Yankee Brew News Archive

Brewer's Profile:Ray McNeill

Originally Published: 07/94

By: Bill Metzger

When Ray McNeill first moved to Brattleboro, Vermont, he planned to become a concert cellist and play in New York City. Instead, he and his wife, Holiday, bought a building and opened a bar. After several years, McNeill started to work at Catamount Brewing Company, in White River Junction. Now, he owns a highly regarded brewery/tavern, McNeill's Brewery, in Brattleboro.

The 1993 Boston Brewers Festival named McNeill's Duck's Breath Bitter best beer of the fest. Celebrator Beer News listed three of his beers in their list of best tasted at the event, which included over 200 beers. Los Testigos de Cerveza also named McNeill's Brewery in its "Testigo Top Ten" beer places in the world. In addition to the numerous beers on tap every day at the tavern, several of McNeill's beers are now being bottled and distributed for off-premises consumption (see review elsewhere in this issue).

YBN: Many commercial brewers started in their homes. Is that how you began?

RM: No. I decided to become a professional brewer after being in the beer business for a number of years. I saw the writing on the wall and got into it whole hog. That's sort of my style.

YBN: You have no homebrewing experience?

RM: The homebrewing experience is a slow, ineffective, and roundabout way to learn, due to the plethora of partially correct and incorrect literature on the subject.

YBN: Are you talking about books like the Brewers Publications Classic Beer Style Series, for example?

RM: Oh sure. In point of fact, you have authors that were not professionally trained, writing books about brewing.

YBN: Is homebrew literature not good?

RM: One of the most important pieces of information on brewing came from my friend Tony Lubold, a chief of brewhouse operations. If you want to brew commercially, he said, 'Don't talk to homebrewers, don't listen to homebrewers, don't read homebrew literature.' I saw one book with a picture of someone sucking on a hose (to start a siphon). We reach these levels of insanity.

YBN: Does this mean they just don't know about commercial brewing?

RM: There's a tremendous amount of voodoo that gets around, and becomes part of literature. If something is printed and less experienced homebrewers read it, they assume it's correct and emulate or repeat that kind of misinformation. It becomes part of "pseudo"-truth.

YBN: How did you learn about brewing?

RM: In addition to working at Catamount Brewing Company, I read the standard industrial literature, Practical Brewer, Malting and Brewing Science, Modern Brewing Technology, and MBAA Technical Quarterly. There's a lot of good standard industrial brewing literature.

YBN: What do you recommend reading?

RM: People ask me all the time, 'What should I read?'. (George) Fix's "Principles of Brewing Science" is a great book, but it takes a lot to read. I think by and large Terry Foster's books are good (Brewers Publications books on Pale Ale and Porter), although I have problems on the recommended water profiles and malting temperatures.

YBN: What did you learn from Catamount?

RM: My experience at Catamount is so complex and myriad, it was beyond description for the most part. I was given numerous menial duties. Any time there wasn't a menial duty, I was expected to find one, or do some reading. On the other hand I'm incredibly observant, so I see a lot of things that others miss. Was it handed to me on a silver platter? No, I don't think so, but I have the ability to dissect complicated situations and gain knowledge. I also visited many other plants and that leads to an overall perception as to how things should be done.

YBN: How much have you learned since you started?

RM: A lot. Am I changing my opinions? At this point, slowly. It's fluctuating, but my style is essentially set.

YBN: What does Holiday do in the business?

RM: At this point in time, I'm the production manager and brewmaster and Holiday takes care of the upstairs and the paperwork. She's the engine behind the whole thing. I have less and less to do with on premise operations. I don't have anything to do with sales and delivery, and anything to do with the paperwork. And quite on the record, it's the only place I care to be. I'm happy and lucky to be in a position involved in beer production.

YBN: Do you see continued growth for craft breweries in the Northeast?

RM: Yes. The market is not saturated yet, and more and more people will jump on the bandwagon. The market will reach an saturation point and the breweries with poor beer will have no chance. A place with a great restaurant and good beer, or a great tavern with good beer, will survive. Places with mediocre beer and a mediocre restaurant are going to get flogged.

Eventually, we'll reach a point where one brewery will not be ashamed or scared of opening next to another brewery, as with any industry. At which point heads will begin to roll. If this industry begins to fade from fashion, which I don't think will happen, more heads will roll.

