Garrett Oliver didn’t fall in love with beer at first taste, but when he did, he fell hard. It happened in London, where the native of Hollis, Queens, moved to pursue a career as a filmmaker after graduating from Boston University with a degree in broadcasting and film. When he wasn’t working his job as a stage manager for rock bands, he was indulging in a time-honored English pastime – going to the pub with his mates.
It was there Oliver discovered beer as something more than the flavorless industrial brews he’d drunk in college.
“In England the beer was something to be paid attention to,” he says. “It was interesting and complex and layered.”
When he returned to the States after a few months, he found there was nothing for him to drink. That’s when a friend bought him a home-brewing kit and told him to “stop whining.”
So started a passion that soon turned into a profession. Oliver, 45, is now one of the most sought-after beer experts in the country, and hosts tastings around the globe. He’s also written “The Brewmaster’s Table,” a how-to guide on “pairing real beer with real food.”
His primary gig, though, is as the brewmaster at the Brooklyn Brewery in Williamsburg, where every year he turns out over a dozen varieties that will end up in pint glasses across the city and beyond.
How did you transition from a hobbyist to a brewmaster?
For a while, I was still making films on the side, but slowly and surely, beer took my life over. I went to work in 1989 for the Manhattan Brewing Company in SoHo. The head brewer there was from the Samuel Smith brewery in England, and I became his apprentice. Then he moved to California, and I took over as head brewer for a year and half, then moved to Brooklyn Brewery at the end of ’94. At the time, there were only two Brooklyn beers, the lager and the brown ale.
What did you learn as an apprentice?
I was learning the professional side of being a brewer. I knew the basic principles, but the difference is very much like, “I’m a very good home cook, I’ve cooked for Michelin-starred chefs, but I can only do it for six or eight people.” There’s a big difference between being a cook and being a chef.
So it really was learning how a brewery operates, and how to keep consistency on a day-to-day basis, and then over time becoming more creative – learning how to put more and more different types of ingredients together and gain the knowledge that allows me to do what we do here, which is to gather influences from all over the world.
What types of ingredients are you talking about?
Well beer is traditionally made from four ingredients: barley malt, yeast, hops and water. Barley malt is varietal, and it can also be caramelized and roasted, etc. There may be 20 or 30 different types to work with. Then you have all the hops that have very different flavors and aromas and levels of bitterness. So that’s your range of spices, if you like. Then there are things like actual spices and fruits, and there are thousands of yeast strains that each produce different flavors and aromas. There are so many variables that you can create a wide range of types just out of the traditional ingredients.
What are your primary responsibilities as brewmaster?
Basically I’m responsible for the liquid. It’s pretty much that simple. I’m responsible for all the beer from start to finish, from the time I come up with the concept ’til someone’s glass is empty. There are parts of that process that are very creative, there are parts that are scientific, parts that are engineering. So it means you don’t have any boring days, and most of them are really busy. My biggest fear when this changed from a hobby to a job was, am I going to ruin this for myself? But it’s been quite the opposite. It’s really interesting, and it has that extra edge to it because it really matters. You’re putting the beer in front of thousands and even millions of people.
How do you decide what you want to brew?
We start with an idea, drawn from memory or things you’ve tasted or an idea you have. You kind of create the beer in your head first. Then the question is, how do I make that happen? You draw in your ingredients, and you think about what techniques are going to bring about your vision.
That’s why for me, mentally it’s almost exactly like filmmaking. It uses both halves of your brain, and I think of it this way: If you have lots of technical skill, you can make a film and when the cars blow up it looks real, it’s crisp and the sound is great. But if you don’t know character development, and you haven’t worked hard on your script, then you end up with a film that looks great, but that you forget as soon as you leave the theater.
Then you might watch a student film where the dialogue’s terrific and whatever else, but the technical skill isn’t there to put it on the screen. What you really need in film and in making beer is the technical ability tied together with the passion and creativity.
Did you have a natural talent for tasting beer?
I think it’s more that I’ve fine-tuned my palate. Most people actually have really good taste. They may not be able to put their finger on a particular flavor or aroma, but that doesn’t mean they don’t know good stuff when they get their hands on it.