Christophe Gagne / Brewmaster

Christophe Gagne, brewmaster at Hermit Thrush Brewery of Brattleboro, VT shares his wisdom of wild yeast and sustainable living. www.hermitthrushbrewery.com

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Intro Voice: 0:05

Welcome to a place where we're thinking together and thinking deeper about who we are.

Female intro Voice: 0:12

Welcome to the Billosophy podcast.

William Forchion: 0:19

We'll start again. Welcome to the Billosophy podcast. Today my guest is

Christophe Gagne: 0:27

I am Christophe Gagne of Hermit Thrush brewery. We are a sour brewery, we only make sour beer, which is tart and therefore weird for most people. And it's, it's it's gaining acceptance a little bit more lately, which is fun. But I've loved tart beer for decades, at this point,

William Forchion: 0:51

wow. So this is the point where we're just starting this interview. And I can go in multiple directions. I can even talk all about beer, or I can talk about you. And I had asked you earlier about the whole the term of brew master. Because I remember from my childhood, and hearing, or watching a television commercial and one of the large brew breweries was talking about their Brewmaster. And I've always just had this image of the Brewmaster with a large stick and I guess that stick was for staring something or whatever. I don't know.

Christophe Gagne: 1:27

Yeah. And I do have a beard. So and that's associated frequently,

William Forchion: 1:31

you do have a very good causal factor, but it's common. A prominent beard.

Christophe Gagne: 1:37

Yeah. At least Brewmaster for hermit thrushes is sort of just the the creative director more than anything, you know, we've got a team of five brewers now we're very excited. And I'm, I'm just sort of the as the Brewmaster. I am the guy who has done sour beer, innovation in production the longest. And so I started get the final say on recipes, but plenty of innovation comes from our awesome folks. But I was I was studying wild yeast in when I was living in West Philly about 12 years ago at this point. So

William Forchion: 2:14

Wow, there's a bunch of things there. There's wild yeast. There's West Philly, have growing up having grown up in South Jersey, there's a connection there. We could talk about a bunch of different things. You're a Brewmaster, you've got you know, the microbreweries popped up in the 90s and spread. Once again, going back to that whole brew master thing I'm thinking of somebody may be late 60s, early 70s you're not that guy. You're pretty young.

Christophe Gagne: 2:40

Yeah, I think I think young people have taken a good chunk of the craft beer movement into themselves. There's a lot of I think there's a lot of creativity and there's a lot of discontent in common office jobs that and and I know of many stories where people received educations and all of a sudden weren't happy in their fields and then needed to change it up a bit. It's It's fun. I mean, you know, it's I've I've really enjoyed it. The markets getting very interesting lately, but yeah.

William Forchion: 3:21

So how did you come to do a craft beer? Did you go to school for breweries?

Christophe Gagne: 3:28

I was I started out as a social worker. And I was home brewing all along the way. And while I was in school, I was I was working in breweries part time, sort of, you know, pay the bills and enjoy my hobby fuller and so I buy a couple days a week by day I brew regular beers and then in my basement in West Philly I experimented with coal ships and kettle sours and wild wild beer production.

William Forchion: 3:57

Just wild beer production.

Christophe Gagne: 4:00

hobby gone. Wild knows. Yeah, it's it's uh, it's fun Beer Beer wants to be made, you know, it's a, whether it's East that's fermenting and or bacteria that's fermenting it or both are at different times. Beer is a, an easy to make safe, selective media that that you can ferment any number of ways that you know, it's, it's fascinating in terms of the wild side because I think terroir can come into beer in a way that hasn't before.

William Forchion: 4:35

No, you have mentioned wild yeast a couple times. And there's something in my head that said one of the reasons why you're in this area in Brattleboro, Vermont is the yeast can Is that true? I mean, what what, what is the story behind that?

Christophe Gagne: 4:55

Yeah, yeah, we I mean, we looked around for good yeast in New England, and ultimate They settled on Vermont and essentially looking for good yeast is is very similar to making a sourdough culture you make you make a beer and you leave the sterile beer out in the beautiful winds of the mountains and generally it starts fermenting, you know, you're collecting spores of yeast from the air, sometimes you're trying to culture some lactobacillus or P caucus. Potassium icees is definitely one of the one of the lovely wild yeasts sort of a funky kind of straw character. And, and ultimately, Brandon burrows profiles, sort of like, like, stone fruit and a bit of citrus and, you know, the hay side of hay side of funk rather than the horse blanket side, which is a term that is used,

William Forchion: 5:49

and it's kind of funny, you lost me there, hey. Okay.

Christophe Gagne: 5:54

Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a smoother and, and, and has plenty of subtleties and kind of fruity character. Biology here, and it's, it's quite consistent. It's

William Forchion: 6:08

so with the yeast, you don't collect yeast, you leave stuff out and nice, just shows up.

