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Cambridge Brewing Co. classics on tap The ragtag Rialto GG team blew into Cambridge Brewing Company on a raw sleeting Monday morning in March. It was early, but were up to the challenge of a beer tasting so early in the day. After all, beer is food.
Our visit proved this plaque true, fresh beer is best! The Cambridge Brewing Company, the oldest brew pub in the Boston area, is housed in the old Boston Woven Hose and Rubber Company factory at One Kendall Square. Although it’s a restaurant and brewery (all is one), it still feels like a factory with high ceilings, exposed wooden beams, and brick walls. The interior is simple, with oak tables and chairs, paintings by local artists, stained glass window depictions of beer scenes and a bunch of awards and medals. My guess is not much has changed since Phil Bannatyne built the place in 1989. But then the décor is not what’s central to this business. What’s central is the beer.
CBC murals and stained glass Smack dab in the middle of the restaurant, surrounded by tables, are two gianormous stainless steel mashing tuns with a warren of pipes like octopus arms leading into other tanks where the beer is fermented and stored.
That’s where we gathered and met master brewer Will Meyers, our host, tour guide and instructor for the day. In contrast to an archetypal jolly portly German brewer, Will looks like a veteran triathlon athlete—wiry, intense, and fit.
Will Meyer's CBC Master Brewer He confessed that he had studied music theory and composition and had wanted to be an opera singer. “But the available jobs were in musical theater, not my favorite. "After one too many productions of The Pirates of Penzance I turned my attention to a back burner passion--home brewing--and decided to get serious.” He beefed up his amateur’s knowledge with organic chemistry and microbiology and did coursework at UC Davis in Brewing Science. In 1993 he landed a position at Cambridge Brewing Company and has been there ever since.
From barley to beer Listening to Will, I rapidly concluded that I knew next to nothing about how beer is made—or used to be made--and was way out of the loop when it came to current trends in American beer brewing. I knew I liked a good IPA, appreciated and supported microbreweries and that the last time I drank a Budweiser Jimmy Carter had been president. Like most American diners I take for granted a shopping list of custom-made beers and ales from artisan brewers, but only a couple of decades ago the dominant model in American brewing was one of mass production, national distribution, and bland flavor. There's nothing like grilling in the snow on a Monday morning Phil and Will were part of a movement to take beer back to its roots, with an emphasis on smaller batches of beer and a greater reliance on local, seasonal ingredients—and customers. Even today, two decades after its founding, CBC’s client list has less than fifty business names on it, all of them in Cambridge, Somerville and Boston, and eighty-five percent of the beer it makes is sold in the restaurant. You can’t get much closer to home than that.
Owner Phil Bannatyne and Jody enjoying a GG lunch
The attitude pays off in other ways. Will and the brewery staff make an annual trip to a local farm in the fall for a truckload of organic sugar pumpkins. Back at the brewery the pumpkins are broken down by hand and used to flavor 625 kegs of CBC’s most popular seasonal offering, Great Pumpkin Ale. In artisan beer terms, Great Pumpkin is a runaway bestseller. It funded CBC’s recent expansion. While Will admits, “It pays the mortgage,” he seems both proud and a little amazed at the popularity of an ale that tastes like pumpkins.
beer, beer, beer, beer During Will’s tenure, Cambridge Brewing’s repertoire of offerings and their approach to beer making has evolved and changed. When Phil Bannatyne first opened the brewery, it was a learn-as-you-go enterprise, concentrating on a handful of traditional beers. Will brought all the passion and creativity he previously devoted to music, channeled it into making beer, and moved CBC into woollier, wilder terrain. He still makes the CBC classics… Regatta Golden, Tall Tale Pale Ale, Cambridge Amber, and Charles River Porter but pushes the envelope by experimenting with whimsical additions--known as adjuncts in the business--like heather, spices, honey, orange peel, cocoa nibs and fruits. Ten years ago he started playing around with blending and aging wild yeast beers. CBC was the first American brewery to make Hefferweitzen, a traditional wheat beer, with a yeast film. Will bestowing his knowledge as we soak it in The basement of CBC, or “Hall of Solitude” as Will refers to it, is where the brewmaster most likes to hang out. The space is cramped, with low ceilings and rows of barrels packed tightly together. It’s a place only a brewmaster or a stowaway could love. This is where Will blends the concoctions that altered the way I think about beer. The beers downstairs are primarily Belgium-style brews, inoculated in open air and allowed to spontaneously ferment in oak barrels. Wild yeast strains contribute their own specific flavor notes and are therefore carefully manipulated by Will. The barrels, which once lived in far away distilleries and wineries where they aged sherry, chardonnay, pinot noir and Madeira, add another layer to the beers’ distinctive richness. No wonder these basement brews have inspiring names like Resolution, Reckoning and Om.
The CBC Beer Cellar One of Will’s basement beers completely bowled me over. Benevolance, as the award-winning brew is called, begins life in a barrel placed out on the CBC patio, where it is allowed to age in the sun, another of the techniques in Will’s magic brewer’s kit bag. Benevolence is the brewer’s defense against the accusation that beer makers are short-term thinkers in comparison to their compatriots who work with grapes. Benevolence is a complex product that easily tries the patience of a brewer as much as wine does a vintner. The bulk of artisan beer is served shortly after brewing. Benevolence, however, is aged, doled out in abstemious tastes as it matures over five or ten years, a long time for any beer lover to wait. My first sip of Benevolence forever blurred my notions of beer’s taste terrain, sending it over the line into territory occupied partially by wine and partially by something else—single-malt Scotch, maybe? The flavor was both tart and complex, with the kind of long finish I’d previously only associated with upper-end distillates or good wine. Visit cambridgebrewingcompany.com to learn more about the wine cellar. Smokehouse sausage, grilled veggies and some beer to wash it down
This was the end of our tour and after our usual Guerilla Grilled lunch, Will loaded us up with growlers of Charles River Porter and sent us on our way with a warm buzz and our heads spinning with beer science and inspiration.
Trying to keep up with Will
To be honest, I got lost in some of Will’s technical vocabulary. My pen was scribbling doubletime across my notebook page--crystallized malt, wort, diastatic powder, acrospire. Somewhere along the line I confused how a gruit is made with the details for brewing a lambic. What I did take away is that for Will it starts and ends with flavor. He brews what he likes and he likes to experiment. His favorite beer is the next one, even if he took his inspiration for it from music, art, or a daily experience. “We’re not trying to be all things to all people, but we figure…if you think you don’t like beer, you just haven’t found a beer that you like.” Not a problem.
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Every morning at CBC starts with mashing in creating a giant porridge of malts
