Storm Brewing

Yesterday my uncle Fred and I visited Storm Brewing ("Get it?"), a tiny, eccentric hand-built microbrewery in the bad part of town. And I do mean eccentric.

Note the rats on top of the fermenter. (They're
not real.) Representing the Black Plague Stout.

James Walton after work

Back in the 1990s James Walton decided he wanted to start a brewery. Not having much money, he decided to design and build all the equipment by hand, using materials bought from dairies and scrapyards. Without any formal training he welded everything himself, from the mash tun and fermenters to the building's boiler system. He kegs in converted soda kegs, for which some pubs have to get adapters since they're only set up for beer kegs. The whole thing cost him about $40,000 to start up ("and half of that was rent", he told me).

He had to learn everything as he did it, and there were a few leaks in his welds, but eventually he got everything working properly. "By the time I finished building it I was probably ready to start," he says.

Fred and I went in for a "tour", which was really more of a good chat. There isn't much to tour in the tiny little brewery, but it's a very cool place to be. We caught James when he was about to empty the mash tun, and he told us about how he got started while standing in the tun shoveling spent grain into a steel drum.

This mash tun is half a dairy tank, cut sideways.
The handmade boiler is behind it.

The workshop

He does most of the work himself, and that may be one reason why it looks less like your typical brewery and more like an enthusiast's workshop on a grand scale. James doesn't confine himself to beer, although that's the only thing he sells. He also makes sake and mead, and he's knowledgeable about agriculture in general - even mushroom cultivation. He builds pretty much everything he needs in-house, including the hand-welded taps that he sends to the pubs that pour his brews.

He gave Fred and me each a cup of his excellent Hurricane IPA (having already poured one for himself) from a very cool industrial-looking tap system set up in the storage area (no photos of that one, unfortunately). And he was very forthcoming about what went into it, from the particular BC-sourced (Gambrinus) malts and hops, to the particular yeast that gives the beer such a unique character.

I've already described Hurricane IPA (and its tremendous underrating on Ratebeer) in the last post, but I have to keep raving about it. I'm dying to try the Black Plague stout - we'd probably have been offered some, but we caught James at the end of the day, shortly before he was planning to go snowboarding.

It's a shame that it's so hard to find Storm's brews - they're only in a handful of bars and restaurants around the city, and he doesn't package them - but their rarity is just another aspect of James's character. He acknowledges that the demand is there, but he has no desire to expand beyond his current setup. Expansion means investors, and investors mean doing what other people want. Right now Storm has its steady customers, and as the sole owner James has the freedom to do what he likes. And it's a system that works: great beer, no compromises. I'll be coming back.

These barrels are for their cherry lambic, which
James was making long before they were cool.

Not your typical brewery.

The heart of the operation.