A Slightly Encouraging Sign at Mayfield Brewing

There's a slightly encouraging sign at Mayfield Brewing since my post ten days ago where I suggested things were not looking good for Mayfield's future. During my morning run through the Belmont, CA industrial park that's home to Devils' Canyon and Mayfield's breweries, I noticed an official sign posted at Mayfield's location by the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control that was not there two weeks ago. The notice, dated October 29, indicates the owner has applied for a premises to premises transfer of their Category 23 - Small Brewery License. This could mean a lot of things, but it's encouraging there's some small sign of life there.

Still, it makes no sense that if this was an orderly and planned move by Mayfield, why they wouldn't simply announce they were moving. Their website still says "Under Construction". What ever's going on, I hope they are successful.

It's Not Looking Good for Mayfield Brewing

I can now admit to having a bit of sick feeling while writing a recent post on Mayfield Brewing for The Session. This sickness was due to a nagging suspicion the brewery was going out of business. The week before I posted the article, I wanted to do some extra research for the article at Mayfield's usual open house, held monthly on the last Friday of the month concurrently with Devil's Canyon Brewing's much larger Beer Friday just across the alley of the small industrial park in Belmont, CA both breweries call home. Everyone was having at good time over at Devil's Canyon, but Mayfield was all closed up, with a new "For Lease" sign covered the top of Mayfield's building. Now this sign could have been intended for any of the units in that industrial park, but it did looked a little ominous up there over Mayfield's loading dock. I sent Mayfield owner John Alderete an e-mail asking "What's up?" and didn't get a response. Hmmmmm.

So I thought maybe he was just on vacation that month. Alderete had talked to me the previous open house about transitioning to a "Wine Club" business model, and so I rationalized this this might have been part of that transition. But now their website has nothing but a boiler plate "Under Construction" graphic and Alderete hasn't responded to another e-mail about what's going on, and it's pretty hard to come to any other conclusion than Mayfield Brewing is in pretty serious financial difficulty, if it hasn't completely gone out of business. I certainly hope to be wrong.

You never want to see anyone fail, and Alderete clearly had the passion for beer everyone in the craft beer community shares. The ever present elephant in the room at Mayfield was the very high price of their premium beers, aged for several months in used wine barrels. Their $30-$45 price for 750 ml bottles was way above what most breweries charge for similarly barrel-aged and special releases, and I'm afraid not everyone who tried his beers felt the taste justified this pricing.

Now I gladly paid $30 for a recent vintage of Mayfield's Noctura Imperial stout, a sensational brew with wine, vanilla, smokey notes mingling with the ale's very rich, complex roasted malt. But I didn't feel the same way about Mayfield's IPA and Alt-style offerings, nor was I alone. Aged in red wine barrels, the resulting flavors seemed to clash more than they complimented. An interesting, complex, thought provoking, but not necessarily delicious beer is not something most people will pay $45 a bottle for, especially in the Bay Area's floundering economy. The fact that the Bay Area has many excellent barrel-aged beers, such as Russian River's Temptation, that taste sensational, are hardly "acquired tastes", and cost about half of what a typical bottle of Mayfield was going for indicates how out of whack Mayfield's pricing seemed to be.

Of course, this is my outsider's view. Who really knows the complex set of issues facing this business? A lesson I learned from running that has served me well in professional life is that when setting goals, one can sit down and formulate an intelligent, reasonable, and well conceived plan to reach them. And then you follow that plan with great effort, dedication, and focus. And even after all that hard work and well directed effort, failure is still very much an option.

The Session #44: The Drive of a Scientist Brewer at Mayfield

For this month's Session, Ashley Routson asks us to write about"Frankenstein Beers", beers where the brewers are "creating beers that transcend style guidelines. These “Frankenstein Beers” challenge the way people perceive beer. They are freaks of nature — big, bold and intense. The ingredients resemble those of a beer and the brewing process might appear to be normal, but some aspects of the entire experience are experimental, unorthodox and insane."

There are plenty of Frankensein-sque brewers out there, pushing and sometimes breaking the envelope using usual brewing techniques or ingredients. Some cannot resist the temptation to jack up the levels of alcohol or bitterness to obscene levels. Some of it can be attributed simply to a creative drive to do something new and usual, to experiment and take risks, which pay off in the creation of a new and unique beer drinking experience. It's also driven by the desire of to stand-out in an ever more crowded brewing field, where the bar for doing something new and usual get raised higher and higher to absurd, ridiculous levels. And there's no shortage of craft beer drinkers willing to stand in long lines to pay the top dollar prices just to taste them. Why? We all like to take a peek at the monsters.

For this this session on Frankenstein beers, I decided to focus on one of my hometown breweries, Mayfield Brewing, known for their Iconoclast series of beers aged in used wine barrels. Located in Belmont, CA, about 20 miles south of San Francisco, Mayfield Brewing seems ideal for this discussion of mad scientist brewers, since brewer and owner John Alderete actually is a scientist, with a Ph.D. in molecular biology. When I met him at recent brewery open house, he hardly came across as a mad scientist, speaking in a calm, reserved, and logical manner while explaining his barrel-aged beers, making it almost seem like he's not doing anything particularly unusual.

