Alan Pugsley

After
working his way through the ranks under the tutelage of
famed British brewer Peter Austin, Pugsley traveled the
world setting up brewing systems in China, Nigeria, Belgium,
and Russia, among others. In the last twenty years, Pugsley
has helped design and install dozens of breweries in
America, including Geary’s, Magic Hat and Middle Ages. His
brewing systems, and the famous Ringwood yeast strain
Pugsley carefully cultivates, produce a range of well-known
English-style ales.

While his success is
undeniable, Pugsley’s influence is not without controversy.
Critics often charge that “Ringwood beers” are
one-dimensional products loaded with buttery, diacetyl notes
which overwhelm the contributions of other ingredients. When
asked about these comments, Pugsley merely shrugs them off.
To him, the Ringwood yeast strain is a thing of beauty. To
hear him talk about it is to hear a professional stock car
mechanic sing the praises of his finely tuned,
high-performance V-8 engine. His work as a brewer and
biochemist is an ode to Ringwood and the beers it
produces.

I recently traveled to
Portland, Maine, to speak with Alan Pugsley and tour the
brewery. Located in a mammoth, 125,OOO square foot facility
on three floors, just outside of downtown Portland, the
Shipyard Brewing Company produced almost 5O,OOO barrels in
2OO4. During our interview, Pugsley spoke about the early
days of the craft brewing movement, why brewers should
personally thank Boston Beer’s Jim Koch, and whether Pugsley
is really out to take over American brewing.

ANDY
CROUCH How did you
get your start in brewing?
ALAN
PUGSLEY I’m English
and I’ve always loved English pubs. My first ambition was to
actually run a pub myself. But being young and without any
money, I ended up getting directed into the brewing side,
the technical side of which is all biochemistry. In England,
breweries can own up to 2OOO pubs. Actually, brewing is
everything that I loved about biochemistry so it worked out
perfectly.

My first job was at the
Ringwood Brewery in Hampshire, England, owned by a man
called Peter Austin. He was one of the first brewers to set
up a small brewery in the late seventies. In England in the
sixties, the large breweries basically decided to
discontinue what we call cask-conditioned or real ales. They
put a real squeeze on that, shutting down some of their
plants and really forcing the publicans away from that. A
body called CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale) got set up as
a lobbying group. They were very successful in getting the
word out and so the attraction to cask-conditioned beer grew
more and more. So Peter Austin set up the Ringwood Brewery
in 1978 to produce a couple of different beers,
cask-conditioned bitters and so forth, and he was very
successful with that. And then he started getting calls from
other individuals interested in doing likewise. Peter had
been a professional brewer for 25 or 3O years so he knew
exactly what he was doing when he was building his plant. He
started a consulting business to use his expertise and to
design and build equipment. I joined Peter in 1982 to learn
the practical side of brewing and then worked with him
building, designing and installing breweries all over the
world, which is eventually how I got to the United States in
June of 1986.

I was contacted by David
Geary, of the Geary Brewing Company, to setup their brewery
and design a beer called Geary’s Pale Ale. I had a two-year
contract there. This was at the stage where there were only
about 5O breweries in the country, very few micros. Anchor
Steam was out there, Sierra Nevada just got started. Geary’s
was the first craft brewery to open in New England.
Commonwealth beat them to the punch as a brewpub, but
Geary’s was the very first microbrewery in New England at
that time. So it was pretty exciting, but it was right at
the forefront in a pioneering role to see if craft brewing
would work in America. It obviously has, and did, and so I
started getting inquiries at that stage, like Peter had five
to six years previous, to help design and build breweries in
this country. So I started a company called Pugsley Brewing
Systems International – working in alliance with Peter
Austin back in England. We had all our equipment made in
England and then I received and installed all the equipment
on this end.

I finally came back to
Portland in August of 1992 to really focus on the consulting
side, which was really starting to boom. In January of 1991,
I received a call from Richard Pfeffer from Gritty McDuff’s,
which I had set up in 1988. He said he had a friend who was
interested in doing something in Kennebunk. I flew down from
Canada and that friend was Fred Forsley. Fred signed a
contract with me a month later and we opened Federal Jacks
in June. At that time, I needed somewhere to train people
and have a brewery to show people as I was getting all of
these inquiries. So I asked Fred if he wouldn’t mind if I
used Federal Jack’s facility for that. And he said, “No, not
at all, provided that you look after the entire brewing
operation.” I said, “That shouldn’t be any problem.” And
that’s what we did on a handshake.

