Above photo by Jolie Hackney

How did I discover Brendan Gough? Well. Let’s be clear. I did not discover Brendan Gough. But, man, did I wish I had.

Several years ago, a brewer pal, I now can’t even recall which one, told me that on my way home from the Firestone Walker Invitational in Paso Robles, I must absolutely make a stop at Central Coast Brewing in San Luis Obispo. And added that, “your mind will be blown.”

I think I involuntarily emitted a derisive laugh. After all, the FW Invitational is what I call my Christmas in June. It is singularly my favorite day of each and every year. Forty-plus of the best breweries on the planet serving their sublime brews to the best beer fans in the universe. It is perfection.

So how, after that day, could I possibly be impressed by some 20-year old microbrewery in SLO?

We arrived at Central Coast Brewing the Sunday morning after the Invitational, hungover of course, and anxious to get back to LA. It was to be a quick stop right as they opened the doors at 11 am to confirm the obvious, that the beers couldn’t possibly come anywhere close to the previous day’s glorious offerings, and then I could taunt the brewer pal who said so by asking if he had been smoking weed…or perhaps crack…before he suggested CCB would “blow me away.”

As we took our bar stool seats at the bar of the tiny establishment, CCB looked every bit the “microbrewery” that had opened in 1998 and been making the “meh” beers of that era for 16 years until the aforementioned Brendan Gough took the Head Brewer job in 2014.

The first easy observation that perhaps my brewer pal was not on crack were the medals on the wall behind the bar: 2015 GABF Gold Medal for Monterey Street Pale Ale; 2016 World Beer Cup Gold Medal for Lucky Day IPA; 2016 GABF Gold Medal for General Schwarz German Schwarzbier; 2016 GABF Silver Medal for Monterey Street Pale Ale; 2017 GABF Gold Medal for Monterey Street Pale Ale; 2018 GABF Bronze Medal for Lucky Day IPA; and, oh yeah, 2019 Bistro IPA Festival Gold Medal for Lucky Day IPA.  Yeah, yeah. Couple of these came after my visit, but you get the point.

The second sign that this was a wise stop was the arrival of Beachwood brewmaster Julian Shrago and his wife Fauna. Shrago is easily one of the most decorated and critically acclaimed brewers over the past ten years, so when he shows up to drink your beer, especially the day after FWIBF, the cat is, as they say, out of the bag. You have arrived as a brewer, and then some.

I don’t need to tell you that Gough’s line up of beers lived up to the hype. And then some.

This born and raised local kid had parlayed his award-winning homebrews into a shift brewer job at Firestone Walker for three years, and then took the helm at CCB for five years where he had quietly and, somehow under the radar, evolved into one of the very best brewers anywhere. Now what?

What would the next challenge be since emerging from the long shadow of mighty Firestone Walker just up the 101?

Answer. His own brewery. Liquid Gravity. He and his wife Celeste, aka The Hop Witch, bought local SLO brewery Tap It! and opened late last year. Most new breweries do not produce world class beer right out of the gate. There is usually a dialing it in period, even for an accomplished brewer. But Gough again defied gravity, oops, defied the odds and Liquid Gravity beer is already as good as it gets.

DRENNON:  Where were you born and raised?

GOUGH: I was born and raised in San Luis Obispo.

DRENNON:  What were you into as a kid?

GOUGH: When I was young, I was definitely into sports. I played travel baseball and basketball until high school. By the time I got into high school I had largely lost interest in team sports and really got into skateboarding and snowboarding.

DRENNON:  What, where and when was your first beer experience?

GOUGH: My first real beer experience was in Munich, Germany in 2002 at the age of 21. My buddy and I were on a backpacking trip through Europe. During our first day in Munich, we wandered into a beer garden and spent most of the afternoon drinking liter steins of proper Bavarian Hefeweizen. I remember being blown away by this magical cloudy beer that tasted liked spiced banana bread. I had never tasted anything like it. At the time I was drinking mass produced American lagers and I had no idea a beer could be so flavorful without being overly bitter. That day changed my entire life. I came back to the States on a mission to find more flavorful beer; eventually finding IPAs, sours and everything else.

DRENNON:  How and when did you decide to become a brewer?

GOUGH: Like many brewers, I started out homebrewing. I was studying Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing at Cal Poly. My mom gave me an old homebrew kit that had been in the garage for a decade. She had purchased it for my dad and he never used it. As soon as I got the kit, I started doing research online and was instantly hooked, spending every free moment I had listening to brewing podcasts, and honing my skills using an igloo cooler and a turkey fryer. After I graduated all I wanted to do was make beer. By that time, I had a part time gig at a local brewery and even though I didn’t know how to turn my passion into a career yet, I was hell bent on making it happen.

DRENNON:  How did you get the job at Firestone Walker, how long were you there and what did you learn from brewmaster Matt Brynildson and brew captain Dustin Kral?

