Craft: The California Beer Documentary

I'm Jeff, and I like beer.

Not this,

or this.

I like that.

Ooh! And that!

And, well, shit! That one, and that one, and that one,

and that one, and that one.

Yup, yup. Aha. That's right. Keep it going, keep it going...

And there we go.

After a first attempt at making my own beer

with... Results...

I thought the best idea would be

to leave my very pregnant wife

and my old dog at home for 30 days,

while I travel throughout California

with another female

visiting nearly 80 craft breweries.

Both big and small.

But this isn't about me.

This is...

- Okay? -There we go. Okay.

Should we hold on?

Who's over there?

Hello?

Just a minute, dude. Just a minute.

Good clap.

Oh, that's how you roll? Take one.

Ready whenever you are.

We don't know any of the answers.

Is it multiple choice?

-We don't know the question. -Oh.

Cheers.

My name is Ken Grossman,

president of Sierra Nevada Brewing Company.

I'm Steve Wagner, co-founder & president at Stone Brewing Company.

And I'm Greg Koch, Steve's partner in crime.

Enjoying some beer.

Vince Marsaglia.

Gina Marsaglia.

We started a long time ago.

-Together we're Ron Jeremy -That's true.

I'm Ron Lindenbusch.

Jeremy Marshall's our brewmaster.

My name is Yuseff Cherney.

I'm the head brewer here at Ballast Point.

I am Paul Segura, the brewmaster at Karl Strauss Brewing Company.

This is Beach City Brewery.

We're in Huntington Beach, California.

Cambria, California.

Torrance, California.

Here we are in beautiful Mammoth Lakes,

the highest elevation brewery on the West Coast.

Welcome to the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company.

We're in Camarillo, California.

This is the beer farm for Humboldt Regeneration.

Here are the soon-to-be Bagby Beer Company.

-Here in Oceanside. -Fairfax.

-Orange. -Vista, California.

I'm Vinnie Cilurzo

from Russian River Brewing Company in Santa Rosa.

-Brea. -Temecula.

-Roseville. -Placentia, California.

We're located in San Marcos, California,

most famous for being the original stone brewery.

We're here in San Francisco.

San Luis Obispo.

-Kernville. -Los Angeles.

Cool, California. Coolest brewery in the country.

Downtown Fresno.

We're out in Pescadero, California on Highway One.

Beautiful Paso Robles, directly in the center of the state.

We're just a few hundred yards away from I5 on the Golden State Freeway.

My name is Vaune Dillmann,

owner of the Mount Shasta Brewing Company in Weed, California.

We're a small, family owned and operated production brewery.

Our facility used to be the old Green Flash Brewing Company

before they expanded.

My company is Cismontane Brewing.

It means the downside of the mountains

as opposed to the other side of the mountains

which would be transmontane.

Science. Save the whales.

We all waxed lyrical about the California brewing scene

for a very long time.

The craft brewing industry was really born in California.

California is where the whole thing started.

This is where the idea was conceived

Well, you know, it's a wonderful story.

You know craft brewing sorta got its genesis

in Northern California.

I went to school at UC, Santa Cruz,

in the late '70s early '80s,

and so I was introduced to Anchor Steam.

I really love Anchor Steam.

-Anchor Steam. -Anchor Steam.

Anchor...

Love their story.

Talk about a genuine story. My goodness.

I bought a brewery,

and we are at the Anchor Brewing Company

in San Fransisco, California.

I'm Mark Carpenter

I've been with the brewery since 1971.

Anchor Brewing Company was actually founded in 1896.

They're responsible for

California Common or what they called the "Steam beer."

Statistically it's an amber lager

brewed with a unique fermentation style.

And the first craft beer of America.

Before the Gold Rush there were no breweries in California.

Along with the Gold Rush came a lot of breweries,

and they wanted to make beer,

and they wanted to make lager beer.

But they couldn't make lager beer

because they didn't have refrigeration available,

so they carbonated these beers,

and because of the carbonation

they took on this funny nickname "steam beer."

You have to keep in mind steam was very modern,

and so it was very hip.

Anchor was the only one to survive Prohibition.

Fritz Maytag wound up buying it in 1965.

It was only draft beer.

There was only one pump in the entire brewery

still no refrigeration,

and just going out of business.

Fritz thought it was cool so far before anybody else did.

He started things up by buying a failing brewery,

and revitalizing the brand,

and that sort of kicked things off.

Love the idea.

The history of this brewery

that was his fascination for buying it.

It was a real part of California history

that was gonna be lost.

I started because I came for a tour of Anchor.

There were only three people working there.

I went and talked to Fritz,

and we got along and he hired me.

So, I'm just too lazy to look for work.

I've been here ever since.

We had a 57-barrel brew size.

We were selling just under a 1000 barrels of beer,

which meant we only had to brew once in a while.

If we brewed, we all brewed.

If we bottled, we all bottled.

So, it was an unbelievable learning environment.

I mean, it was almost like a brewing university.

Fritz started bottling in 1971.

Bottles enabled the brewery

to ship all the way to the East Coast.

Then we went on to our Liberty Ale.

-Liberty Ale came out in '75. -Yeah.

And then all of a sudden, here comes flavor,

and people are like, "What the hell is that?"

First dry-hopped ale in America.

Basically like, ten years ahead of anybody

as far as making a hop-forward beer

with a lot of cascade hops in it.

That was the beer

that Tony and I clicked on when we met.

I thought it was one of the most awful beers I'd ever tasted,

and he said, "Wait till you're done with that bottle."

And by the end of the bottle,

my palate was desensitized a little bit

to the hoppiness, and I was like, "Wow!"

I went to UC Davis, the Master Brewers Program,

and ever since then I've been brewing.

My name is Charles Bamforth,

and we are at the University of California, Davis.

I am Professor of Malting and Brewing Sciences.

I did my bachelor of Science

and my Ph.D in Biochemistry,

and I am an enzymologist.

And the first job in 1978

that interested me was as an enzymologist

in the brewing industry.

That was down at a place called

The Brewing Research Foundation just South of London,

and this was an organization

that was actually funded by the tax on beer.

So, the biggest paymasters of The Brewing Research Foundation

were Bass because Bass was

the biggest brewing company in the UK,

so they paid more than anybody else.

And so in 1983, I went to Bass.

By which time Thatcher had

screwed up the British brewing industry,

and Bass decided they were gonna sell all their breweries

and go into hotels.

They became the biggest Hotel company in the world.

If you ever stay at a Holiday Inn, please do

because that's helping my shares.

Beer and brewing have been taught at Davis

since 1958.

The first real professor of Brewing Science

here was a guy called Michael Lewis.

He retired formally in the mid '90s,

at which point

the handlers of Busch corporation