Recently I watched a brewery being put together. A crane plucked stainless-steel tanks -- a lauter, a brew-kettle, a mash mixer -- and eased them into a boxy building off Hollins Ferry Road southwest of Baltimore. The building is the home of the Clipper City Brewing Co., Maryland's newest brewery.
Hugh Sisson, head of the brewery, and Tom Flores, the brew master, also looked on, watching with a mixture of wonder and worry.
They were impressed that after months of being little more than an idea, their brewery was at last taking shape. There weren't any six-packs of the company's Clipper City Ale and Lager rolling off a bottling line, but keg beer should be ready in December, and bottles in January.
A crane engine bellowed, a forklift whined, a hammer pounded and a welding torch flared. These were men at work, big boys building big things. There was noise and pride in the air. And some anxiety. Would everything fit? Would anything get dented? A dent inside a brewing tank gives bacteria a hiding place and a chance to do unpredictable things to a batch of beer.
Most of the pieces did fit, pretty much. However, a few days earlier when Sisson, Flores and fellow brewer Jerry Rush had finished assembling a massive grain silo, there were some parts left over. The parts should have been put on the roof of the silo, to keep it from collapsing in snowstorms. So the three brewers built a scaffolding inside the tank, climbed up and by hook, crook and some swearing, put the pieces in place.
"It is humbling," said Sisson as he stood underneath a row of 100-barrel fermenting tanks, whose tall steel legs and hulking bodies reminded me of creatures from "Star Wars."
"For months everything is on paper. And then stuff this size shows up," Sisson said, gesturing toward the towering tanks. "You think, 'Oh, my gosh!' "
Operating a midsize brewery will be another step in Sisson's brewing career. He started about 10 years ago making beer at home for himself. Next he brewed small-batch beers for patrons of Sisson's, a restaurant in South Baltimore. This brew-pub operation grew into a microbrewery, meaning it could sell a PTC limited amount of its beer outside the brewing site.
But Sisson wanted to be bigger, to put his "craft" beer in bottles and ship them around the state. He needed more room and bigger equipment. He left Sisson's, got financial backers and went hunting for a brewery site. After many months of pushing paper, getting government permits and proving, among other things, that beer is not flammable, Sisson was welcoming the stainless-steel tanks, and the building on Hollins Ferry Road was starting to look like a brewery.