AC
From the early days, what did you think of the possibility
of craft brewing taking off in America?
AP
There was a lot of interest and some of the imports, like
Bass Ale, were doing really well, particularly in this area
in Maine. Sierra Nevada was making inroads in the West – so
there seemed to be opportunity. With Geary’s in the first
few years, to be honest with you, it was a struggle.
Everybody who was a large domestic beer drinker saw the
color of the beer and thought it would be way too strong. In
actual fact, the alcohol content was really less. So that
was the big challenge. We were lucky in Portland. There are
a lot of people and pubs who wanted to have something
different.It was bit by bit, struggle by struggle to get
more taps. And then the bottles came out about three months
after the draft and that’s when we started getting more
visibility. It was steady, slow, hard, pioneering work. You
had to sell every bottle.

AC
How has that changed to now?
AP
It’s completely changed. The bigger market for craft beer
exists now, obviously. The craft beer market since those
days has grown every single year.The craft brewing segment
of the market is not going away. Back when Geary’s started,
Sam Adams was just starting. Even though it really wasn’t a
microbrewery as such, it was a contract brewing operation
where all the money raised went into marketing. Jim Koch is
a very good marketer. He did a great job in getting it out
there and turned it into a multi-million dollar brewery. So
that brand in itself helped pull others with it. All of his
marketing money was not only making people aware of the Sam
Adams brand, it was making them aware there was something
outside of Budweiser. And that’s really what he did. Even
though we’re competitors, at the end of the day, you say
‘well done’ and if you’re honest, you say ‘thank you for
doing it that way’. It certainly did help.

AC
After outgrowing the Federal Jack’s location, you opened a
package operation called Shipyard Brewing Company in
Portland, Maine, in 1994. What was the result of this
move?
AP
The odd thing is that as opposed to taking away from Geary’s
sales, it actually increased them. The reason being there
was one little face of Maine-made beer on the shelf which
was easy to miss. When you put Export Ale here and Geary’s
Pale Ale here, all of sudden you’ve got a billboard. If you
look in the supermarkets today, you’ve got Shipyard with
three or four shelves and Geary’s with three or four shelves
and that’s how you sell beer. Ironically, our growth and
establishment helped Geary’s. Plus, I think it gave them a
little bit of a kick in the pants and realized they had some
competition. They realized they needed to do something else
and that’s when they came out with Hampshire Special
Ale.

AC
How important is it to have a brewery that is inviting for
consumers and that is not just an industrial plant?
AP
I think it’s absolutely vital. That’s why we love it here –
we’re right on the edge of downtown.We believe it is fully
vital for us to be right where we are. If you took this
whole model and put it out eight miles from here in a green
field, it wouldn’t be Shipyard. We’re part of the fabric of
the town.

AC
Did you see yourself eventually settling down with one
brewery or continuing the consulting.
AP
I actually still do consulting. To be honest, no one had
ever offered me an ownership position of any serious
proportion until Fred did when we established this
brewery.That really sealed that for me.

AC
You’ve been pretty influential with creating a flavor of
beer that is commonly found throughout New England. Can you
tell me about bringing the Ringwood yeast to America?
AP
Most people I built breweries for came to me because they
like the beers we produced and they wanted to brew
something, not equal to that or a copy, but in the fashion
of what we did, which was basically English-style ales.
That’s the technology I brought from England, the open top
fermenters, English malts, and creating nice, balanced
beers. With West Coast, American-style beers . . . there’s
nothing wrong with them but they’re very heavily hopped and
there isn’t a whole lot of balance in a lot of them. I
always talk about a nice, pleasant, easy drinking,
well-balanced beer where you take the malt and hops down the
aisle and they get married and live happily ever after and
have a nice life. In this case, they make a nice beer. Some
breweries are making huge, big beers. Sometimes our brewers
ask why we can’t make huge, big beers. Well, number one,
these companies tend to be fairly small. We’re the
thirty-first largest brewery in the country right now. If
you don’t have drinkable beers, you don’t get there. You
have the beer geek who loves to have an 11.9 percent stout
or bitter or something, which to me isn’t beer. You really
don’t get here from there. So, anyways, people wanted to buy
into that and I wasn’t just selling systems and equipment.
That was the last thing I wanted to do. If you wanted to buy
a brewery from me, we’ll fashion it after a traditional,
English-style brewery and we’ll be producing English ales
and we’ll utilize the Ringwood yeast.

