Mitch Steele was recently hired as Stone Brewing’s master brewer about two years ago. He quit his job as an assistant brewer for Anheuser-Busch’s Michelob department to join Stone’s crew. Stone Brewing Company is known for there distinctively arrogant beers. This caused quite a stir among the industry and beer geeks. Many were concerned whether a macro-brewer would have a negative effect on Stone’s bold and independent image.

Zach Rosen: When did you first get interested in brewing?

Mitch Steele: I would probably say my second year in college. I had kind of fallen into wine making as a major. I went to Cal Davis [UCD]. As I was starting to get into that I found there was also a brewing science program. So that kind of sealed the deal. I went to Davis with the expectation of doing some kind of science major. I just didn’t know what. I wanted it to be something applicable to some sort of career. The wine making thing really was very attractive to me; I kind of fell into that my first year when I had to take an elective class. I had to find something to take and someone recommended an intro to wine making class, as I progressed on with that and found there was brewing available as well, that kind of just grabbed me.

Zach Rosen: Oh yeah, so did you ever do any wine work?

Mitch Steele: Yeah I did, I actually spent eight years making wine when I got out of school. There weren’t many jobs in the brewing industry back then, and I ended up working eight years in the wine business.

Zach Rosen: What winery?

Mitch Steele: It was a company called Almaden. They were really big back in the mid-eighties and kind of have been bought up and partitioned out the brand still exists but the winery doesn’t exist.

Zach Rosen: Now your major, were you viticulture or brewing science?

Mitch Steele: The major was fermentation science so I was not able to study viticulture, which is grape growing. I’m not a farmer and I realized that kind of quickly. I took one viticulture class and said, “Oh that’s not for me.” So…but the major was fermentation science and it involved both winemaking, brewing science, a lot of industrial fermentation science, like waste water treatment and that kind of stuff. You know a lot of microbiology and food science type stuff.

Zach Rosen: How’d you feel your education prepare you?

Mitch Steele: Pretty well, at the time, Davis was the only school that offered any kind of brewing science program in the United States. I don’t think I could have learned nearly as much as I did, you know, anywhere else. It was, I thought it was a pretty good background for going into brewing.

Zach Rosen: How did you go from winery to brewery?

Mitch Steele: Well I was working in the winery and I always kind of had it in the back of my mind that the brewing thing was going to be something I wanted to try at some point, and in the hometown where I was living there was a guy in the process of opening up a pub-brewery; that was in Hollister, California. And I got in on the ground floor with that and helped him to open up the brewery. It was a little brewery. He was making around seven hundred to one thousand barrels a year, which, with the system he had broke down to about one to two brews a week. So I was able to come in and brew on my days off or in the evening or something and help him out. I moonlighted as a brewer when I was working in the wine business, and decided fairly quickly that I like brewing a lot more, and that’s what I wanted to do.

Where did you go from the brew-pub?

Mitch Steele: I spent four years there and then went to Anheuser-Busch.

Zach Rosen: So what did you start off as at Busch?

Mitch Steele: The position at the time was called a brewing supervisor, now its called a brewing group manager. And basically it’s a shift supervisor, a frontline supervisor, for the union, you’re a manager working shift work. Doing weekends, evenings, overnight shifts, whatever, and you’re basically coordinating the shift activities for a department in the brewery such as a brew house, fermenting department, or the finishing department.

Zach Rosen: Was it a big switch going from, well, wine to beer, or even Busch to Stone? Well, Michelob to Stone?

Mitch Steele: Going from what I was doing to Busch was a huge adjustment, because Anheuser-Busch is a huge corporation. It was the biggest company I’d ever worked for, and everything there is very structured. There are a lot of resources there that you don’t have in other situations. A lot of science, a lot of research going on in the company, a huge engineering department that knew how to build breweries and use really high-tech kind of equipment, instrumentation and such; which I had never had any exposure to at all prior to going there. Going from Anheuser-Busch to Stone, surprisingly the day to day job duties that I deal with are pretty similar, even though, the difference I would say is more cultural. The company is a lot more different in their approach, how we do things. The other thing is that we don’t have the resources, obviously, as a company like Anheuser-Busch as, so we don’t have people that I can just pick up the phone and call to talk about instruments and how to best a accomplish a process, or anything like that we kind of have to figure it out on our own.

Zach Rosen: So then, what are your day to day jobs right now?

