It was a grey, chilly Saturday afternoon as I wandered down the block in
Old Roseville towards the railroad tracks. On this particular day, I am heading
into The Boxing Donkey to meet up with Jason Mouzakis and Kyle Virtue, two
local brewers/brewing enthusiasts who have been tapped to brew the Boxing
Donkey’s Donkey Brew, which is their home brew option on their tap selection.
The Donkey Brew rotates the style of beer on the tap, but Jason and Kyle have
been the ones on that tap quite a bit, much to the enjoyments of many patrons.
Including yours truly.
On this particular day, I wander through the bar and out back to the
patio where these two guys have their stuff all set up across their own corner
of the back patio. They have a massive metal pot set up on a burner hooked up
to a propane tank, along with a big orange tub propped up on a table behind it.
There is an array of grains, hops, yeast cultures, measuring tubes, and
everything else displayed on the bar top behind it.
Kyle is a slender man of few words, with a stern focused look on his face
as he is milling about prepping everything around him. Jason emerges from the
back of the bar through the side gate, his stocky frame adorned with dusty
clothes from grinding grains. His beard even has a vague halo of the white duty
stuff. If you look closely at Kyle’s short, blonde hair, there is even the same
layer of dust. Pointing it out coaxes a hearty laugh out of both of them as
Kyle flings it out of his head. Jason brushes it off of his shirt, but shrugs
after its apparent it’ll take a lot more than that to get his clothes clean of
it.
Nobody can say they don’t get their hands dirty, that’s for sure.
Kyle gets the pot on top of the
burner, and carefully gets it lit with a gaseous pop-and-whoosh that always
makes you jump back a little bit, no matter what. In the pot is a lovely dark brown mix of what will become an ESB, short for Extra Special Bitter, as the end product. Since
they have started over a year ago, they have made several different styles of
beer like a Scottish Wee Heavy, Smoked Porter, and Pale Ale to name a few.
As it sits on the burner, Jason
and Kyle sit down with me for a chat at the bar stools arranged around their
brewing set up. Warm air wafts over our direction from the now slightly boiling
pot, giving the air a slight smell of warm bread.
The first thing on my mind was
how they got started in general, and Kyle had an interesting answer for me,
“I started making soda…you know,
ginger beer, lemon lime, vanilla…I started making it at home, in single
batches, a couple of gallon at a time.” He went on to add that he started that
when he was 16, as he got closer to 21 he began to brew beer through what he
learned on the internet over time while at home.
Jason also had an interesting
start in this whole process. He explains,
“Well, I decided I was going to be friends with Kyle one day [in 2010],
because he was working at the comic shop [A-1 Comics]…and we were having a
kickback one night and Kyle was like, ‘I got all this beer I need to get rid
of’ (laughs).”
Kyle also interjects with a
smile,
“I
had about 30+ gallons of beer, all in bottles, at the time…”
Jason laughs and goes on to add,
“It was just sitting in his
room! So we went to his house, and we picked it all up. Just boxes and boxes of
beer…So we brought it over to the house [Jason’s] and it was amazing. The best
beer I’ve ever had.”
Fast forward to late 2015, and
Jason is set to get married, when the subject of beer comes up again,
“I just said, ‘Kyle lets brew
some beer’, and we brewed it all out in my front yard.”
After getting all the necessary
equipment, they brewed up a smoked porter and an IPA that wet over very well
with the guests. And ever since then, they were off brewing beer on their own,
fine tuning recipes that Kyle had cultivated over time with, according to him,
“A lot of trial and error, and
lots of mistakes in the learning process.”
With that simple sentence he walks
over to the freshly boiling pot, gives it a stir with their thermometer, checks
it and walks back to join our conversation. Jason then fills me in on how they
got started,
“We were out here [at The Boxing
Donkey], and we met Mike [Reese, chef at the Boxing Donkey] one night and just
started chatting. Then, one day, he comes up to me and tells us, ‘Our brewer
bounced and went to Washington. So do you guys want to brew for us?’…We were
like ‘Uhh…sure!’…so we talked to Joe [the owner of The Boxing Donkey] he gave
us the rundown, and we brewed. Fast forward a year, we’ve brewed about 7
different styles of beer now.”
Changing gears, we begin to go
over what makes their process different from similar smaller brewing set ups, like
home brewing for example. Kyle simply points to the boiling pot and explains
that they use an all grain process, much like a lot of larger scale breweries
use. He goes a bit further by adding,
“Picking our own grains gives us
a wider ranges of flavor to work with, as opposed to using extracts and stuff
home brewers tend to use.”
This commitment to both
consistency and quality is what sets their beers apart, time and time again.
And the sales speak for themselves. They have been brewing here more and more as
their beers continue to sell very well. They also have begun a bit of an expansion
with The Boxing Donkey. Jason explains,
“We [the bar and them] did
recently acquire a second freezer, because we were talking about…how we want to
do two different styles of beer, in order to keep the bar stacked up, but at
the moment, the bar only has one Donkey Brew tap. However, every beer we have
made has sold out…even people who aren’t beer people say that it’s good. And
even people who are beer people are like, ‘Wow, this is really good.’”
Making good beer like this has definitely
made me curious in the process, and I ask them what they enjoy about brewing
like this so much. Kyle responds, simply,
“It’s fun when you create
something that’s drinkable…and something that people enjoy, that’s nice too.”
Jason gives me a two-fold answer
with,
“I like the science of it, I
like working with my hands…Kyle I’m pretty sure feels the same way [Kyle nods]…I
also like the historical aspect is kind of neat too, because you inadvertently
learn how other countries do it, you know, and how long they’ve been brewing
beer, and stuff like that.”
As Kyle rinses out their orange
jug in the background, Jason leans over and turns off the burner. Kyle and him
give each other a short look, a brief head nod, and continue about their usual
routine. They have an obvious synergy that shows that they are in tune with
their own process on the same level. Being friends also helps.
Jason go on to add as he picks
up the thermometer out of habit,
“Joe, the owner, has been really
supportive, and he always says that if we need something to keep brewing, just
let him know, and it’s been really cool.”
With a partnership like this
between both the brewers and the bar itself, it’s no wonder that when Jason and
Kyle load up the Donkey Brew tap, the beer will be drank.
Or drunk.
Either way, It’s a definite win-win.
