He may not be making a massive volume of beer right now, but you should expect big things from Nick. He is the brains behind The Doodle Brewing Co. in Liberty, MO. For those of you who check the links you will see that his page is a little out of date. That's because Nick is busy with his full time job and brewing, packaging and selling his beer. Nick isn't all alone in the brewery venture, he has help from his 6 year old son and his wife Holly when packaging time arrives.
This years expected output of Doodle is about 150 barrels. That should be enough to break even. That is all Nick is shooting for for now. Well.....breaking even and making awesome beers that are not tied down to particular styles or traditions. The current beer Nick is producing (with more to come soon) is called Doodle Double. It is a very drinkable strong brown ale featuring the proper yeast for the style and a very lively carbonation. According to Nick this may be the only beer he brews close to style. This is an effort to have a beer that sells well enough so that he may exercise his creativity with other styles. As Nick and I continue to discuss his latest effort I am offered a full bodied dark beer with a surprising flavor profile. This beer has been brewed with spices in lieu of hops to achieve bitterness, aroma, and flavor. It is a real fake out, masterfully crafted to fool the palette. The idea is to have real bitterness from spices (rather than hops) to balance out the hefty malt sweetness. To those of you out there who are familiar with the term Gruit, this is not exactly that. The combination of ingredients is aimed more at the emulation of hops more than showcasing the flavor of herbs and this beer tastes like a beer rather than a spice bomb.
In our relatively short time together we discuss many of the challenges of starting a brewery. Most of them have been mentioned before. One difference for Nick was his early start as a brewpub (rather than a production facility). As a brewpub you are unable to self distribute in Missouri. This little hitch ended up costing Nick a lot of time. He recommends to future brewery starters - "Get a lawyer, in the time I stubbornly tried the DIY approach I was paying rent. If I had a Lawyer he would have straightened my ass out ASAP and I would have been months ahead."
One thing I notice as we watch the 11 lanes of I-70 traffic flow by is the incredible head on both of Nick's beers. In all of the time I have been enjoying craft beer I have never seen anything like this. The term "head follows the beer to the bottom of the glass." is overused, but this one absolutely does. When prompted Nick volunteers his not so secret secret, declaring "I use a little olive oil in my wort (what beer is before fermentation), instead of aeration. Since I lack a scientific background I am completely baffled by this and I ask for clarification. I will oversimplify what Nick told me with the following - yeast needs unsaturated fatty acids for its cell walls to remain healthy, a dose of oxygen helps it create that, a dose of olive oil does the same. The setback is a longer lag time before fermentation. The bonus is that you now have fermenting beer which starts out free of oxygen, a beer spoiler.
I came on this trip, in part to learn as much as possible about different breweries, and techniques. I feel that the KC leg of my trip has done a great deal towards that end. Thanks to everyone who I was lucky enough to spend time with.
For the technically minded reader out there I have included backing for the Olive Oil theory. It is not mine. It was in the public domain and I am assuming a link is ok. http://www.brewcrazy.com/hull-olive-oil-thesis.pdf
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| Nick's 1/2 Bbl brewhouse |
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| The manual bottle filler. |
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| A remarkable finished product. hand crafted, of course. |
If you find yourself in the Kansas City area do yourself a favor, seek out The Doodle's beers. You will be glad you did. In addition, don't do what I did and miss most of the rest of the city. I missed BBQ entirely as a result of a self imposed schedule. Try to leave plenty of time to do everything so you can enjoy all KC has to offer. Only if you are a die-hard walker will you be able to walk KC, otherwise get a cab.
Have fun.
Keep Brewing,
Ray
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