CHANGE MY LOCATION
Chris Devlin
Seattle Beer Examiner
Examiner Feeds
These websites were picked by the Seattle Beer Examiner as useful resources.Seattle Examiners
Seattle Crime Examiner
Most Recent Post
UW police lawsuit reveals hidden racism of Seattle
Seattle Parenting Examiner
Most Recent Post
Top 10 kids Halloween jokes - Witches and Skeletons
Dick Cantwell Speaks at Elysian Fields
1 comment
On Tuesday night at the Elysian Fields brewpub, Elysian brewer and co-owner Dick Cantwell kicked off the Washington Homebrewers Association's Educational Speaker Program Seminar series before a crowd of fifty-odd attendees. During his speech, Cantwell gave an interesting overview of both his own brewing history and that of Elysian. Many of the details of Elysian's story can be found in Geoff Kaiser's thorough overview of the talk in his What's on Tap blog. Cantwell's personal story: he was an aspiring fiction writer for ten years in Boston before becoming a homebrewer. After only two years of homebrewing, he secured two job offers shortly after arriving in Seattle in 1988 by running around town with a mixed six pack of his best homebrew. Before opening Elysian in 1996, Cantwell brewed at Duwamp's, Pike Place Brewery and Big Time.
The best part of the evening was the Q&A portion. Cantwell is obviously excited about this year's plans for the Pumpkin Beer Fest, which includes a sour pumpkin ale, the PK-47 (a pumpkin version of the AK-47 malt liquor), an Allagash parsnip beer and the first ever pumpkin beer from Michigan's Jolly Pumpkin. Also, a sour beer Cantwell has been working on in the Tangletown basement for four years may be on tap at one of the Elysian brewpubs soon (in very limited supply).
Cantwell spoke passionately about Elysian's creative process: the brewing team brainstorms and brews new beer recipes together as a way of keeping everyone involved. He addressed the raw material supply problems that both homebrewers and commercial brewers face and stressed the need to improve communication between brewers and suppliers. Finally, he distributed recipes for the Immortal IPA and Avatar Jasmine IPA and offered a tour of the brewing facility at Elysian Fields.
Overall, it was a great evening. Thanks to WAHA for putting on a worthwhile event. I look forward to the next one in the series.
Subscribe
Feed
