November: who doesn't like Confucius?

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
― Confucius

Confucious had it almost right (if you ask him about wisdom I'm guessing he'd say I'm taking the 'easiest' route).  But to the point, choosing a job you love is only half the battle. Put it this way, if you're job was to drink beer (delicous craft beer, not that light lager business, no one loves that) every day (or only on days you wanted to) it would be pretty amazing, right?  Sure, but what if you had to do it alongside a grumpy co-worker (co-drinker) or worse, all by your lonesome?  It would still be great!...for a while.  But there would come a day in your life (like 30 years in?) where you just didn't want to talk to that grumpy co-worker anymore, or in the lonesome instance a point where you just wanted to talk to a co-worker, grumpy or otherwise, and it would kind of feel like working. 

So I would modify the words of Confucius just a bit:  
"Choose a job you love, do it with your closest friends, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
-Confucius, with a little help from his friends

I brew almost every week, and as many of my previous blog posts suggest, I love to brew.  But as the realities of opening a brewery turned towards doing research on legal documents, licenses, locations, cost analysis, etc and the purpose of brewing became more of finding a beer list for the brewery than creating the most ridiculous beer we could think of, or just something we wanted to drink, I oftentimes felt like I was working.  Luckily, last weekend, I was reminded why I started down this path in the first place.


Last weekend I had the privedge of finally visiting Clemente in Los Angeles.  As most of you know, Clemente and I started brewing together and continued to do so until he moved to LA, almost two years ago exactly. Even though he is across the country he is very much an essential part of the brewing process as we spend our 'free' time constructing recipes together via gchat.  We also have recently started bi-(more lile tri or quad) weekly skype sessions to stay on top of the aforementioned research.  But even though we talk recipes and skype, at the end of the day I am the one brewing by myself on Sunday afternoons watching the Giants beat their previous weeks' record low rushing yardage, and it recently started to feel like work...until last week.

While visiting Clemente and Ila, ironically not brewing but at a Passion Pit concert at the Greek (amazing show), I had the thought: "oh yeah! THIS is why I love brewing and why I want to do it for a living."  In my head 'THIS' was many things all at once.  First and foremost it was spending time with great people.  Clemente and I have a great time brewing and doing anything else (especially while listening to Passion Pit, but that was a bonus, not a necessity). But on top of that it was looking around and seeing tons of people having a great time.  And for better or worst, most of those people had a beer in hand! (or wine decanters, but you can't win 'em all). I said it in my very first post and it still is true (whether or not I forget it because I focus on the wrong things), people enjoy drinking good beer and I enjoy providing it.  I was reminded not to lose sight of why I want to brew, and why I am going to love owning a brewery. Jon Taffer would probably take this opportunity to slap me across the face, but before he does I would like to retort that I am still fully aware of the business side of things.  I just have to remember to not lose sight of why I started down this road in the first place.

So as we continue this process of creating Otium I will continue to remind myself that Confucius was right (or half right)

This post was brought to you by the character '()' (parentheses)

October Update

My oh my does time fly.  It is time for the October monthly update!

What's brewing?

As fall approaches, or is upon us, so does my favorite season for seasonal beers.  Of all the seasonal beers out there it is hard to beat a spiced pumpkin ale.  A great spiced pumpkin ale to me is heavy on the pumpkin, light on the spiced, and just right on the ale.  Clemente recently told me that pumpkin doesn't really have a lot of flavor and that most people associate the pumpkin pie spices with the flavor of pumpkin.  My response? 'Nonsense, I'll just add TWO pumpkins!'

I have tried making several variations of spiced pumpkin ales, but none have lived up to the first one I made two years ago.  So this time around, I planned to replicate the all-grain version of that extract recipe.  I prefer a nice ale that is not overwhelmed by the spices.  There should be a nice aroma that invokes all the nostalgia you could ever hope for and then fades to the background so you can enjoy the flavors of the beer. Last year I tried several variations of pumpkin ales using the spices from the ChaiPA, but all of those were too overwhelming. So this time I went back to a minimal blend of cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg.  We'll see how it turns out, just in time for Halloween!

What's new with Otium?

The braintrust has begun bi-weekly Skype meetings. Right now we are in the information gathering stage to best make a decision on the location of the brewery.  Right now MA, NJ, and NY are all viable options.  We have done some market research that has been very informative and are now looking into the different legal implications of opening in each state.  Every state has very different laws about how much you can make, where you can sell it, and what you can sell inside the brewery.  Because we are going to start out as a very small brewery, these small differences can have a large impact on whether or not the brewery is successful.  It is very important that all the necessary information is gathered before an educated decision can be made about where the brewery ends up.

Stay tuned for the next update and keep drinking craft beer. You deserve it.

Otium Brewery

When I started this blog, my 'dream' was to open a brew pub.  A series of brainstorms, reality checks, and other such events has changed the vision.  The new dream?: a standalone nano-brewery, Otium Brewery, to be precise.

What is Otium Brewery? When will it open? How big is it?  Where is it?  Why the name 'Otium', and more importantly, what the heck does 'Otium' even mean?

Those are all good questions that I will attempt to answer now.  So go grab a beer, sit back, relax, and listen to the story of how Otium came to be...

Those of you who know me already knew, some of you discovered when I started writing this blog, and the rest of you will learn by the end of this sentence, that I have been homebrewing with my brew partner Chris for 4 years now and have made well over 50 batches of beer (all of which you can read about in previous posts).  This is not a story of Chris and me or the homebrewing, however, this is a story of Otium Brewery.

