McFarlane Brewing Co.

EDITOR'S NOTE: McFarlane Brewing closed since this story originally appeared in print. Peter McFarlane is brewing at Hops!

Don't let the McFarlane name, brewer Peter McFarlane's red hair and bushy, red muttonchop sideburns, the Scottish crests on the office door or the logo with man clad in tartan fool you. The beers coming out of McFarlane Brewing Co. in Phoenix, Ariz., are strictly German.

McFarlane has had customers ask him to brew a Scottish ale, but so far he has resisted. "Sure, you'd get the hardcore micro drinkers, but that beer would never go in this market," he said. His family tree is actually more German than Scottish, he explains, and he brews German beers because he thinks that's what he makes best and because German styles make sense in the Phoenix Valley, where summer arrives early and stays late.

Selling a German-style craft beer in an area where mainstream lagers dominate, and craft beer drinkers think in terms of ales, has been a challenge. That it is available only on draft makes it even tougher. "It was a lot of education," McFarlane said. He invited retailers to the brewery to learn about his beer and how to sell it to customers, and several evenings a week he visited bars and talked to consumers.

He knew he could make a good hefeweizen -- one he brewed for Hops! Bistro & Brewery won a gold medal at the 1992 Great American Beer Festival -- but there wasn't another distributed in the Phoenix Valley when McFarlane Brewing opened in 1996. Nonetheless, it became the brewery's flagship beer and accounts for half its sales.

"Hands-on experience, knowledge and education are important, but to get a good-quality beer you have to know what you're doing and why you're doing it."

The hefe is made with 50 percent wheat and 50 percent two-row barley and fermented with Bavarian yeast. The beer has a clovy nose and a citrusy, sweet flavor that's cut with hops in the finish. It's a straightforward beer made in a straightforward way.

McFarlane keeps it that way, handling all the brewing himself while his wife, Jane, manages the office and marketing. "It's all process," he said of brewing. "That's the most important thing. Hands-on experience, knowledge and education are important, but to get a good-quality beer you have to know what you're doing and why you're doing it."

The beers are simply named -- McFarlane Hefeweizen, McFarlane Pilsner and McFarlane Red (a Märzen) are the year-round beers -- because "we don't name our beers after animals," he said, and the recipes are traditional.

The Pilsner is styled after a Bavarian pilsener, emphasizing malt more and hops less than a Czech or Northern German pilsener. All the ingredients are German, and the German Tettnang hops are apparent throughout, although McFarlane estimates the International Bittering Units at 12-13. A bit of carapils in the recipe adds a touch of nuttiness to the taste.

The Red is made from two-row, several different Lovibond crystal malts and Munich malt, then hopped with German Northern Brewer and Perle. Although there are no smoked malts, the beer is biscuity and slightly smoky-tasting.

Although he started as a homebrewer and then was a pub brewer, focusing on making a few very consistent beers is fine with McFarlane. "I have seasonals," he said. "I get enough variety with specialties that I don't get bored." The brewery usually has five beers available, most of them light in color if not in taste. "People don't drink dark beers here," McFarlane said. He made a schwarzbier once, but only a 40-barrel batch.

This spring, he went with a Maibock rather than a darker bock, producing a dangerously smooth 7 percent ABV beer from two-row, caramel, carapils and Vienna malts and Northern Brewer and Perle hops. The beer spent 25 days in the unitank, then 40 more lagering (all of the McFarlane lagers spend about six weeks lagering).

The 1997-98 holiday beer was a spiced porter that included fresh gingerroot, nutmeg and orange peel. "I wanted to make sure you can taste the beer first, then each four of those flavors," McFarlane said. The spices mellowed as the beer aged for a few months and became something you could drink for breakfast

McFarlane first looked into opening a brewery in the mid-1980s when he was living in Flagstaff, but the city was in a recession at the time and he couldn't find the money. He studied brewing professionally and went to work for Hops! Bistro & Brewery in Scottsdale, brewing there for 3-1/2 years. Meanwhile, he raised the capital to open his own brewery. The brewery began as a partnership between Peter and his brother, Steve, but the partnership ended. "It wasn't amicable," Peter said.

McFarlane Brewing Co. is in a district of warehouses and businesses near Sky Harbor airport. The concrete-brick building formerly housed a company that sold lamps and statuary. The brewery moved into the building in January 1996 and had its first beers out early that May.

The brewery has a 20-barrel JV Northwest brewhouse, five 40-barrel fermenters and two 100-barrel lagering tanks. It's the largest brewery in the state. "Mathematically, it worked out good," McFarlane said. He brews two batches in one day usually two times a week year-round, then blends fermented batches, filling a 100-barrel lagering tank with 80 barrels of beer. A large wooden room that was part of the original building proved exactly the right size for the lagering tanks, and it was converted into a cold room. "It was nice and convenient, and really cheap," McFarlane said. The room stays at 34-36 degrees F year round.

Two grain silos sit behind the building with an auger leading inside. McFarlane Brewing buys its two-row a semitrailer load at a time, with a typical delivery consisting of 45,000 to 47,000 pounds of grain.

The building itself will provide a lot of room to grow. McFarlane figures its maximum capacity is around 25,000 barrels, which they hope to achieve one day. He has produced 2,300-2,400 barrels each of the years McFarlane Brewing has been open, although it was only operating for eight months that first year.

"Our best customers have been here 20 years. They appreciate a local product."

"Competition is pretty tough," McFarlane said, with tap handles going to out-of-state breweries at the expense of in-state breweries. "I don't think many places in Phoenix and the Phoenix Valley support the locals."

Jane McFarlane added, "Our best customers have been here 20 years. They appreciate a local product." The beer is available at about 95-100 accounts, in bars, restaurants, resort hotels and the nearby greyhound park.

Peter McFarlane thinks bottling is essential to the brewery's future success and is in the process of raising money for a bottling line. That would allow for more diversification of the product line and would help sagging summer sales. Draft sales drop sharply for everyone in the Phoenix area in the summer, he said, in part because restaurant business suffers. Bottling "would keep sales on an even keel all year round."

The brewery has a staff of four, which includes, in addition to Peter and Jane, a salesman who also does the bookkeeping and a full-time driver. The brewery self-distributes and does all its marketing and advertising in-house. "We spent the money for a good computer system," McFarlane said. "It really made things very easy, especially on the business side and with things involving numbers."

Another thing they spent money on is the distinctive ceramic tap handles, made in Canada. "They're a great marketing tool," McFarlane said. "You can read them from across the room, and the name and type of beer is visible from any angle."

Despite competition, McFarlane's beers have found a receptive audience. A 1997 readers' poll in the local weekly New Times chose it as the best local brewery. The brewery's tasting room, the Green Door, has proven popular both with employees of the nearby businesses and with others who seek it out. "We just wanted a small tasting room, but it turned into a destination area," McFarlane said. "It's hard to find, but once they find it they keep coming back."

Large picture windows let sunshine into the tasting room, and asparagus ferns hang overhead outside, making it feel more like a place to sit around and drink beer than a beer factory. Terra cotta tiles cover the floor, and the bar is topped with riveted copper sheets and sided with corrugated metal. Patrons can sit at the bar or at picnic tables and play with children's toys or playing cards, choose from a selection of cigars and snack on popcorn.

"We do a good happy hour," said Jane McFarlane. "Fridays are packed." Both McFarlanes credit bartender Bobbie Krekk with a good part of the tasting room's success. Customers even send her postcards when they're on vacation.

This story orginally appeared in Brew Your Own magazine in June 1998.