Weekly Brew: An interview with a local brewer

This week I'm taking a break from my regular writing to bring you an interview with "Uncle" Frank Fermino, the head brewer at John Harvard's Brew House in Manchester, CT. Aside from being one of the nicest guys in the world, Frank is a smart, knowledgeable and masterful brewer, and it clearly shows in his beers. In front of me I have the current John Harvard's sampler (all of which are great, by the way) as I probe Frank for a little information.

The Daily Campus: So, what beers do you have on tap right now?

Frank Fermino: What I call the Party Pils, which is a partigyle style pilsner. Our blueberry, which is roughly a light ale made with a touch of wheat. I don't make fruit beers very often, but when I do I always use a little wheat malt, which allows the fruit flavor to come through. I use natural fruit, this time we went with 30 pounds of Maine blueberries. Then we have our Hugh Hefeweizen, a little play on the Hugh Hefner name, which has become a house classic. We have our John Harvard's Pale that's our standard pale ale, which is always on.

DC: Aside from the John Harvard's Pale Ale, how many beers do you have on tap that are John Harvard's Signature beers?

FF: Just the pale.

DC: So you have control over everything else you do?

FF: Yeah, the pale and the John Harvard Light really, but even the light I tweaked a little to my liking.

DC: If you went to any other John Harvard's, do you think you could tell the difference between your pale and the others?

FF: It will be slightly different, yeah. It's a house recipe based on a recipe by Tim Morse a long time ago, and it's ok. But some of the ingredients you can't even find anymore. So [John Harvard's] brewers have taken the liberty to modify it the best way they could, and each one will be slightly different, but basically the same pale ale.

DC: What is this beer right here?

FF: That's actually an IPA with a super light color; I was hoping to filter it to stand out and be super bright looking, but that day I couldn't filter it. And then the beer on the side there is the Mt. Rainer Red that is made with all Mt. Rainer hops. That is something I did with Dave Wollner of Willibrew; we split a box of the hops and each brewed our own version. His is slightly maltier and mine is a little drier, but I think both of them came out really good. I love doing stuff with Dave, he's awesome.

DC: Before you came here what were you doing?

FF: I used to brew for Newport Storm; I was there for little over a year. I was partner, assistant brewer, GM, anything from ordering boxes to brewing beer. In a place like that everybody wears many hats, it was three of us at the time, and we had to do everything.

That's a relatively large brewery; I've seen their beer all over.

Oh yeah, all of Rhode Island, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Connecticut. They brew about 5,000 barrels [158,000 US Gallons] a year.

It must be pretty similar working here then.

Oh yeah, I'm in charge of everything here from pricing to ordering grain to making sure everything works. Like if the refrigeration is down I'm the guy that has to make the phone call.

So you have to be almost a manager, an engineer and a brewer all at the same time?

Yeah, glorified plumber.

So how long have you been here?

I've been here since May of last year.

Was it a big transition going from the larger setup to a brewpub?

Yes and no. The system is different, but the basics are the same. I have a little more liberty to tweak things here, but some aspects are harder to control. The freedom to brew whatever I want is great, but I found it a challenge to make the same beer. If I'm brewing a porter, the next batch of porter has to be exactly this. Which is definitely harder here.

I do like to keep it mixed up. Pale, light, an IPA due to customer demand, and something else. A wheat beer, something hoppy, something malty, maybe something strong as we go into the colder months. I'm going to start working Russian Imperial Stouts and Barleywines into rotation.

Do you do a lot of seasonal beers?

Yeah, with seven tap lines I have a lot of room to do that. Something I did last year, which I'm going to do again is the NF Ale, you know, for football, which is an easy drinking, low alcohol kind of beer, with a little roasted flavor. The kind where you can sit here and have a couple of pitchers while you watch the game and still drive home and not get in trouble.

Do you experiment a lot? Do you use any unconventional ingredients?

Not really, more so when I was a home brewer. Which is what I did before any of this. There have been beers that I've never made before, like a milk stout, which isn't really experimenting but just something I've never done before. What I have done is use one of my 5 gallon fermenters, drain some off the bigger batches and throw in, say, some peppercorns and then try that. The craziest beer I've made was the Dark Bootlegger, which was a barley wine and then I got a wooden rum barrel from Newport Distilling and aged it in the rum barrel. I then brewed a porter and blended them together. I served it on cask and people were like "woah". It came out really nice, but unfortunately I don't think I could repeat it because of the wood and the small scale.

Do you feel that as a brewer your personality comes out a lot in your beers?

Yea, I think so. There are certain grains and certain ingredients that I try to incorporate them into every beer. You don't want them all to taste the same, so you've gotta be able to switch it up a bit. Get something very distinctive that you like in the beer. As well as having fun with it. And for me, beer being like food, you don't want to eat the same food every day and I don't want to drink the same beer every day. I like to drink something different for whatever I'm doing at the time. That portion of my personality comes out in the range of beers I have available. Then you get some crazy names, these are all pretty tame right now. The Belgian Century, that was my one hundredth batch since I've come on board here. Previous to that there's been the C-3PO Golden, Angry Chewbacca. I'm a Rush fan so I name things after Rush songs. Red Barchetta and Red Sector A, which is kind of funny because Red Sector A really came out better and Red Barchetta is my favorite song, and I was like "I should have saved that name!"