Sharon Vanorny
Overseeing the mob: Brewers Andrew Gierczak, Henry Schwartz and Giotto Troia.
Andrew Gierczak, Henry Schwartz and Giotto Troia hold these truths to be self-evident, that all beer recipes are created equal, that they are endowed by their creators with certain unalienable charms, that among these are juniper, durian and carrot cake. That to produce these recipes, a crowdsourced brewery should be created, deriving its power to bottle whackadoo brews from the consent of the voters.
A little over two years ago, Madison learned what a crowdsourced American craft brewery would look like: three 24-year-olds making chocolate banana stout and blood orange green tea hefeweizen on the equipment of a veteran brewer twice their age. Friends Gierczak, a former brewer with Leinenkugel, and Schwartz and Troia, both savvy marketers and entrepreneurs, are the founders of MobCraft Beer, widely considered to be the first crowdsourced brewery.
Other, bigger, breweries have thrown a bone to homebrewers, fans and outside brewers before with such competitions as Sierra Nevada’s Beer Camp and Anheuser Busch’s Project 12. But MobCraft used an unprecedented open submission process to determine nearly every beer in the brewery’s lineup, and it’s been chugging along ever since.
Now, with 56 beers listed on RateBeer (where MobCraft ranked as the best new brewer in Wisconsin in 2014), MobCraft is almost ready to take the next step it promised way back in 2013. It will move its operations from House of Brews in Madison to open a brewery and taproom in the Walker’s Point neighborhood of Milwaukee.
MobCraft was shooting to open its doors in Milwaukee by 2015, but it doesn’t appear that will happen. The new timeline? “2016!” Schwartz says with a laugh. “That’s about as close to a timeline as we can realistically give right now.”
“Some things are moving faster than others,” he adds. “We’ve got construction [documents] assembled and submitted to the city to get building permits, but we are still in the process of wrapping up financing.”
Team MobCraft wants to offer food, but state regulations are tricky. The Milwaukee beer scene is still coming to grips with Wisconsin’s statutes that prohibit residents from simultaneously holding a restaurant and brewing license; they also prevent a brewer like MobCraft from having a secondary restaurateur with his or her own Class B liquor license operate within their taproom.
“We will have food,” Schwartz says. “It’s just a question of how it all comes together legally.”
As MobCraft’s aesthetic has matured, so has its beer offerings. Barrel-aging has crept into the lineup with mezcal barrels (Cervezarita), brandy (Old Fashioned Berliner Weiss) and bourbon barrels (Noctis and Petrichor). The new brewery will have approximately 2,000 square feet of walled-off aging space, though indications are that this will be the home of MobCraft’s growing stable of sour beers.
“We will have an entire dedicated sour facility within our brewery that will be completely separate from the rest of the brewery, enclosed and with separate air handling and venting,” says Gierczak. For those beer fans who share many brewers’ fears of bacterial infection in non-sour beers, rest assured Gierczak is aware of the dangers.
“I am currently working on a plant cleaning/sanitation regimen for the new brewery that aims to mitigate the effect of sour bacteria in the brewery,” he says. Schwartz anticipates acquiring some foeders, the large wooden tanks used for inoculating and aging sour and funky beers, once the new space settles into its groove.
Perhaps the biggest change with MobCraft’s move is losing the day-to-day presence of House of Brews owner Page Buchanan. “Being an entrepreneur is very fun and stressful,” says Schwartz. “There’s no guideline for how to do it right.”
“Page has been a great mentor to us over the years, and it will be sad to part ways,” he adds. “But with all the new beers he is producing...we are really starting to step on toes.”
Gierczak echoes those thoughts. “We are sharing a brewery with another brewery,” he says. “And both breweries are trying to grow and expand and make more beer. We get in each other’s way a lot.”
Earlier this summer, Schwartz and Buchanan shared some classic stories about MobCraft’s hacker-meets-mad-scientist work ethic. Like the time MobCraft worked on its first ghost pepper beer.
“We had our food processor, from home, and we put a quarter pound of ghost chilies in this beer — and like we do all of our adjuncts, it’s steeping a tea and adding it in there,” Schwartz recalled. “So we just threw the food-processed ghost chilies into this just-a-little-cooler-than-boiling water, and just, boooom. An instant plume, and everybody’s, like, coughing and crying, and Page is like, ‘You stupid MobCraft guys! Do your stupid shit at home!’”
“It dissipated quickly, though,” Schwartz added.
“There was some cussing on my part,” Buchanan acknowledged. “Some coughing.”
“That was only, like, six months in, though,” said Schwartz. “And just about a year later, we did it with the durian fruit, and then it was just a stink bomb.”
With these kinds of mishaps, you’d think Buchanan would be eager to show MobCraft the door. But MobCraft will continue to produce some of its beers at House of Brews while its new facility is getting up to speed. “Page is going to allow us to continue brewing our monthly crowd batch at his facility,” Schwartz says, referring to the beers that go out to pre-ordering customers whenever new recipes are selected. “We’ll brew around [at other facilities] here and there to keep our flagships on the shelves.”
Schwartz says other brewers have been extremely “kind” to them. Wisconsin Brewing Company’s Kirby Nelson and Mike McGuire looked over their plans for the Milwaukee brewery, pointing out potential issues. Others even offered to help stock the new place.
“Karben4, when they upsized equipment, they’re like, ‘You want us to hold onto this [old equipment] for you for a couple years? When you need it?’ Suuure!”
Because of its reliance on the public to generate recipes, MobCraft’s beers are usually lightning rods for criticism; there are almost always vocal devotees and detractors for each release on Untappd. But the guys are so earnest and devoid of bullshittery that they can’t help but make friends in the broader Wisconsin brewing scene.
This upcoming move to Walker’s Point doesn’t mean MobCraft will be gone from Madison, says Schwartz: “We’re still just a five-person team, and we get around.”