Aldrerete's most celebrated beer is his Iconoclast Nocturna, an Imperial Stout aged in Petite Syrah barrels. And it is excellent. Red wine and chocolate is a natural pairing, and the Syrah and rich chocolate flavors of the Imperial Stout pair effortlessly. There's also smoky and vanilla notes adding to the complexity of this creamy, rich tasting stout, and it truly is a very memorable experience. There's a bottle of it in my refrigerator that I'm saving for a special occasion. Alderete's decision to brew and barrel age an Imperial Stout, a commonly barrel-aged beer and Mayfield's most popular one, was mostly an after thought. He almost seems bored by this beer.


He appears more passionate about his other two beers, the Iconoclast Aurora an Altbier and the Iconoclast Eclat an IPA, which are both aged in Cabernet and Zinfandel barrels. Having tried these beers as well, I can tell you both are quite complex and interesting. Interesting flavors come and go as the beer warms up, the flavor profile changing with every sip. However, the red wine flavors seem to clash with the Altbier and IPA styles and the tastes seems a bit forced, with the end result coming across a bit like a mad scientist's brewing experiment. John readily admits his beers are unusual and often take a while to get used to, also points out that while his IPA is atypical by today's standards, it is in fact more true to the IPA style's origins of travelling long distances by sailing ship inside wooden barrels. I have to say, Alderete seems much more turned on by the challenge of creating a beer of unusual flavor combinations for people to slowly discover for themselves, than putting out something easily and instantly appealing to everyone that's easy to sell.

While I'm not totally sold on John Aldrete's Aurora and Eclat beers, they continue to draw me in every time I drink them, and I look forward to tasting them again. Why? I like to take a peek at his creations.

Giant Metallic Object Spotted Near Devil's Canyon Brewing

It towers over the city of Belmont casting long, ominous shadows. Startled airline pilots swerve out of its way as they land their aircraft onto nearby San Francisco International Airport. UFO sightings along the San Francisco Peninsula have tripled. And if you've driven down Highway 101 near the Ralston exit and looked westward, you can't help but see it towering over the small industrial park where Devil's Canyon Brewing is located. Just what is it?

Linda and I decided to spend last Friday solving this deep mystery and grab a couple pints at Devil Canyon's Brewing Beer Friday, an open house Devil's Canyon holds the last Friday of each month. Turns out this shimmering tower of metal is a humble grain silo. I spoke for a few minutes with Daniel Curran, Devil's Canyon's VP of Sales and Marketing, who told me the new silo halves their grain costs, as they can now buy grain in much higher volumes with the increased storage capacity of the silo. Cutting costs by increasing volume? Well, that sounds something like a mega brewer ABInBev might do. But hey, craft brewing is a business, and as a business, any craft brewer to find ways to keep costs down to stay competitive, just like ABInBev. But since grain has a pretty long shelf life, I'm not too concerned about a drop in Devil's Canyon's overall product.

But what is very un-ABInBev-like is that Devil's Canyon maintains and cleans all the tap lines wherever their beer is sold, making the extra effort and expense to maintain the quality of their product at the point of sale. Having experienced excellent beers such as Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Sam Adam's White Ale, and Anchor Steam ruined by a stale cheesy flavor introduced as the beer flowed through a dirty tube into my glass, trust me, this is good to know.

Linda and I also checked out Mayfield Brewing that evening, which is located in the same industrial park not less than 50 yards away. I've heard a lot about Mayfield, but never had the chance to check out their beers before, especially since the $30-$50 a bottle pricing was a little too steep for my recession limited wallet. The good news is they were serving 4-5 ounce tastings for a more affordable $5.

Mayfield's claim to fame is aging their beers in used wine barrels, infusing a lot of wine and woody characteristics into their beers. For a couple of the beers we tried, this created an interesting, unique, and complex drink. But notice I didn't use the word "tasty", because with the Iconoclast Aurora, and Iconoclast Eclat, an Alt Beer and IPA aged in Zinfandel and Cabernet barrels, this process seemed to create a forced marriage of flavors and the resulting liquid seemed to have a bit of a identity crisis. Linda, a big IPA fan, really missed the floral aroma found in a good IPA, which seemed to be sucked out of the brew from the barrel aging process in the Eclat.

There were no such problems with the Iconoclast Nocturna, an Imperial Stout aged in Syrah barrels. Maybe that's because Syrah and the chocolate notes of the Imperial Stout are a more natural pairing, or the smoky, woody, and vanilla notes that the brew seemed to pick up from the barrel aging effortless pair with the chocolate and coffee notes of the stout. No "acquired taste" required to enjoy this one, which was one of those beers that make you sit up and say "Wow!". Linda and I gladly spent $30 on a bottle of this stuff.

Only about 25,000 people live in Belmont, and yet it's home to two craft breweries. I think we're going to like living here, despite all the strange goings on from time to time.