Mitch Steele: Well I’m the headbrewer, I’m also the production manager, and so my job, primarily, is to coordinate the, make sure we’re doing day to day what we need to be doing. You know, we’re brewing the right things, we’re getting as much brewed as we can brew. We are supplying the bottling line with all the beer they need. Making sure the bottling line is bottling what they need. That kind of thing from a production management standpoint, I also work on some longer term things like where are we going to be in a year or two years. What kind of equipment are we going to need? What kind of tanks are we going to need? We’re growing very fast and that takes a lot of active to manage our growth, and make sure we’re prepared for it. It’s a lot of looking at projections, sales projections, and what we’re going to need to do to meet those. So as far as having enough fermentors, having a big enough brewery, enough ingredients, all that kind of thing.

Zach Rosen: Now, so, working for two pretty big breweries, you know Anheuser-Busch, size wise, and then Stone has quite a reputation right now. Do you feel like you’ve made any significant contribution to the brewing industry?

Mitch Steele: Yeah I think so. I’ve had some pretty good opportunities. When I was at Anheuser-Busch, I got to do new product management for them, for just over three years. And a lot of our efforts were to try and make people realize that Anheuser-Busch had a talented staff of brewers and we could brew whatever we wanted to if we put our mind to it. And I think we accomplished that to a certain degree. I think there is a lot more respect from craft brewers for what Busch does as far as brewing and skill then there used to be, and I think a lot of that, not directly maybe, but a lot of that came from the work I was doing. And that was definitely the goal of what we were trying to prove. You know I got to do some neat things with Busch and I’ve done some neat things here at Stone as well. Its been a great experience, and you know I know a lot of people in the brewing business, I’ve got a lot of friends, and its been pretty fun.

Zach Rosen: I was going to ask that too. How important is communication between in the whole brewing industry? Do you communicate a lot with other brewers, both foreign and domestic?

Mitch Steele: I think it happens a lot more on the craft scale than it does on the big brewers scale. At Anheuser-Busch you don’t really need to rely on other brewers for help, you’ve got a whole company is staffed with people who’ve seen everything in the brewing business, almost. Where as in the craft brewing business, on this side, you tend to bounce things off people a lot more frequently. I know I do, and there is a lot more comradery than there is on the big brewer’s side. You know for instance, you know, if I know someone in a small brewery or a regional brewery, that could be considered a competitor, it’s a lot easier to pick up a phone and talk to them, then it would be being at Anheuser and picking up a phone to talk to someone like say, Miller. That just isn’t done. So I think, I think from that stand point it’s important and it’s a little bit easier on the craft side.

Zach Rosen: Working on the craft side, do you have more control over say working on new recipes or development in the actual beer itself?

Mitch Steele: Yeah I do, here; in the larger companies you have a lot more chefs in the kitchen. We still do it all as a team here. We’ve got a lot of people who have come up with a lot of good ideas and stuff, but yeah it’s a little more active involvement, and I think that’s a good thing. We all have suggestions, and I think we have a great staff of brewers here. So the suggestions are all valid.

Zach Rosen: Do you have any personal philosophy; some people like to emphasize stuff when they look at a beer, or any personal philosophy with what you do?

Mitch Steele: Yeah, you know, yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t know if I can verbalize it. I, I always think beer should needs to be exciting, you know and I think its important that, you know, if youre going to make something new you’ve got to really, really got to be something special. Theres a lot of good beer out there so you’ve got to put that extra effort in to make it something that really stands out. And I think that, that’s important when you know we’re doing something like special releases. You know something that we only do once or only release once a year. It’s got to be something that’s really going to be great, and you know I think the ingredients; you need to use ingredients that are really going to stand out and are going to complement each other real well. And you know, I’m not, I’m not a strict style person. You know there’s a lot of guidelines out there for beer styles and what needs to go in them, and I don’t really follow that, and I don’t think anyone at Stone here does. Follow those things religiously. I know there are brewers out there who brew strictly to style because they want to win awards, and things like that, and that’s really not what we’re about. You know we’re about brewing great beer, and if it fits into a style or not that is kind of after the fact. You know if we can fit it into a style great, and if it doesn’t that’s fine too.

Yeah, personally talking, the Stone 11, the 11^th anniversary, that was, you guys did a really good job on that.

Mitch Steele: Oh thanks.

Really, just a different beer.

Mitch Steele: Oh that’s a perfect example. That’s one of those ones where we try to do something really special.

Zach Rosen: Yeah I know a lot of people are calling it the black IPA almost. It’s real…it’s something else. Let’s see, do you have any influences, mentors, or role models?

