Greenbush Brewing Company, Sawyer

Good ideas often start over beer. Always looking to take a good thing too far, we sat down over a beer (or two) and decided that beer itself was a good idea. Of course, not just some easy-drinking, institutional prole beer, but stuff like the beers we’d had at great bars. In short, we wanted beer with flavor. Complexity. Character. Intensity. Not words found in the mass-market lexicon.

So with a banjo burner, a bunch of industrial-sized kitchen pots and as many buckets as we could find, we jumped in feet first. Once a week, every week. Now, several years later and with a 15 barrel version of said banjo burner and kitchen pots for a brewhouse, we’re befuddling the beer judges and converting the masses. One pint at a time.

Our original brewing system has a long and sordid history befitting our line of beers. It centers on the second-to-last kettle ever built by noted coppersmith Fred Zaft, a handcrafted, solid copper 7-barrel brew kettle originally housed in a nineteenth century bar in San Francisco’s old Italian neighborhood. At one point, the bar had been totally restored to its past glory, replete with a “self-flushing spittoon” under the bar (yes, it was actually a urinal). Unfortunately, we were not able to get the self-flushing spittoon.

If you think our beers tend to cross various lineages, you’ll love tidbits like the fact that in 1951, our current building endured a freight train derailing and plowing into the building. We hope our beer can make that sort of impact on you.