Christophe Gagne: 6:15

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of it's that is basically how it works. You know, we, in our production and the brewery, we definitely propagate yeast, that's, that's from the wild. So we'll brew a batch and leave it on our cool ships, which is what what these pans are called the wide shallow pans that you put hot, sterile beer in, and then it collects the yeast. And, but you know, so you'll have leftover biology from that. And you can propagate that up and brew other regular beers with it as well. And so we're pretty happy to have never bought yeast, it's, it's, it's all we've ever done here is every single can that we've ever produced is wild fermented.

William Forchion: 6:58

Does that. So with that, is there's a bit of uncertainty there. So you're gonna get a different flavor throughout. I mean, one of the things that we have we as Americans, I want to say I think, around the world, folks have, you know, we buy we go to franchises, because we know what we're going to get we know it's going to be the same if you're doing that wild, wild collecting and wild east, and do you get variants and variations that are

Christophe Gagne: 7:26

for sure, for sure. I mean, all of life has risk. And the ebb and flow of characteristics are, are lovely. I mean, I think our year to year is, is somewhat varied, but also wonderfully, so our vintages are, are really weather related, they're related to when we brew and how we brew and it's, it's really satisfying to make relatively simple beer, and to see it blossom into something that's way more complex that I could then I could write a recipe for it's one thing to add these hops that are kind of really interesting and blended together and this kind of grains, stuff like that. But the the, there's a vast array of chemical compounds that yeast and bacteria can produce by fermentation, I mean, you know, 1000s and I, I can't approximate the complexity we get with with the wild yeast, so it's definitely a different I mean, it's a whole different brewery that most breweries that are our art goal is to always be a great sour and to make the best beer possible rather than the same beer we made last time.

William Forchion: 8:45

Wow. I didn't see that one coming. Just and there's a passion to what you do. What is the what is the passion behind it? Is it to share the beard with beers with the world or is it I think

Christophe Gagne: 9:01

it's I think it's sort of an intersection of like the local food movement and appreciating you know, what we have around us rather than just trying to get the imported whatever and and kind of combining that with with I have a passion for trying to fix climate change a bit and I haven't done that much yet. But at least wood fired local wood fired instead of fossil fuels. But the the fact that beer wants to be made and that sour beer takes less energy are are pretty key. Kind of ethical concerns on my side. But also I like really get into the food and flavors, you know, complexity of experience stuff in it. I just feel very lucky that the two can dovetail

William Forchion: 9:53

No, I'm going to ask a question. That's good. This lady goes off topic here. There are you have a very prominent beard I mentioned before, and I've seen a few prominent beards in here. Is that a requirement for the beard?

Christophe Gagne: 10:11

No, if you can't grow a beard, that's okay. You just have to not shave. No, just kidding. It now that I'm really curious about why beards are so common in our industry? I don't really. I don't really, I don't really know socially why that is. But, you know, I think there's a fair amount of brewers who are free thinkers, and I don't

William Forchion: 10:30

know, maybe that's got something. You could spend more time thinking than shaving. Okay. Yeah,

Christophe Gagne: 10:34

yeah, kind of just like a little eye roll at the at the falsehoods that society imposes on you. And then, you know, you only have to sign up for what you want to sign up for?

William Forchion: 10:45

No, going back to the brewery and being here, did you? Did you run into any resistance? That's your coffee cups? Did you run into any resistance with opening a brewery and and I guess there's a couple of questions. Did you run into any resistance? How did you connect with the partners that you have in hermit thrush? Those are?

Christophe Gagne: 11:10

Yeah, yeah. We I don't think we have a lot of resistance. To starting a brewery, we had a lot of confusion, because in 2014, starting in August, our brewery was a little more out there than it is right now. So, you know, we'll have a good told you so but the we every and I hooked up actually in college, we had a radio show together, called intelligent music, tasty fish. And it was a phenomenal music and cooking show. And just in general, we've we've been good friends since and he was very involved helping me to homebrew and you know, stuff like that. So we just we have a great working relationship and kind of go way back.

William Forchion: 12:01

And where did you go to college?

Christophe Gagne: 12:03

Swarthmore just outside Philly.

William Forchion: 12:06

If you could go back to your younger self, say that guy who graduated high school was about to take off and go to college. Do you have any words of wisdom for that guy to get you to hear or any cautionary tales?

Christophe Gagne: 12:25

In general, don't worry too much about being a weirdo. I mean, I don't think I was really worried about at that time anyway, but, you know, don't undervalue unique with thorough follow through. Yeah, it's all it's all possible. You just have to make it happen.

