Brewmaster Q&A Series: Joel Manning, Mill St. Brewery
Brewmaster: Joel Manning
Brewery: Mill St. Brewery
Location: Toronto, ON
Notable Beers: Tankhouse Ale, Organic Lager, Cobblestone Stout
How long have you been brewing overall, and how did you start out?
It is all I have ever done as an adult! I began brewing in 1986 at the Amsterdam Brasserie and Brewpub as an assistant brewer. The company opened a second brewpub (The Rotterdam Brewing Company) in 1988 and with my boss Gord Fuller leaving a year later to go to Creemore Springs (where he is still the brewmaster) I wound up in the position of brewmaster for the Amsterdam/Rotterdam Breweries in September of 1989 at the age of 22!
That company at that time was a great learning ground and we made dozens of new beers every year and as part of the “first wave” of Ontario craft breweries we were really trailblazing and bringing styles of beer to market that hadn’t been seen in this province for a long time, if ever. That company became the Amsterdam Brewing Co. in 1994 and we began selling our beer to other bars and we stopped making the wide range of styles that we had as a brewpub. I learned a lot there about style design and brewing during the brewpub years as well as the how to achieve beer quality and consistency in the later years as a packaging microbrewery and worked as the brewmaster of the Amsterdam until 2004 when I took a year off before coming to Mill Street in 2005 where I am very settled!
I have always been very involved in the Master Brewers’ Association of Canada which is an educational trade association for brewers that goes back to 1914 and in 2003 I chaired their technical committee and in 2004 I was elected president of the MBAC–the first microbrewer ever to hold that position. I mention this because when I joined the MBAC in 1990 I was given “associate” membership because I was a brewpub brewer and some of the membership didn’t think that I should have “professional” membership since I didn’t package and the complexity of my brewery wasn’t up to big brewery standards. I was later quietly upgraded to “professional” status and the fact that I or any craft brewer eventually became president of this association shows how far us craft brewers have come in that period of time.
I am very proud to have served as president of the MBAC (and I still chair their Education Committee) but I am even more proud to go to work every day as a Canadian craft brewer.
What prompted the inception of Mill St.?
Mill Street was born out of a desire to bring craft brewing back to the east end of Toronto which used to have a really rich brewing and distilling heritage that had been lost over the years.
Organic brewing was also a precept of the company and the three founders were adamant about making an organic product when they launched the brewery in 2002. Our Original Organic Lager was the first beer that we ever made—all the rest of them have come since then.
What’s your favourite Mill St. beer produced so far?
You think that I would get used to that question, but it pains me every time! I will probably give you a different answer every time you ask as well.
Today, I would say that it is a Belgian-style tripel that we make every fall called Betelgeuse (like the star in the constellation Orion).
Betelgeuse is released around the first day of winter on tap at our brewpub in Toronto where it is brewed during a time of year when the star is near its zenith in the southern part of our night sky around midnight. I once accidentally drank a growler of it while watching the National on CBC television one night a few years ago and literally couldn’t stand up afterward—I was marooned, laughing, on my sofa for a while. That beer is magic..and 9.1% alcohol!
If you had to pick a favourite ingredient, what would it be? [hop, malt, adjunct, spice, etc..]
Biscuit malt. I strongly believe that all beer needs balance in order to be something that you will embrace over a long time. That balance can be very refined and small or absolutely massive, but it needs balance.
A solid malt palate is necessary in order to stage other flavours on top of and biscuit malt is my favourite building block. It tastes quite literally like Ovaltine and is a great bridge between a huge number of different flavours in beer making them all work together in a full-flavoured but very drinkable way.
What’s your favorite style of beer to brew?
Bamberger-style Rauchbier. We beechwood-smoke our own malt at Mill Street to make this seasonal beer (that will come out this year in February) and I just love wood-smoking malt. It’s something that I have been doing over my career since 1988.
What are your top 3 all-time favourite beers [any Country]?
Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier from Germany—whenever I am in Bamberg you will find me in their tavern there that dates from the 15th Century. It’s my favourite beer drinking room anywhere.
I once had a pint of Young’s IPA on cask at a Young’s pub in London that stopped me dead in my tracks the way that only a perfect pint of cask ale can. I still remember the beer perfectly although my memories of the rest of the day are really sketchy.
Westvleteren 12 from the Saint Sixtus Abbey in Belgium. I have a case of it at home that I paid almost $400 for. It tastes like the universe.
What are your top 3 favourite Ontario-produced beers?
I’m gonna get in trouble picking favorites here.
Other than the 35 different Mill Street beers produced this year that I have a certain penchant for…I like Neustadt Springs Brewery 10W30 (great people and outstanding beer), Paul Dickey’s brewery called Cheshire Valley made an English Mild that I had on cask last year was an outstanding session beer and Mike Hancock’s Dennison’s Brewing Co. Weizen is pretty hard to beat in its style.
From whom have you learned the most with respect to brewing?
Gord Fuller, who is now at Creemore Springs, is one of the best brewers in the country and my time spent back in the 80’s with him figuring things out from first principles was so formative I have a hard time conjuring any one person who had more of an effect on me than him.
We certainly did (and still often do!) disagree with one another on brewing matters but that’s because we both have strongly held opinions and also because he’s frequently wrong (joking!)
He’s a really good friend of mine, a smart science guy and a rock solid technical brewer who actually thinks his way through the many different facets of a technical problem (and there are a lot more of them than some brewers realize!) before moving forward—my time working with him constantly reminds me to apply both science and rigor to what I do when I brew. My default position is that the devil is in the science and god is in the art but what I learned from that guy is that the science IS the art. Understand the science and you’ll understand your art kind of thing.
Can you describe any of your future plans for the brewery?
We are expanding our main brewery to keep up with demand so that is on-going.
We will continue to develop new beers and bring them to market increasingly in bottles and cans for home-consumption in addition to our traditional draught offerings.
As we grow, more and more of our brands that we have had on tap over the years will start showing up in take-home format. We have just launched our Cobblestone Stout in a Nitro-charged can which is an example of that kind of innovation and response to demand from our consumers here at Mill Street.
Do you have any events or announcements you’d like to relay?
We are expanding our Toronto Brewpub currently and it should be open by the spring with a whole new manufacturing facet attached to it that will be core to the new expansion. Stay tuned and we’ll announce something soon!
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Mill St. releases limited edition Vanilla Porter Bierschnaps →
Mill Street Tankhouse moving to canned format →
