Joe's Brewery

Editor's Note: Joe's Brewery replaced its brewery with a widescreen television shortly after this story was written in 1997.

In the flatlands of east-central Illinois, John Isenhour is living out the dream of many homebrewers-and quite a few professional brewers as well. As brewmaster at Joe's Brewery in Champaign, he gets paid to brew what he wants when he wants. No light beers need fill his fermenters; at Joe's he has brewed Belgian ales and other complex, time-consuming styles.

True, the job doesn't pay much and isn't full-time, but it suits this dedicated homebrewer well.

"It's like I won the lottery," Isenhour says. "It's like having a giant home-brewery."

The first time Isenhour went into Joe's, a little more than two years ago, he inquired what kind of beer was on tap. "Bud, Bud Light," the server answered. "I thought you made beer here," Isenhour said. "We got that *stuff* over there," the server said, gesturing toward the brewpub's handles, tucked inconspicuously behind taps for megabrews.

Joe's has become better known for its craft beer since then, but it remains a brewpub unlike any other in the United States. It goes against the grain (so to speak) of what they're teaching in "brewpub school" these days.

A college bar first

Joe's is above all a college bar, located literally across the street from University of Illinois fraternity houses. In Champaign-Urbana, students are allowed in bars when they are 19 (although it's not legal for them to drink until they're 21), and Joe's has stiff competition for those student dollars. Promotions that all but give away beer, such as quarter-beer nights, have become such a problem that Champaign's mayor has threatened to put a bottom-end cap on beer prices.

The brewpub began life as Chief's Brewing Co., which consciously made an attempt not to be a campus bar and died a quick death in 1991. The current owners took it over in 1992, and for several years employees actually downplayed the fact that beer was brewed there. Despite the quality beer made by former brewmaster Bill Morgan (now at Diamondback Brewing Co. in Cleveland), the beer frequently lingered on tap for several months. Isenhour, who is completing his doctorate in informational science at the U of I, began assisting Morgan soon after his first visit to Joe's, and took over as brewmaster when Morgan left in 1995.

Isenhour, 41, has been homebrewing for about 20 years. In 1995 he won third place for a lambic in the American Homebrewers Association National Homebrew Competition. He still brews at home, in part to culture yeast-at last count, he had 17 different yeast strains working. Isenhour frequently judges at homebrewing competitions and has reached the National level in the Beer Judge Certification Program. Homebrewers may be more familiar with him than they realize. A few years back, he began using stamps with the words "More Malt" and "More Hops" on them when judging, since he found these problems so common. From time to time when using the stamps, he has met homebrewers whose evaluation sheets he had once stamped, only to be greeted with "So, you're the asshole ... "

Living every homebrewer's dream comes with its share of hard work. Isenhour now finds himself with complete responsibility for brewery operations, including training and managing assistant brewers, recipe design, equipment maintenance, monthly BATF and state alcohol tax reports and inventory. But the schedule is flexible; Isenhour brews about once every two weeks and can fit his other duties in with doctoral work and teaching.

While the pub now promotes the fact that beer is made on premise, the house beer accounts for only 10 percent of beer sales. "The place floats on cheap beer," Isenhour said. He expects to brew between 170 and 200 barrels in 1997-that is, if he can keep the equipment in the seven-barrel brewery working. The system was never state-of-the-art. For example, brewer Stephen Bernard said, "The brew kettle was made by a company that makes equipment designed to melt metal." Isenhour recently was rebuilding some valves which he described as "antiques."

"We've cobbled things together," he said. "It works pretty well if you keep your eye on it." But finding replacement parts is difficult. Isenhour recalls spending Christmas vacation of 1995 "with the (brewery) totally apart and thinking it wouldn't ever go back together."

