On Saturday, S and T and I went over to the Triangle Brewing Company for their brewery tour.

They’re really nice guys, and it was really encouraging to see a young brewery doing well. The two guys - Andy and Rick - are enthusiastic and are clearly in their dream jobs. I can taste the jealousy in my mouth. It’s hoppy.

All in all they’ve got an incredibly small amount of equipment in a giant space - which means plenty of room to grow. It appears that they’re subleasing some of their extra space for storage, which is smart. For the most it’s a pretty standard operation. 9 bbl system, 4 fermenters, 1 bright tank. They only keg - no small packaging right now. This is smart, as bottling lines can be prohibitively expensive, but it means that people either have to go find your beer on tap or come to your brewery.

Only two things really struck me that I’m still mulling:

1) They use yeast from one fermentation to start the next - constantly. They just pull the yeast from the bottom of one cone and dump it into the top of the next. That’s fine, and it’s pretty standard practice. But I’m curious as to how much variation they’re going to experience over time. In general, you hear a lot of brewers talk about re-pitching yeast a maximum of 6 times. They said that they brew about once a week right now. So if they’ve been open since July 4th that’s something like 15 consecutive re-pitchings minimum (figure they’ve probably done a few weeks with more than 1 batch, as they now have 2 beers). So not only are they pulling dormant yeast over from one fermenter to the other, but also an enormous amount of dead yeast cells. This is the stuff we try to get our beer off of for secondary. It’s clearly not effecting things too much, right now, as their beer is delicious, but I am really curious about variation and consistency over time.

2) They were talking about possible getting into canning, because it’s cheaper than bottling. Which is true. They also mentioned that there aren’t many craft beers in cans, which is also true. I can only really think of a few. It strikes me, though, if that isn’t a little consumer-driven. When I think of canned beer, the first thing that comes to mind is Bud. And then I remind myself that Guiness comes in cans, as does Murphy’s and Boddington’s and all those “pub-style draught” cans. The only small non-widget containing cans I can think of belong to Oskar Blues Brewery. The Top of the Hill cans its beer for local sale, and the intertron tells me that there’s a few more out there, but they’re not very wide-spread. Cans have some wonderful benefits. They’re more difficult to break, they’re much lighter weight, they’re much easier to stack and store, and the packaging itself is much more inexpensive. On the other hand, it carries this really kind of weird stigma. Like, don’t you think that things that come out of a can taste like they were in a can? Can’t you taste the difference between a can of coke and bottle of coke? I can. I’d be really interested to do a side-by-side comparison with a beer that’s been in a can for 3 months and a beer that’s been in a bottle 3 months. Can you “bottle condition” in a can? Can you get by the imagine of a meathead crushing a can of your beverage on their forehead after they’ve finished shotgunning it?

Anyway - TBC - They’ve got two beers right now - a Belgian Golden Ale: a good amount of hops, well-balanced, spicy and refreshing - and an Abbey-style Dubbel: dark and chocolatey, maybe missing some of the deep plum and raisin flavors, but really incredible. If you’re in the Triangle area, check ‘em out. Well worth it. I think T and I are going to head down to Tupelo’s on Friday night and hit their pint night.