In our October/November issue, I shared an account of my early days as a homebrewer and described how Relix has come to partner with String Cheese Incident keyboardist Kyle Hollingsworth and SweetWater Brewery on a collaborative beer. I also tracked the initial stages of the process as we made our way to Crosby Hop Farm in Woodburn, Ore. to select the hops that we would use. Our story now continues in early November, as Kyle and I make our way to SweetWater’s Atlanta home base to brew the pilot batch.

You can now head over to the Relix Facebook page to help name the beer and win 2 tickets to the February launch event + lodging in Brooklyn!

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Kyle pours a 420

Kyle and I arrived at SweetWater shortly after 9 a.m., reconnecting with head brewer Nick Nock and “Minister of Propaganda” Steve Farace, who had initiated our Oregon sojourn. Nick had prepped SweetWater’s five-barrel brewhouse for this initial go-round. A brewhouse is a unit that consists of a mash tun (the vessel where crushed grains are converted into sugars) and a brew kettle (where this liquid, called wort, is then boiled and combined with hops).

After we added our barley, wheat flakes and malt, we had well over an hour for the mashing process to yield our sweet wort before we transferred it to the brew kettle (with some vorlauf action along the way, just to drop some jargon and sound pro—this is the process of recirculation to remove any large grain particles and facilitate wort clarity).

Dean and Kyle cleaning the spent grain from the mash tun

While all those enzymes were reacting with the starches (brewing is both art and science after all), we had time to make the rounds inside the facility. We saw the various tanks (including our beer’s future home, the Dank Tank), leading up to the massive 400-barrel tanks—there are 31 gallons to a barrel—which are operated through a multiscreen computer interface. Then, we watched the bottling operation and the process by which kegs are refilled (after they are steamed and cleaned “to get off the guacamole,” Nick suggested). Kyle even pulled a beer off the bottling line for his own Laverne & Shirley moment. (Watch the opening theme on YouTube if this reference eludes you—I brook no opinion as to whether Kyle is Laverne or Shirley.) We were also on hand for the daily sampling process in the SweetWater lab, where they taste everything that’s heading out (and a few brews still in process) to ensure that the beer is consistent and worthy of being shared with the world (a.k.a. “true to brand”). Finally, Nick Burgoyne joined us over at the Woodlands where we sampled some barrel-aged beers. All told, if you have a chance to tour SweetWater, I heartily recommend it.

Kyle samples in the Woodlands after Nick Burgoyne removes a nail

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While we were in Woodlands, I asked Kyle to reflect on his many years as a homebrewer and comment on what originally sent him down that path, which he has continued to explore while creating new music with SCI and his solo band. (Ed Note: Stay tuned for Kyle’s new album 50, which will be released on March 2, the day he turns 50.)

“My early homebrew days were due to my brother,” he says. “Anything he did was super cool—he listened to the Grateful Dead first and then I listened to the Dead—and he was into homebrewing, which I thought was cool. I really enjoyed two parts of it. I enjoyed the process of creating something out of four ingredients—putting something together and having something completely different come out the other end. And it was also fun to have brother time and create something together. So that was an early part of it—the passion of brewing and also the passion of community and companionship. That community and companionship is also something I associate with beer in general.”

Nick Nock gets grabby on the bottling line

SweetWater’s Nick Nock’s echoed Kyle’s sentiments as he looked back on his early days at the brewery, which began over 20 years ago, when he became employee number one.

“I was a homebrewer and then, in ‘96, I had a New Year’s resolution: I wanted to get paid for making beer. I stuck to that resolution and, ultimately, I was working at five different brewpubs around the city before I ran into the sales guy at SweetWater and asked him if he needed help. He said no, but encouraged me to check the place out, which I did, and I really liked the guys. It was awesome.

“When I came in, there were three guys running the show, and I actually volunteered for a really long time. It was my job to load the truck of kegs. This guy would show up with an old dairy truck with maybe a 10-foot bed. He’d give me a little memo book and say, ‘I need two 420s, one ESB and two Blues.’ Then I would have to go to the cooler and do some crazy stuff—climbing, getting the kegs down, putting them on a palette and giving it to him. That was 20 years ago. Now we have twenty 18-wheelers going out the door. It’s really cool to see that where we once were doing five kegs, now we’re doing hundreds of kegs.