Doing a partial mash in a full-size brewery

Joe's is an extract brewery, but the brewers compensate by using what Isenhour calls a "poor man's lauter tun"-a 45-gallon bucket filled with specialty grains. The brewers suspend a very large grain bag in the container so it cannot touch the bottom. A tri-clamp fitting at the bottom allows them to pump wort into the bottom of the kettle, and about halfway up the kettle is a port that is used for stirring in malt and whirlpooling at the end of the boil. They draw liquor from that to the top of the "sparge-o-matic," making a liquid circuit that runs until all the "worty goodness" is extracted from the grain. Isenhour has introduced up to 150 pounds of grain into the system using this method. "I may never do that again," he said.

Bernard came from an all-grain brewery, Duster's in Lawton, Mich., but he sees some benefits to extract brewing. "There's a lot less shoveling out of crud, which I like," he said, laughing. "This encourages you to play more with yeast strains and with hops." Isenhour is a big fan of dry-hopping. "We must use more hops than almost anyone, which I'm proud of," he said.

The process works well, for Joe's has turned out highly praised beers. Little Dog ESB won an Award of Excellence at the 1996 Real Ale Festival in Chicago. HopHead Ale, an India pale ale, is appropriately named and doesn't embarrass itself next to Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale. Academic Ale Ordinary Bitter shows incredible depth for a beer that's about 4 percent alcohol by volume.

"We can come surprisingly close (to all-grain) by blending different types of malt and using fresh malt, and using a lot of adjuncts," Isenhour said. Both the HopHead and Academic start from a base of several powder and liquid malts. The HopHead is hopped with Centennial and Willamette, the Academic with English Fuggles, Goldings and Willamette. Of course, both are heavily dry-hopped.

Joe's also has featured brown ale, porter and barley wine, plus more esoteric styles such as witbier, gueuze and a tripel called Danger Ale. Isenhour tells a story about farmers from the surrounding rural area coming in to order "the Belgian lemonade" when the gueuze was on line. Isenhour's goal is to keep on three beers at all times, but equipment problems have made that difficult. Academic Ale is the beer available most regularly.

The management gives Isenhour free reign over all aspects of the brewery. He can choose which beers he wants to brew, select the ingredients he wants to use and decide how long he wants the beers to condition. Some breweries push out ales in a little more than a week, but at Joe's no beer goes on line before it's a month old.

Buy two beers and let the second warm up

Joe's serving tanks are usually 36-38 degrees F, and sometimes dip as low as 33 degrees. This is fine for the mainstream lagers on tap, but the English-style ales fare better served in the 50s. The colder temperature "makes them taste more bitter than they should," Isenhour said. "Instead of adjusting my recipes, I just tell people to buy two beers at a time, and the second one will be right."

Although it's a college bar, Joe's is not a campus dive. The brewpub is spacious, with a dance club featuring a deejay, and room upstairs for private parties. Pool tables fill one section on the main floor, and U of I sports photos decorate the walls. The brewery equipment is in an attractive glass-enclosed atrium. Joe's food menu emphasizes appetizers such as nachos and fried cheese, as well as sandwiches and burgers.

The waitstaff is learning about the beers and how they are made, but some patrons still don't realize that beer is brewed there. A few even think the equipment is for decoration; Isenhour recalls hearing a patron say of the brewery, "That takes up a lot of room for a showpiece." The regulars who favor the brewpub's own beers know to visit during the afternoon and early evening. Arrive late at night, and you may find a youth throwing up light beer, a bit of unpleasantness the authors once witnessed there.

Joe's is a brewer-friendly place. Isenhour gives yeast away to homebrewers and will gladly talk about brewing beer when he's not too busy. He'll flip open his black book and share recipes. "Some people are very proprietary about their recipes," he said. "I like this beer. If everybody made beer like this, I could go anywhere and drink the beer. It would be great."

Isenhour realizes that the blessing is also the curse, that Joe's student-heavy clientele would never support his beer alone. "It would be Chief's all over," he said. But he's not complaining. As he put it, "Where else can I work where I don't have to make light beer?"

This article originally appeared in Brew Your Own magazine in April, 1997.