Mitch Steele: Gosh there is so many. You know, I think anywhere you look in this business, you’ve got people, umm specific mentors, probably, probably not. Role models, yeah there’s people that I think are doing some really great things. I think as a brewer, this is such an exciting time to be a brewer. There’s people who are really pushing the envelope and I think you kind of take your cues from them, and you try and do something better. That’s what its all about; it’s competitive but it is friendly you know. It is like, “Wow, they just did that, we could do that!” Or we can do something even better, or take it to the next level, or whatever. I think everybody is always happy, or I’m always happy to see when a brewer comes out with something really cool, because I think it’s good for the business. And so you be aware of whatever everybody else is doing. And you know, that’s great, and then it gets your mind turning, what can we do? That kind of thing.

Zach Rosen: Are you currently in any societies or guilds, I know there is like American Society of Brewing Chemists.

Mitch Steele: Yeah I’m a member of the San Diego Brewers guild, but I’m not very active. I’m not a member of the Society of Brewing Chemists, but that’s more of a lab oriented society. I think they do really great things, but it really doesn’t apply to what I do in my job. I have been an active member of the Master Brewers Association of America for a long time. I kind of let my membership lapse, because southern California doesn’t have an active district. Although I’m seeing that they are trying to start that back up. So I’ll probably get involved back with that group, that’s a good group too. The Brewers Association is another group I’m fairly active in as well.

Zach Rosen: Now just over the years have there been any significant lessons that you’ve learned?

Mitch Steele: Yeah never compromise quality, probably the biggest one you know. If the beer is not up to snuff you don’t send it out. That’s probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned. Do whatever it takes to get the quality that you need, even if means getting people angry, or offending people, whatever, you got make sure the beer is what it needs to be. The other one is don’t dumb down your beer for the masses. That’s something I’ve really liked about Stone when I came here. They brew, this company brews beers that they want, and then they get everyone else on board. They don’t try and dumb it down for some guy who is going to pick it up on a whim and not used to drinking these kinds of beers.

Zach Rosen: As a master brewer, you mentioned consistency; do you have a big role in that? In Busch you might have had other people for that, but at Stone at least?

Mitch Steele: Yeah we are. We’re growing into that and it’s a big thing. I think any time in an environment that’s not a brewpub, where you can have some variation from batch to batch, but if you’re putting beer out in a bottle. It’s got to be the same and that’s something that I think. It require a couple of things, it requires a good palette, you need to be able to taste your beer and be able to identify when things are changing, and then also you need to have some analytical data on the beer and that can come from lab work. It can come from instrumentation out in the brewery measuring the process. I think you need to look at all of that, and I think we do a good job of that here at Stone. I mean we taste beer everyday; we taste all the beer that gets packaged everyday. Everybody who tastes has a good feel for what our beer is supposed to taste like. So if it drifts one way or the other, we are on it. With Anheuser, it was incredibly important, because with the beers being real light in character, it was something they cannot withstand any sort of variation in the process or ingredients or whatever. Our beers here at Stone are a little more forgiving, but that doesn’t make it any less important. We need to identify when anything isn’t going right in the process or if they’re not consistent in the process and try and get that fixed. We do put a lot of effort into that.

Zach Rosen: Let’s see just a couple last questions. Are you a home brewer or any other hobbies?

Mitch Steele: Yeah I belonged to a home brewing club when I worked at Anheuser-Busch. I’ve kind of gotten away from it because I’m making beers that kind of, fulfill that need. To put it mildly I guess. I don’t know how else to word that. But I don’t really homebrew much here, I just don’t have the time we’re doing some really good beers here at Stone. You know some really interesting beers here and all that kind of thing anyways. I’m getting to know a lot of the home brewers here in Southern California, and it’s a cool hobby. And I play music too so that’s kind of fun.

Zach Rosen: What instrument?

Mitch Steele: Guitar.

Zach Rosen: Oh fun, fun. Then of course, do you have a favorite style or one particular beer you really like?

Mitch Steele: Well, it depends on when you’re really asking me. I would say, an IPA, in general would be something that I seek out all the time. I always like something that’s got a real nice fresh hop character. I really like Belgian tripels, and I like Oktoberfest beers. I would say those are probably the three that I really enjoy. I like a really good European pilsner, in the summer I think that’s great. But I could be drinking barley wines, and saying that I love barley wines, it depends.

Zach Rosen: Definitely time and place for everything.

Mitch Steele: Yeah.

Zach Rosen: Well thank you!

After talking to Mitch, there is clear evidence that brewers no matter where they work, or on what scale, are interested in one thing: good beer. Regardless of taste, the impressive consistency that Anheuser is able to achieve reflects the quality of their brewers. The brewers, whom unfortunately, at big companies like Busch, can’t express their artistic side in order to please the executives; it’s fortunate, and makes me happy to know though that a brewer like Mitch is now at Stone, and has the skill to keep their big heads afloat.