The Idea
Chris and I decided 2 summers ago that we wanted to brew for a living.  A thought that almost every homebrewer has at least once in their life.  Being the financially responsible man that I am, I knew that the best way to accomplish that goal while making enough money to get by would be to open our own establishment.   At about the same time, a phenomenal show by the name of 'Bar Rescue' aired.  Watching the show, I had the obvious thought that "Clearly, if these people with apparently no knowledge of the bar business, or any common sense at all, can open a bar (albeit a failing bar) and turn it around, then I undoubtedly would be successful." The plan was to open a brewpub.

We set out on the research and discovered that opening a brew pub is a costly endeavor (I know, I was as surprised as you are).  $250-500K would get you on your way, but considering I had just started my first job out of college and Chris had just departed to CA to pursue a writing/directing career, we didn't have close to that amount of money (and still don't, but let's use the newly employed excuse anyway).  With that, we knew we had to take a more practical approach.  What could we do that would require the least amount of money, but still accomplish the lifelong (6 months long, same difference) goal of brewing for a living.  The answer, open a small scale nano-brewery!!

The Plan
After some more researching, we decided that the ideal size for what we were trying to accomplish with the least amount of risk/seed money involved, would be a 7bbl system.  A 7bbl system will produce 14 kegs of beer for each batch.  Your standard micro-brewery usually runs a 15 - 50 bbl system, and larger scale breweries can have 120bbl systems or larger. The small size of the system is part of the reason the brewery is called a nano-brewery, but in actuality it is the total annual production that classifies a brewery's size for federal/state regulation purposes.  That is why we won't have to pay the same license fees that Anheuser-Busch pays.

A nano-brewery comes with its pitfalls.  The amount of time/labor that goes into a batch of beer is relatively equal no matter how large the batch, so it's going to be a lot of work for a relatively small amount of beer.  Considering the fact you can only sell as much beer as you make profits will not be huge in its early goings.  Because of this, the plan will be to 'not quit my day job' and brew late at night.  My roommates have already pointed out: "so that will be exactly like what you do now then."  This point alone is the reason I am not terribly worried about the fact that I will have to spend a couple (or several) late nights a week making a little money doing what I would otherwise be doing in my leisure time anyway.  Which is a good segue into what the name 'Otium' means/represents.

The Origins of 'Otium'
The first thing we needed to do to make the brewery real was to name it.  I mean, once it has a name it's half way to being real, right?  True or not, that is what we set out to do, name the brewery.

Brewery naming is a difficult process.  A lot of ideas were thrown around.  A lot of themes were considered.  Chris' girlfriend, Ila, produced a laundry list of possible names that I think she just had lying around in case someone ever asked her for brewery name suggestions.  Near the bottom of that list, amongst several random latin words, was 'Otium'.  I liked the word, no clue what it meant, but it sounded cool, was short and sweet, and just felt right.  So I googled it and came across the wikipedia page on 'Otium'.  The thing that stood out was a phrase "otium cum dignitate," literally 'leisure with dignity,' which is the idea that leisure time should be spent productively: reading, studying, spending time with family, and bettering yourself and the world. It was perfect because that is exactly what brewing is for me.  I spend my time brewing because I enjoy creating something that everyone can enjoy, that's how I spend my leisure with dignity.

Who is Otium?
At its current stages, Otium has a core braintrust: myself (the brewer), Chris (the idea man), and my sister Stephanie (the accountant).  We are very excited for what the future holds.

What next?
If having a name, a recipe list pages long, a box of tasting glasses, an executive board, a twitter account, a facebook page, a website, and a company e-mail address make you a working brewery, well then we are a working brewery.  If it doesn't, and I have a feeling it might not, then there is a lot more work to be done. A lot more work that we are excited to get to do.

The timeline for opening is in the order of years, but I will continue to give monthly updates on the progress of the brewery, no matter how large or small.

If you have finished reading this you are probably done with that beer, so go grab another one.  You earned it!


"Drink Otium - Because leisure is a choice."

It's been a while...

So it turns out keeping up a regular posting schedule is harder than it seems.  Although I haven't posted in well over a year, that is not to say I stopped brewing.  Quite the opposite is true, in fact.

Since my last post in April of 2012, I have brewed 31 batches of beer:

Blonde*

IPA2

Double IPA*

Raspberry Wheat*

Brown Ale*

Pineapple Wheat*

IPA3*

Clam Stout*

Chai-P-A*

Clam Stout

Pumpkin

Pumpkin 2

Blonde

Chocolate Vanilla Stout

Pumpkin 3

Espresso Porter

Maple Christmas Ale

Chocolate Peppermint Stout

Crimson Imperial IPA

Otium150

Maple Bock

Pineapple Wheat

Blonde

Black IPA

IPA4

Rye Pale Ale

Chai-P-A

Mango Imperial IPA

Belgian Citrus IPA

Clam Stout

Black IPA

* served at the Otium tasting in August 2013 (What's Otium? I'll explain in my next post)

That's about a beer every two weeks, but it's more like 6 straight weeks and then a month off, then 4 in a row, then 6 weeks, ... you get the idea.

I also started kegging, almost exactly a year ago.  I have a dual-tap kegerator and 4 kegs that are all full 90% of the time.  There are, pretty regularly, two beers on tap at any one time, making my apartment my primary source of beer for consumption.

In short, I am still brewing, more frequently than when I last posted, and I have big plans for the future that I will explain in future posts.  It is incredibly difficult to post every time I brew, or even close to as frequently.   But I promise you this, I will do my best to post at least once a month with updates.  On (or close to) the 1st, to be precise.  So stay tuned.