. Scott informed us
that New Glarus is currently cranking out 1,000-1,400 barrels per week,
of which about half is kegged and the other half bottled. A new filler
acquired from New Belgium of Fort Collins, Colorado fills bottles at an
alarming rate and a state of the art automated kegging line fills about
63 kegs per hour. “I was a Bud Drinker” admitted Noll “I’d drink a
Spotted Cow here and there. But since being here for the past three
years, I’ve become a beer snob.” The attitude and work ethic the Careys
exude seems to be infectious. “Everybody here is instilled with the
idea of doing the best possible job they can and getting better all the
time.” he said. “They really care about their employees and in turn we
feel the same way. I make a living wage at New Glarus and can take care
of my family.” He continued “It costs less for me to insure my family
here than when I was in the army.”
After a
spectacular day in the presence of great folks and great beer, we
reluctantly headed out of town and left with the kind of feeling that
very few breweries can resonate. New Glarus is a one of a kind brewery
founded by folks who never forgot where they came from and continually
pursue new and inventive directions in which to take their art. -AD
“He who works with his
hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a
craftsman. He who works with his hands, his head and his heart is an
artist.”
-St.Francis of Assisi (from the New Glarus website).
This post was written by Margaret and Angelo on May 17, 2009