By the end of the 2013 calendar year the Saugatuck Brewing Company will have created well over 4,000 barrels of craft beer.
That beer will be sold to restaurants, purchased by consumers at grocery stores and enjoyed by thousands of people at the brewery's Lucky Stone Pub located on Blue Star Highway in Douglas.
But another 150 barrels of locally produced ale, porter, stout, and other varieties of beer will also have been made at the brewery, not a drop of which will be seen or tasted by the general public.
Though we'd all like to believe head brewer Dexter Gauntlett has a side project running a top secret fermentation lab aimed at discovering the future of beer the reality is actually a great deal more inviting. Saugatuck Brewing Company runs the state's only brew-on-premises program where inquisitive and thirsty craft beer drinkers can create their own personal brand of beer.
"Our philosophy is, the more our customers know about our beer craft the better craft beer drinkers they'll become," Gauntlett says.
To Gauntlett and the rest of the Saugatuck Brewing Company staff, inviting customers into the brew house and putting them to work is as much about creating informed beer drinkers as it is about creating good beer.
"It's an education experience. It takes about four hours to do the brewing and the customer comes back in approximately three weeks to bottle the beer. It's cold, carbonated, and ready to drink at that time," Gauntlett says.
The program, which has been active since the brewery opened in 2005, has accounted for more than 2,500 batches of beer, made in five small kettles, which just happen to be the brewery's original commercial equipment.
"It started out in our first facility (on Enterprise Drive). When we expanded to our new location we kept our old equipment and we enlarged our primary system up to a ten barrel," Gauntlett says.
As the brewery's primary facility expanded, so too did its ability to help those attempting to learn the tricks of the trade.
And at least two of those novice beer makers have gone on to become local brewery owners themselves.
Brian Steele and Dan Gilligan, co-owners of Kalamazoo's Boaytyard Brewing Company, originally fine tuned their passion for craft beer by brewing small batches under Gauntlett's tutelage nearly ten years ago.
"Dan and I did it two or three times. After about four years of doing that we knew enough where we could sit down and ask if we could do this ourselves," Steele says.
Of course the Boatyard guys are the exception to the rule, as the majority of customers Gauntlett entertains aren't interested in starting their own business so much as just starting a single batch of delicious beer.
"That's kind of a unique situation with those guys," Gauntlett says. "They were avid beer guys to begin with, I guess. They are the only people I know that have started their own brewery after brewing with us."
Gauntlett says that his primary clientele for the program is folks on vacation seeking a fun afternoon and corporate groups aiming for an outside the box approach to team building.
"I do a lot of corporate events and team building things with companies like Kellogg or Whirlpool. We do events where people will come in with their employees and brew beer. I can do up to five kettles, doing five different beers. We usually break the teams into smaller groups, maybe five or six people per kettle and have them think about what kind of recipe they want to develop," Gauntlett says.
SBC can help create about any recipe the amateur brewers can think of, or Gauntlett is happy to offer up one of his go-to styles if the client isn't sure exactly what to make.
Gauntlett says he's routinely surprised by how well the batches turn out. He's even served some of the very best brew on premises beers in the pub.
"Our serrano pepper beer, for example, was inspired by a friend of mine actually," Gauntlett says. "We now produce it and bottle it as one of our Brewer's Reserve Series beers."
But more often than not, folks, whether they be casual vacationers or corporate bigwigs are just happy to leave the brewery carrying five or six cases of really good beer. Beer that they made themselves.
"I won't let anybody leave with anything they don't like," Gauntlett says. "If they are expecting something different or are truly disappointed, I'll take their beer and I'll make them a new batch."
Depending on when you book the brewery, the program can cost up to $300 with the initial brewing process taking place over the course of an afternoon and the final product being ready for bottling and consumption within three weeks.
"You need about three or four weeks advance notice to get in and I don't see it slowing down. We do it seven days per week by appointment," Gauntlett says. "It's a good promotional tool for our brewing company and our restaurant."
For more information on Saugatuck Brewing Company or to book a time to brew please visit their website.
Jeremy Martin is the craft beer writer for Southwest Michigan's Second Wave.
Photos courtesy Saugatuck Brewing Company.
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