This is my first post on this blog about beer, brewing, and life as the Director of Brewing Operations for Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant Group. (That just rolls off the tongue doesn't it?) Before I jump into topics here is a little of my own history:
1966- Born in Omaha, NE but family moved to Portland, OR when I was a baby.
1970- First memories of drinking beer.
1979- Move to Denver, CO with my mother and 4 siblings, though still visited my father in Portland regularly. I have my first craft brewed beer from Boulder Beer, my mother would buy me a bottle or two of the few craft breweries but mostly imported beers from Applejack Liquors every weekend. At 14 I had a bottle collection that covered a wall of my room and thought that delicious flavor of cardboard meant “great beer.” I also started in the restaurant business as a dishwasher at the “House of Lords.”
1985- I was visiting my father in Portland and he took me to the old Skippers Fish and Chips we loved as kids. It had been taken over by a couple of brothers named McMenamin and they were brewing their own beer right on site. I was hooked.
1988- I was finishing my degree in History at the University of Colorado at Denver when this funky joint in a run down neighborhood close to campus opened that was also brewing their own beer, called the Wynkoop Brewing Company. I got a part time job bussing tables just so I could be around it. Six months later, I was graduating and had a job offer to go work in a Congressional office in Washington, DC. They offered me a position in the brewery if I would stay. I chose rubber boots over neckties and working with late great Russell Schehrer made just about every style of beer there is, including meads and ciders in one of the busiest and weirdest brewpubs on the planet.
1992- I get married to a bright, beautiful and funny manager named Diana.
1993- We have a cute and curious baby girl we called Emma and I get the “opportunity of a lifetime” to go run a microbrewery on the Caribbean island of St. Maarten. Sadly that sucked, so I asked Hickenlooper to help me bring me home, and he did. He then turned around and sent me to Mazatlan, Mexico to start a brew pub. From there I went to such other brewing hot spots as: Wheeling, Omaha, Des Moines, Green Bay and Buffalo. Though there was also San Francisco, Guatemala City and Kaohsiung, Taiwan to mix it up.
1999- The Wynkoop had stopped building brewpubs so I left the company to come work for Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant Group.
2005- Promoted to Director of Brewing Operations and begin whole new saga of traveling around the country building breweries.
