Eight years after opening Beach Time Distilling on Nassau Road exterior Lewes, proprietor Greg Christmas is including beer into the combination.
After greater than a yr working to safe state and federal approvals, Christmas lately began brewing beer below the title Dog Pirate Brewing Company. The first two brews – a chocolate porter and a session IPA – are actually out there on the tasting room, with a number of kinds to be launched within the coming weeks and months.
Before opening Beach Time Distilling in 2015, Christmas labored for seven years as a plant engineer at Dogfish Head. Christmas stated he had thought of opening his personal brewery earlier than touchdown on a distillery, deciding to guess on one thing he was extra snug making at the moment. In the years since, he’s honed his brewing abilities, which he’s been doing at home for the reason that Eighties. Inside the barn-like building on the nook of Nassau and New roads, Christmas has his brewing gear sequestered behind the building away from the distillery, which is required by legislation.
In the tank now could be a hazy IPA. While it’s not his private beer of selection, Christmas is aware of it’s one of many extra common kinds proper now. After that, he stated, he’s trying ahead to brewing beers that fulfill his personal tastes. He stated his approach lends itself to sure kinds of beer, significantly Belgian and a few English kinds, which occur to be the sorts of beer he enjoys. The subsequent beers on faucet are a saison and a Trappist ale. He stated clients ought to anticipate his beer to be made in a reasonably conventional approach.
“I’m not going to throw a bunch of weird ingredients and stuff in there,” he stated. “That’s not to say I’m a purist … but the tools a brewer has available are pretty broad. You don’t have to rely on fruit infusions to get fruit flavors in your beer if you know how to coax the yeast and ingredients to produce those.”
Christmas makes use of a 300-liter fermenter, or about 80 gallons, however the precise yield varies from beer to beer. For instance, he produced rather more of the porter than the session IPA.
He’s a member of the Master Brewers Association of the Americas, which he stated is a superb useful resource for somebody like him who’s simply beginning. The MBAA affords members a number of info on its web site, and it produces brewing podcasts.
So the place did the title Dog Pirate Brewing Company come from?
“We had a dog that we rescued. He was hard-headed and full of what I called swashbuckling shenanigans. And he earned the name Dog Pirate from all the things he did,” Christmas stated.
The Dog Pirate is is memorialized within the brewery’s official emblem.
On the distillery facet, Christmas added canned cocktails to his choices about six years in the past.
“That’s really what made the brewery possible, because we really don’t have the space for a walk-in cooler to have kegs of beer and that kind of stuff,” he stated.
One day whereas canning cocktails, it dawned on him that the canning machine may serve two functions, and permit him to brew and might beer. He doesn’t plan to supply any draft beer on the tasting room room, however he’ll most likely keg some beer for festivals or one-offs on the tasting room. He’s additionally contemplating shopping for firkins so he can often provide these to clients.
Dog Pirate Brewing Co. and Beach Time Distilling, 32191 Nassau Road in Lewes, are open from midday to six p.m., Wednesday and Thursday; midday to 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday; and midday to 4 p.m., Sunday. For extra info, name 302-644-2850 or go to beachtimedistilling.com.
