Mr. Wizard's World - Interview with Springfield Brewing Company's Ashton Lewis

In all of the buzz surrounding Mother's Brewing Company coming to town, it's easy for Springfield to temporarily ignore that we already have a brewery in town.  To refresh your memory, it's called Springfield Brewing Company, and it's been in business since 1997. 

Many people wonder why SBC (Springfield Brewing Company) hasn't grown exponentially in the beer vaccuum that has been Springfield for the past 15 years.  I spoke with the Master Brewer behind the oldest operating brewing company in Springfield, Ashton Lewis, on how he got started brewing, how he landed here, and why the Springfield Brewing Company hasn't grown beyond its front doors.

First, it is important to note that Lewis has two job titles for a single job.  While he is the Master Brewer for Springfield Brewing Company, he is also the Brewing Market Manager for Paul Mueller.  The reason for this?  Mueller owns the Springfield Brewing Company.  While this is an interesting piece of trivia, it also has some very important implications for Lewis and Springfield Brewing Company.

Lewis himself is a very nice, friendly guy with an incredibly impressive knowledge of beer and brewing.  He's passionate about beer (as he would have to be) and loves all kinds of beer.  Below is a transcript of our email conversation in which he provides insight into the what's coming for Springfield Brewing Company, what it's like to have a symbiotic relationship with a steel company, and why he thinks beer styles are a necessary evil.
 St. Ange Brewing: What is your role at Springfield Brewing Company? In other words, what are your duties in the context of the brewery?


Ashton Lewis: When SBC was just an idea back in 1996, I worked for Mueller as a consultant and was part of the design team. I then was hired to be the Master Brewer for SBC and continued working with the Mueller design team. This was really an awesome experience because I got to not only work on our custom built equipment but I got to pick out all of our brewing tools without a tight budget to worry about. That occupied much of my time in 1997.


We began brewing in December of 1997 and at that time I was the only employee in the brewery. After struggling solo for a few months I got some relief when I was able to hire a second brewer. That was a huge relief because Mueller was working on a large brewing project in Japan and I traveled to Tochigi Prefecture north of Tokyo on six different occasions for that project while the brewery was in its first and second years.


Today I formulate all of our recipes, as I have always done, and oversee brewing at our brewery. But Trey Manning and Brad Luikart, who is one of our managers and part-time employee in the brewery, do all of the work.


SAB: I understand that, like many professional brewers, you started as a home brewer. What inspired you to start brewing?


AL: My parents enjoyed good beer and I had a very small beer bottle collection that I started from the empties of their tastings. About the same time my best friend and I were offered to use a homebrew kit that one of our friends’ father had. We were in high school at the time and brewed our first brew in 1986 during the summer between our junior and senior year. Tommy and I both were bit by the bug and we pursued different degrees related to brewing. Tommy got his degree in biochemistry from the University of Maryland and I got my degree in Food Science at Virginia Tech. We joined forces again as graduate students in the Department of Food Science at the University of California, Davis where we studied beer!


SAB: What made you decide to go pro?

AL: I decided to go pro the day I entered school as a freshman at the University of Maryland. I told my dad, who was a scientist for USDA in Beltsville, Maryland at the time, that I wanted to be a brewer and he suggested studying food science. So that’s what I did. I transferred to Virginia Tech as a sophomore, continued homebrewing, worked in a beer, wine and seafood market and got a job in the State Extension Wine Lab where I did analytical tests on wine.


After I completed by masters degree at Davis I taught brewing courses through University Extension and at the American Brewers Guild with Dr. Michael Lewis, my professor while in school, and Dr. Tom Shellhammer. The three of us also had a brewing consulting practice called Lewis Twice and Shellhammer; the “Lewis Twice” was Dr. Lewis’ grandfather’s nickname as he had the very Welsh name of Lewis Lewis.


SAB: What makes now a good time to work in the beer industry?


AL: I think the last 20 years have been a great time for any US brewer because there is so much interest in different beers. When I came to Springfield the scene was much, much different than what I was used to in California. In California the craft brewing scene was in full bloom. In Springfield there was Ebbett’s (spelling?) Field and Rye Bread & Apple Core and some craft beers available at Brown Derby and on tap at some restaurants and bars. Ebbett’s and Rye Bread had definitely stirred the inertest of local beer lovers, but both of these pubs were pretty small and Rye Bread did not survive long, likely due to their location. Today there is a lot more local acceptance and interest in beers further away from the US norm.


This trend has been seen in other parts of the country and in other nations. In fact, there is a lot of growth in small European breweries, many of them brewing US styles that were developed by craft brewers who began by brewing interpretations of European styles that slowly became US styles.


SAB: How important is it to you that Springfield feels a strong connection to the Springfield Brewing Company?


AL: Springfield Brewing Company is a brewpub and without our loyal customers, new customers from the area and out of town visitors we would not have much of a business. So I consider the connection between Springfield and SBC extremely important.


SAB: What is the capacity of the brewery?