“Back then, though, when we showed up to work we’d all listen to the same jammy music. We enjoyed what we did. I don’t want to say it was a hobby we’d get paid for, but we weren’t always wearing shirts and, at times, it could be a free for all. Still, we’d get the job done and it’s grown into a big ol’ business. We’re number 15 in the country [of craft brewers, based on sales volume]. We’re still doing what we did before; it’s just gotten bigger and better.”

SweetWater variety packs offer bonus art action

As for the process of creating our beer itself, which continued through multiple hop additions after our sweet wort reached boil in the brew kettle—some of which you can see for yourself through the accompanying images, and look for more at relix.com, sweetwaterbrew.com and kylehollingsworth.com, as well as our social sites—I asked Nick to describe it in layperson’s terms:

“By the time you and Kyle had arrived, I pre-milled the malt we had agreed on, so it would be ready for us to get the mash going. Then we put in some base water and we added the malt as the rakes were stirring to make the mash, which has an oatmeal consistency. We agreed on the 149-degree mash set temperature, which is good because that would give us a lot of fermantables, but also leave some behind for a nice mouth feel. From there, we transferred to the kettle, sparging a little bit, which means adding more water to the mash and showering the grain to pick up any residual sugars.

“We did a five-barrel batch and we boiled it for an hour to sanitize the wort; during that process, we added the hops. We added a handful of hops up front, which is going to give us some bitterness. Then we went crazy on the back end, which is going to give us flavor and aroma, which I know we’re going to enjoy. Then we pitched the fermenter [adding yeast].

“Once it came out of the kettle, we had to cool it down because if you add boiling wort, it’s going to kill the yeast—the yeast is a living organism. So we went through a heat exchanger, and we knocked out into the fermenter at about 68 degrees. That’s where the yeast likes to thrive and, hopefully, by 6 a.m. tomorrow, we’re going to see some activity of fermentation—bubbles coming out of the blow off bucket, which would be a great sign.

“The next step is: We’re going to take samples of it daily to see what the gravity is, see how the yeast is reacting with the sugar water that we created. Then, at a certain time, we’re going to dry hop a lot, to add to the aroma of the beer—that should happen on day number three, day number four. Then, around day number seven, with the samples that we’ve been taking, we’re going to notice that the yeast has done its job; it’s not going to eat any more sugars. Once that’s the case, we’re going to chill it down from 66–68 degrees to 32–33 degrees—that’s going to make the yeast become dormant and drop out. From there, we’ll move it to another tank to let it condition for about a week, and then we’re going to move it to the brite tank, where we’re going to carbonate it. Then once it’s carbonated, it’s on…”

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What style of beer are we making? I’m tempted to call it a New England-style IPA [I am a native New Englander after all—Go Sawx], as that is the beer that you’ll most commonly find in my fridge these days. However, as per the authority of Nick and Kyle, I’ll stand down on that reference. What I can promise, however, is that if you enjoy a New England-style IPA, then you’ll be a fan of our beer. I’ll leave the proper description to Nick, who says, “It’s going to be a very drinkable, big, bold, hazy 7.2–7.3 percent [ABV] IPA. I think it’ll be a crowdpleaser. We hooked up with our friends at Crosby and they pointed us to some dynamo hops that I think are going to be absolutely delicious and aromatic.”

By the time you read this, we will have sampled the pilot batch—here’s hoping that I will have received a package in time to share with my Thanksgiving guests—and made some adjustments in preparation for our climactic return to SweetWater to brew the production batch. Are you curious what we’re going call it? So am I. As I write this, we still have no name, but we’ve launched an online contest and I’ll share the final results in my next report.

This project traces back to February 2014 when I first approached Kyle during a String Cheese rehearsal at the Hard Rock Resort in Riviera Maya to discuss the possibility of working together on a beer, so I’ll leave him with the final word:

“It’s been over three years in the making from Mexico to Atlanta. It’s been a long journey but, with SweetWater, I think we found the perfect match. Everything has been really cool, starting with the hop experience—going out to the fields and seeing that process from the harvest through the drying kiln—then coming here and continuing that whole arc of the story from our first discussions over the phone to the hop farm to the brewing and then the tasting in a few weeks. I just feel really lucky and blessed that I’m able to play music and follow this other passion of brewing. Music is very exploratory, and now we’re going on another sort of a safari together. I can’t wait to see, and taste, what happens.”