AC
What has been your relationship with the Hampshire Brewery
and using the yeast strain?
AP
When I first did Geary’s, they wanted an English-style pale
ale. David Geary wanted a beer to be dry, crisp, smooth, and
something like Bass. I was obviously very familiar with the
Ringwood yeast and loved it and have built many breweries
overseas, through Europe, China and Africa using that yeast.
And it makes great beers and a diversity of beers. It’s not
just one flavor. It’s a big span of beers and styles. I
discussed it with Peter Austin and we agreed. So we brought
it over in vials and grew it up and there you have it.
Actually, the only two people who have access to the
Ringwood yeast are myself and Hampshire. It’s not only a
good flavoring yeast but it’s a great mechanical yeast. It
ferments very fast, it flocculates very fast, it attenuates
fast. Those are all great things and it means that our whole
cycle is done in eight days. It’s beautiful to work with.
It’s aggressive, it’s vigorous, it looks after itself.
Unless you are very unlucky or have a dirty, dirty brewery,
it’s going to keep trucking away. And those are the things
in a yeast that any brewery would want.

AC
How would you describe it and the beers it creates?
AP
Well, it creates the beers and the styles that we produce
the beers in. People who don’t brew with Ringwood say you
can tell every beer that is brewed with Ringwood. I don’t
buy that. We make a very, very light beer and I can’t find
Ringwood in there. On the other hand, we make Prelude, a
strong ale, and there may be traits there. But there’s no
more of a trait there than in other yeast strains. The kind
of yeast that Sierra Nevada uses, which way more brewers use
than do the Ringwood yeast, on the west coast, that’s all
you can taste. It’s funny, no one ever talks about that.
It’s because it’s an English thing I think. ‘Pugsley’s
taking over the northeast and created this Ringwood thing.’
There are some brewers out there who wrote some really weird
articles. One brewer said he’d rather get a sharp stick in
the eye than brew with a Ringwood yeast. Actually, I take
that as a compliment. He wouldn’t say things like that
unless he was jealous.

AC
How do you respond to some of the criticism you have
heard?
AP
I counter it with all of the consumers who have loved the
Ringwood yeast. We’re not here to please everybody. We’re
here to please the people who like our beers and we’ve got
lots of them.

AC
What are the future plans for Shipyard?
AP
We’re now moving out nationally and getting great reviews.
We’re starting to fill niches in different areas where
people can enjoy our beers and discover our styles of beer
made with the Ringwood yeast. Our goal is ultimately to be
available in all states. We’re not out to conquer the world
or be Sam Adams. We look for steady growth and on the beer
side, consistently producing our world-class ales. We’re
here for the long haul and the Shipyard brand will be here
long after Fred and I are dead and hopefully long after our
grandchildren. We really believe in how this thing is
branded.

We’d like to grow to
whatever we can grow to. The only thing we have against us
is that we’re in the State of Maine and there is a very
small population here. If we we’re doing the same thing in
Boston, San Francisco or Chicago, we’d probably be a 12O,OOO
barrel brewery by now. But on the other hand, it lets us
grow in a good, steady, controlled fashion. People like New
Belgium in Colorado, I just have no idea how they manage
that growth. They must have an ungodly amount of money.
That’s fairly unique. I’d rather growth less than that,
profitably, and have a profitable family business.

I think Sam Adams has found
how difficult it is to reach one million barrels and stay
there. They actually dipped under it last year. If you take
Twisted Tea out of the operation and the malternative stuff,
then the beer is down significantly. I think when you get to
a certain level, it gets harder and harder and requires more
and more money while the bottom line gets less and less.
That’s what breweries like Heileman, Schlitz and Pabst
found. That’s why they all went out of business.