AL: We have the capacity to brew about 1,800 BBLs of year if we were using all of our fermenters to the max. In reality, most brewpubs don’t max out their fermenters because of specials and longer aging beers and seasonal trends in sales. We currently brew about 1,300 BBLs per year.


SAB: What are your favorite types or styles of beer?


AL: I really do not have a favorite style. I like beers that represent the entire range of beer types. My preferences vary with weather, mood and what I happen to be doing. I think I am like most craft brewers who just really like beer.


SAB: How important do you feel categorizing beer into styles is to the brewing industry?


AL: I personally don’t care much for pigeon holing beer by style, but consumers do like to have some idea about what they are about to order and styles are useful for that reason. We have at times brewed beers that do not fit into a convenient style and it does make it more difficult to sell and explain these beers. When I formulate recipes, I rarely worry about attempting to “conform” to established styles defined by groups like the Brewers Association because I want to make our customers happy and stylistic definitions are not created to do that.


SAB: What styles do you currently have planned for production in the coming months?


AL: OK, so after stating I don’t brew to style, I will tell you that we have a Schwartzbier and a Pilsner in the fermenter as we speak. We also are planning to brew a Saison, Hefe Weizen (our summer seasonal) and will be bottling a sour beer that was barrel-aged with Brettanomyces for 2 ½ years.


I understand that you have some limitations on how your beer is sold and marketed due to the brewery’s close relationship with Mueller Steel. Would you mind to explain a bit about how that relationship affects the brewery?


This is something we do by design because Mueller fabricates equipment for some of the nation’s leading breweries and we choose not to compete with our customers by actively marketing beer in the local market. We do sell a very limited amount of bottles and kegs through distribution, but we do not go out and really push our beer. If this balancing act sounds difficult, it is.


SAB: Do you feel that operating the brewery within the context of Mueller is a restricting or liberating? Why?


AL: Although we intentionally restrict growth outside of our establishment, which is what most breweries want to do, I find the self-imposed restriction liberating. I represent Mueller to the brewing industry and it’s really fun to wear both hats. Our customers know a brewery that SBC was built to better appreciate their needs so I get to interact with other breweries in a way that other pub brewers do not. To me that is pretty cool. I love it when I can help a customer by applying my practical knowledge gained from what I have done at Springfield Brewing Company since 1997.


SAB: As a columnist for Brew Your Own Magazine, you take on the alter-ego of Mr. Wizard and answer technical questions for homebrewers. How did you get started with this, and what is your favorite part of writing the column?


AL: You are right that Mr. Wizard was my alter ego for a long time. For the first 10 years of my column I was anonymous and it was Publisher’s idea, Brad Ring, to introduce me as myself for the 10 Year Anniversary of the magazine.


I got started with BYO on the ground floor. The founder of the magazine was Carl Landau who had sold a successful magazine called Computer Language or “CL” and decided to move his family to Davis. He had no idea that UC Davis was the only university in the nation with a formal brewing program when he decided to launch a homebrew magazine.


He of course did find out and placed a call to the brewing lab one day. Scott Ungermann, now the Resident Brewmaster for Anheuser-Busch in Fairfield, CA, answered the phone. Carl was looking for someone in the brewing lab to write a Q&A column and act as the Technical Editor. Scott pointed Carl my way because I did a fair amount of teaching while in graduate school and was doing some homebrewing classes for the American Brewers Guild at that particular time. That was in 1995 and I have held both roles, with a brief break as the Technical Editor during my move to Springfield, since then.


My favorite part of writing my column is the continual challenge of being able to answer all sorts of questions posed by our readers. It’s like staying in school for 15 years with 9 essay exams per year! This actually is a huge benefit for me at work because I have become a half-way decent writer.


SAB: What is your process for creating a new recipe? Is it different depending on the intent of the recipe?


It’s really not very exciting to explain, but it is all based upon abstraction. I envision what I want to do and begin pulling ingredients and process together to attempt to accomplish the idea. I began formulating beers like this at Davis and have continued my same process. Most brewers I know use a similar process.


Besides “this tastes good,” what do you want your customers to think about when they taste your beer?


The biggest complement to most brewers are words like “clean”, “balanced” and “drinkable”. Beyond the essentials, and I do feel those are essentials, I want our customers to appreciate our interpretations of beer. If I were a musician I would hope for similar impressions from my audience.


SAB: What else do you want people to know about you?


AL: SWM, 41, like to read, travel and really like great food and music.


SAB: What else do you want people to know about the Brewing Company?


AL: SBC is really a neat place. We have a wonderful facility, friendly staff members, a wide variety of comfort food and a nice line-up of music. I really like jazz and enjoy listening to the live musical groups that play great jazz Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings.

OK, so that's a glimpse into the mind of Mr. Wizard himself, Ashton Lewis.  If you have any questions you'd like to ask Ashton, post them in the comments below.  I'll use your questions (within reason) in a follow-up interview with Mr. Lewis in the near future.