What does it take to get a cold beer around here?
If that’s what Alan Dritenbas and Mike Malone asked themselves when they signed the lease for their new Walking Tree Brewery, the answer is two long years – almost to the day.
Last Thursday at 3 p.m., the tap was pulled for the first beer sold in the first commercial-scale brewery in the county. With a 20-barrel brewhouse and five fermenters – two 20 barrel and three 40 barrel – the facility can start distributing to restaurants and bars within a month, and with luck, could be canning within a year.
The former Navy warehouse, which once stored airplane parts, has been meticulously and creatively converted into an industrial-chic tasting room and brewery.
Though the pair has been experimenting with small 10-gallon batches for years, scaling it up to 600 gallons involves not only math but science, Dritenbas says. While Malone focuses on the beer, he is working on various certifications on the tasting end, including as a cicerone, what he describes as “beer’s equivalent to a wine sommelier.”
“It’s a rabbit hole,” says Dritenbas. “There’s so much to learn. But we’ve got a lifetime to learn it.”
As guests ranging from curious neighbors to close family and friends streamed through the bar’s two entry points, servers fended off queries as to just where to find the two men of the hour.
“We were doing a knockout,” Dritenbas explained, after he headed back into the tasting room from the production zone. “That’s where you chill the beer after it’s been boiled and send it into the fermenter. It’s the most dangerous part of brewing – not for us, but for contamination. Everything has to be perfect, so it’s a little stressful.”
Not nearly as stressful, however, as the many months of permitting that preceded the project’s start and continues today regarding serving food at the brewery.
Malone and Dritenbas envisioned having food trucks at the brewery, but then heard from the health department that food trucks can’t operate in the city except for special occasions. “They said we can have them up to 18 times a year, but I feel we ought to be able to have them whenever we want. We’re still working on that.”
Worst case scenario, he says, they may have to be licensed as a restaurant.
They have not yet signed with a distributor, a requisite step to get their beers in other bars. And they’re waiting for parts to be able to fill growlers, the take-home glass jugs that craft beer aficionados tote around like old-timey luggage.
One last detail, apparently overlooked by the health department’s inspection until it was giving its final approval: The brewery has to screen all its doors, no small effort considering the huge openings.
“That’s OK. It’ll keep zika out,” jokes Dritenbas, referring to the mosquitoborne virus. “We had to special order the doors – they weren’t cheap. We showed the health department the receipts and they were OK with that for now, but it’s going to be another month or so.”
While screens may stop mosquitos and flies, they will also stop air flow. Until the tasting room is fully enclosed, it has no air conditioning.
“We call it the wind tunnel,” says Dritenbas, referring to a battery of fans placed around the interior.
Two rooms do have air conditioning, though not everyone had discovered them last week: a small space beyond the bar games area, and the restrooms. “We expect to find bar stools in there some day,” Dritenbas says.
This summer, and probably through fall, the baking afternoon heat is certain to spike the thirst of customers and the brewery plans to be open seven days a week. Walking Tree Brewery is a block south of Aviation Boulevard, off Piper Drive, at 3209 Dodger Road. A grand opening celebration is planned for Saturday July 16 starting at 2 p.m.
