The brewery I visited was the Circa Brewery at 152 Lawrence street Brooklyn, NY. I called the brewery to ask if I could make an appointment and I spoke to the manager Rachael who was very helpful and kind towards me coming in. she asked if I was available to come in that same day to speak to Danny who would love to show me around.

A couple hours later I arrived, I was astonished by the look inside. It was a bar and a restaurant but with huge tanks all throughout the right side of the room. I immediately sat down at the bar just to see who and how someone would approach me. right away a young lady came to take my order as I replied that I called and was meeting Danny for a tour. She pointed to the guy on top of a tank cleaning it out and said that’s your guy come around so you can meet him.

Danny shook my hand and told me to join him on top while the finishes the tanks. I immediately told Danny that I appreciated the time he was taking out of his work day to help me. I then asked him to explain a little about himself. Danny has been working in this field for 8 years professionally and about 4 years unprofessionally making beer in his home. He loves his job and says it is a two-man job to run all the production at that location.  He then stated the steps of making beer.  Saying that what is done in today’s day is different from the methods that were once used before. He first said that the four main ingredients for making beer are Barley, Hops , water and malt . He gets the barley and malt already mixed from farmers around the united states and the globe. Barley is a very important ingredient in this process but Danny said something interesting about how barley from Germany is used in German beers but if you take barley from Canada a lot of people would never see the deference. He then explained how every tank works differently the first two were for heating the liquid which contained starch sugar and gains for about an hour to an hour and thirty minutes. Its then cooled and transferred to the smaller tanks by the entrance which at that point the yeast would be added and left alone to eat the sugar. Once it is tasted and is cleared by Danny he then adds other flavors to get a certain type of beer. I asked him about how important the farmer is in this day in age as he replied it is very important to have a middle man because in new York there isn’t a lot of room to be growing the raw ingredients yourself all the time . I also asked him about the look in the venue and if it was a safety concern. He explained to me that the owners of the brewery thought it would be cool to have the tanks in front of the clients so they can see the hard works that goes in. also, to add a certain unique look that not every bar would have. It is indeed a safety concern and a health concern to have the process take place right next to the service but he replied that if there’s no law against it then all we have to do is keep it clean.

Danny then stated that he knows that I am studying wine but that the beer process is a lot more complicated than just stepping on grapes. As he laughed he made sure to relay that message to professor Goodlad and offered to do a class tour so he can go more intodepth with the beer making process

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