YBN: Which type of brewery will survive?

RM: I have to relate this to England, or Belgium. Certain breweries in Belgium take on house flavors that last. Breweries with "rank and file" type character are far more susceptible to being overtaken by a place with a better location and a better marketing package. Great beer, great food, great location, and great service are all important. You fuck up the first two and you're sunk.

YBN: Do you see your brewery triumphing over "formula" brewpubs?

RM: What we do here is very unusual in terms of the fact that we never filter. On top of that, there are just extraordinary things--on a worldwide basis--that we do. You can walk in here and taste five pale ales at once. That's unusual.

YBN: Will this change?

RM: We're trying not to. Today we have one, two, three...ten beers on tap; two are lagers.

YBN: Have you won any awards at the Great American Beer Festival?

RM: We keep walking away from the GABF empty-handed. Winning a medal there seems to be a toss of the dice. We brought some perfectly acceptable products last time. We had a barley wine that got an 8 and 9 with one judge, a very good score. Another judge gave the same beer a 3 and 7, which would have put it in the dung heap.

YBN: What is it about the GABF?

RM: I can say this without hesitation. I sent Duck's Breath Bitter to the Festival. It was brewed with Marris Otter barley, and East Kent Goldings and UK. Fuggles hops. It clearly fit the style for Traditional Bitters. Despite scoring rather well, there was no Gold Medal winner for the category. But the bronze medal winner was won by a beer hopped with CF-90, a "son of Chinook" hop that has never seen the style before. I was flabbergasted.

YBN: Is the GABF more commercial, promotional event than competition?

RM: Yes. And it boosts one's ego. But strangely, there are some people who continue to win time after time.

YBN: What about all these beer festivals in New England?

RM: There was a boycott of the Boston Brewers Festival because some brewers thought (the coordinators) were making a lot of money and they weren't getting any. My view is that if someone sees an opportunity and seizes it, then probably everyone around them gets envious. They start to get pissed off. The simple point of fact is that it's probably the best show for us, so we attended.

YBN: What about the number of beer festivals?

RM: Same situation as with how many breweries can coexist. It reaches a saturation point. If it serves our area and helps us market beer, we'll be there. Whether it survives is immaterial to me. It seems that the number of festivals has reached a saturation point.

YBN: How do you succeed in making so many different styles of beer with such high quality?

RM: I was sitting next to a German brewer once and someone asked me what was the difference between an ale and a lager. I said 'nothing', and he (the German brewer) was livid. I felt justified. I look at it with Zen-like binoculars. I've tried to learn what brewing is all about, not just how to make a particular style. The end result is that I've become adept at making all types of beer.

YBN: You are now expanding. What does that expansion consist of?

RM: We have three 15-barrel unitanks coming, all designed by me. They were done by a sheet metal fabricator in Keene, New Hampshire. I also designed an upgraded 7.5 barrel brewhouse. The most we can brew now is 5 barrels.

YBN: Is the expansion going to be enough?

RM: No, it's a band-aid, but it'll cover the bar and our current level of distribution. Now we're into this packaging thing. We're looking long and hard at a different facility for packaging.

YBN: How are sales of bottles going?

RM: They move a little different on premise than off premise. On premise, the Oatmeal Stout and Dead Horse IPA sell best. In bottles, the blond ale and the Dead Horse are selling extremely well.

YBN: What with brewing more beer and hiring more people to brew, how do you expect to maintain quality?

RM: They make mistakes. I look over their shoulders all the time. Knowing how to produce beer helps greatly. For example, a month or so ago, my chief assistant cleaned out the mash/lauter tun, pulled the false bottom and left it out. I came in the next morning at 5:30, glassy-eyed, and mashed in. Later, when I did a runoff and the wort wasn't getting any clearer, I realized the false bottom wasn't in. There it was sitting next to the mash/lauter tun.

The question is, 'What do you do?' Other brewers would have thrown the brew. I referred to what I'd learned on mash transfers. What we've got is a textbook mash transfer to a lauter tun, which happens at Anheuser-Busch every day. I moved all the mash out, washed the tun, put the false bottom back in and pumped the wort back in, a textbook mash/lauter transfer.

I've over-educated myself. Brewing is like using an 18 gear bicycle. Brown ale--I switch to gear number 3. It's just a bicycle. It doesn't matter how complicated it is, once you've learned how to use it.