California Beerzine

When I ask Denise Jones if she has any tricks up her sleeve for the Great American Beer Festival this year, she shakes her head. “No tricks, just what we have at Moylan’s. Last year we shocked the world when we won so many awards. When we won gold for Hopsickle, I became the hop queen in about 20 seconds.”

We’re sitting in the Cathedral Hill Hotel in San Francisco, a half-hour before Bruce Patton’s beer dinner featuring Moylan’s beer is scheduled to begin. I had been afraid that it would be difficult to get a brewmaster to open up and talk about her process and her career, but it’s easy to get anyone to talk about something they love. And Denise Jones clearly has a passion for brewing.

“We know we have beers that are higher quality, and they can only get better. We’re gonna make more beer this year than ever before–we’ll probably crack 4,000 barrels.”

Moylan’s, a brewpub in Novato, CA, has been around for 13 years now, but Denise has been brewing there for just under two. When I ask her what she is most proud of during her time at Moylan’s, she doesn’t even mention the gold and silver medals.

“We’ve increased the quality and the production. There’s more awareness and education among the brewers. Safety is a big concern. Maintenance and just fixing things, getting things to work more efficiently. There’s a lot more to it than just walking in and changing all the beer flavors. Other things are more important.”

Beer dinners are exactly what they sound like–various beers, in this case exclusively Moylan’s, matched with several courses of food. The dinner that night started with Dragoons Dry Irish Stout paired with a Lobster cake and Osso Buco Ravioli. A silver medal winner at GABF, Dragoons is slightly sweet and light for a stout. It is in talking about the beers for tonight that I learn the most surprising thing about Denise.

“I sent Bruce random samples of fresh beers–all my creations. I put my own brewing style into the development of these batches, but there are limits. For example, I would love to make the Irish Red at 4%, that’s what it is traditional, but I have to do it at 6.”

“You want to make beer with LESS alcohol?” I ask.

“Sure. I love brewing small beers. But Moylan’s is about big beers. People like 8%. Brenden [Moylan's owner] likes it. I did get him to agree to 5% on Dragoons, though. And more alcohol keeps them on the shelf longer.”

“Why do you think people want these super high alcohol beers?”

“I don’t know. Why do some guys need bigger engines than others?”

Indeed.

Between each course Bruce brings Denise to the front of the room to tell us about the beer we were going to drink. And each time she told us the alcohol content of the beer, someone in the back of the room cheered. So I guess she’s right about what people want.

The second course at dinner is confit leg of duck, topped with a tangy and delicious peach barbeque sauce. It’s paired with Moylan’s IPA–a bold choice. It works, but the bitterness of the IPA threatens to overwhelm some of the subtler aspects of the dish. I suspect that’s why the peach BBQ sauce tasted like such a revelation–its sweetness stood right up to the IPA. Bruce told us that he wanted to remind us of an end-of-summer barbeque.

The third and final course is dessert. I have always suspected that Bruce’s heart lies in creating desserts. They are delicious and inventive, and invariably served in the most extravagant presentation of the night. That night he topped butterscotch bread pudding with cinnamon ice cream in a tall martini glass. Even before dessert arrived, my dining companion sipped the Danny’s Irish Red served with it and exclaimed, “Cinnamon!”

By dessert, I’m usually so full and so excited to taste the dessert that I tend to ignore the beer. I’m a red fan and I’ve had it before–while the cinnamon is present, it’s not too strong. It is balanced by a malty flavor, with a light sweetness and richness to it as well.

Brenden, the owner of Moylan’s, sat at the table next to Denise, enjoying the dinner. He does seem to have found a good strategy with Moylan’s. When discussing the business of brewing, Denise said that they are always looking for “that perfect equilibrium–making beer for flavor and to sell. You don’t make money sitting on barrels, but it’s always a concern for brewers that you spend enough time with the beer. And then the price of hops and grains go up, and people complain that the beer is too expensive.” When I asked if they were going to change anything because of high hop prices, she shook her head. “We haven’t addressed that yet–haven’t changed. We still want the finest ingredients we can get our hands on. I still import malts from England, other things from Belgium.”

At the end of the interview, we see people starting to wander around with mugs of Tipperary Pale Ale, so I ask my final question, the one I’ve been sitting on: Does she ALWAYS get asked about being a woman brewer?

“Thank you for not asking!”

I laugh. “It gets old?”

“I just think about the audience. Is it a chauvinistic thing, the same bunch of old guys who assume things about me? Or is it some young lass who wants to look up to me–and that’s scary! I get these chick magazines, and it’s about girlpower. So I go that route. But with other magazines, it might be some schtick.”

“I’m not trying to please anyone anymore,” she adds. “I’ve been lucky. I brew for a living. I got hired by great people who let me feature my craft the way I want to. But I don’t have advice for anyone. My advice is to educate yourself and work hard, like for anything else. Luck is a product of timing and preparedness.”

My takeaway from talking with her is that brewing excellent beer is no different from doing anything else well. It takes passion and perseverance. Bruce Patton says at almost all of his dinners that that is his favorite time of each month–when he gets to cut lose and cook want he wants, pairing it with the beer he has such a passion for. Denise Jones does the same thing, doing what she loves, how she loves it. I’m tempted to say we should all be so lucky, but luck–well, Denise told you how to find it better than I could.