William Forchion: 12:48

Okay. Wow, that's, that's right there. That's a tag right there. And I was gonna say, do you have any words of wisdom to offer to anyone who was in that situation? And I think you just did it right there. Oh, I was gonna, you mentioned the whole the climate emergency that's out there. And I have one of my three children, my 13 year old is just stricken with anxiety over the planet that he's going to inherit. And, and you're, you know, a generation or two ahead of him? What are you? What are you doing to offset or stop or stem the climate emergency? And or what do you see as a possible possibility for what we can do as a, as a community or as a nation?

Christophe Gagne: 13:40

On the personal level, I'm glad to be burning biomass fuels, predominantly in my life, you know, we've got a wood stove, and you know, it's definitely cozy and it's nice, but it's also, you know, we only go through like 200 gallons of oil in the winter. And so I think there's some amount of remembering good, simple things of the past, you know, that the the closed carbon loop of the stuff that's above ground is better than the stuff that's below the ground. But you know, that that I feel like is just sort of a marginal improvement. And what we really need is, is massive shift. You know, I think, I also think that craft beer has the potential to, to reduce just general distributed markets, you know, that the excitement of craft beer and local food ism, and all that stuff is, is I think, gonna prove very important to reinvest in reinventing our food system to have to have less transit, but and then, you know, I guess on the on the business side, I try to have a decent scaled presence in the world. We only use cans because they're dramatically less energy for the environment, both on recycling and shipping. No, we don't have a massive walk in cooler at our packaging facility because we make beer that's really designed to have phenomenal shelf life. You know, a lot of our barrel aged sours get better with time rather than, you know, worse. And so I hope people like our beer, but I also hope people like our ethics and you know, business has to take the first step legislators are always going to be too slow.

William Forchion: 15:28

Do you ever do you have a your business has grown greatly since you started? Very well, since you started. Do you ever have any concerns about growing too big? Because you have to? You're just popularity you're shipping all over the world now and you have a presence and a following all over the world. Does that bother you? I mean, success.

Christophe Gagne: 15:55

Yeah, it kind of does. I really, I think that there's a there's a radius of shipping that I'm willing to tolerate. And then and then sort of beyond that. I think we're just gonna stop growing. At a point we were hoping to develop plans for netzero brewhouse that, essentially, I'm looking to do zero emissions or not grow the business much more, you know, because because we have to improve how we do things, not just how much we do. So, so I hoped to put a a smaller than usually possible, off grid brew house online. And then stop growing after that.

William Forchion: 16:44

Would and this is I mean, not that I want to get into your business deeply. Would it be a possibility for another hermit thrush to? So that it has a different district distribution radius, so that you share the idea? I mean, it would be very different beer because it would be based on the east, right for that location was?

Christophe Gagne: 17:06

Yeah, I've definitely studied wild yeast and other areas. You know, I don't, I don't know that I plan on starting another hermit thrush elsewhere. But, you know, given the right team and partners, I definitely consider it, you know, I do think that distributed production is ultimately you're going to give us a better quality of life with a lower atmospheric impact than centralized production with distribution, as long as we are able to realign our priorities of experience and, and assessment of life quality, to let go of some of the pithy stuff that we just sort of have done on a whim.

William Forchion: 17:49

Wow.

Christophe Gagne: 17:51

Have you? Have you gotten any common themes of wisdom in your, in your talks with others?

Unknown: 17:58

I haven't, and I guess maybe I have. It's okay to be weird. It's, uh, you know, unique is important. Following your passions, regardless of how unique and weird they are. So yeah, I guess maybe I have gotten a common theme. And maybe that's a common theme, because those are the people that inspire me, is folks who have who get to wave their freak flag high, you know, do their thing for sure, and have grown comfortable or mature enough to either tune out the naysayers, or just do their thing enough to show the naysayers that doesn't matter what they have to say. I mean, there's the I'm attracted to, I get drawn to people who just have a uniqueness about them who just are, you know, they're, they're doing their thing, and they're doing it proudly, not necessarily to be on the front page of papers. And, you know, that's that power to power. And positivity is something I want to share. And that's why I do this podcast, I want to share that with others, because I know that there are kids, and there are some older folks who have been too afraid to step into their selves, their true self and, and take a risk at being uniquely who they are. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate this. And we'll start we'll oh and by novia and this is a bit of the Billosophy podcast. If you like what you hear, please tune in for some more find out when we're dropping new podcast and remember, move forward with passion and purpose and

Christophe Gagne: 19:49

don't undervalue unique with thorough follow through. Yeah, it's all it's all possible. You just have to make it happen.

Intro Voice: 20:05

Thank you for listening to the Billosophy podcast. Keep checking in as we will be regularly releasing new episodes.