GOUGH: I was at Firestone Walker for almost three years. When I got my interview up there I had basically no experience and no formal education at all. I was fresh out of college with my Marketing degree but all I wanted to do was make beer. Fortunately, I had a couple of good friends named Mark Fischer and Max Montgomery who I knew through the homebrew circuit and they both knew Matt Brynildson. As the story goes, Matt was looking to hire a brewer and Mark and Max had recommended me. At the time I was entering every local homebrew competition that I possibly could. I had won best in show at the Mid State Fair with a Kolsch and was becoming increasingly more obsessed with the art and science of brewing. So, even with very little experience and no formal brewing education I was able to parlay my reputation as a homebrewer into an interview at Firestone and the rest is history.

I credit Matt and Dustin with much of what I have been able to achieve as a professional brewer. Nobody executes with greater precision than the boys in Paso Robles. There’s obviously a lot of new brewers out there these days giving the old guard a run for their money but I’ll be damned if you could find a better group of brewers than they have. To me, they are the process gods in this industry. No disrespect to anyone else but if you’re having a fantasy brewer draft, Brynildson and DK go number one.

 

DRENNON:  How did you become the head brewer at Central Coast Brewing?

GOUGH: After brewing production at Firestone Walker for a few years I think I really just wanted to make my own beer and CCB was my opportunity to do that. I had known the owner for a long time and took the Head Brewing job there in 2014.

DRENNON:  During your time at CCB, you won a number of World Beer Cup and Great American Beer Festival medals in highly competitive categories. To what do you attribute that success?

GOUGH: Honestly, there are a lot of factors, but I think being able to use your palate to make small recipe tweaks to improve the beers is really important. Other than that, building a recipe that fits into the style and making sure you have good, fresh raw materials and minimizing oxygen pickup are all really important as well.

DRENNON:  I was about to go out on a limb (not really) and guess that recipe development is one of the most important elements in brewing fantastic beer.  How did you develop and cultivate that skill?

GOUGH: I draw a strong connection between having a good palate and successful recipe development. One leads the other.  If a beer doesn’t taste the way I like, I need to decide what about it needs to change. To me, this is really the essence of brewing. Experimenting with new processes, recipes, and techniques to continually try and make better beer. Any given recipe will taste different on every brewhouse so it’s up to the brewer to be able to understand what they are tasting and make adjustments.

DRENNON: Between work ethic and talent, which do you think is more important as a brewer?

GOUGH:  That’s a tough question. I think there are some inherent talents you need to possess in order to be a good brewer but I also think you can make up some shortcomings with work ethic. This question also brings up the interesting topic of what constitutes talent in a brewer. In other industries, I think talent is easier to measure. There are a lot of intangible qualities that go into being a good brewer. I know a lot of brilliant, engineer types that make bad beer because their palate is garbage. On the other hand, having a good palate certainly doesn’t make you a good brewer in and of itself. Much of what I do is efficiency evaluation and problem solving but if the beer is not good does being efficient really even matter? Ultimately, I think the most important traits for a brewer to possess are a good palate, good problem-solving skills, a mechanical mind, an understanding of science and a strong work ethic. All of these pieces sort of work together.

DRENNON: So now you and your wife Celeste, aka The Hop Witch, own your own place.  Liquid Gravity in your hometown, San Luis Obispo. That has to be equally exciting and challenging, especially when you toss in a pandemic during your first few months of operation. Tell us how you pulled it off.

GOUGH: It has certainly been a challenging time to open a new brewery. I think we’ve been able to hold it all together by remaining fluid and being able to adapt as more balanced distribution plan moving forward.

DRENNON:  What are your goals and also your biggest challenges (pre-COVID and during COVID)?

GOUGH: The goal for our entire team every day is to make the best beer that we possibly can and to stay positive and have fun while we’re doing it. We have an incredible team of all-stars that left good jobs to come and embark on this journey together. The challenges seem to change daily. As anyone who has worked in a brewery can tell you, it comes with a fair amount of stress. Tight deadlines, equipment failing and everything else that goes along with it. That’s why I think it’s so important to build that culture of family and friendship within the brewery. It’s much easier to navigate these challenges when everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals.

DRENNON: Do you have a favorite beer style to drink versus to brew, or are they one and the same?

GOUGH: They are one and the same for me. My favorite styles to drink and brew are crisp and hoppy – German Pilsners, West Coast IPAs and Pale Ales. That said, I enjoy brewing and drinking a wide variety of styles and really take pride in trying to brew the best examples of each style at Liquid Gravity. On our menu board you’ll almost always find a hazy IPA, a fruited kettle-sour, and an imperial stout. We offer a wide range of beers and I enjoy trying to make the best versions of those styles that we possibly can.

DRENNON: Since your IPA and hoppy beer resume establishes you as something of a “Hop God,” what is your professional assessment of the West Coast-style versus the New England-style?

GOUGH: (laughs) I don’t know about that but I do think there are some really awesome things about both styles. When hazy IPAs started making waves, I got on the hazy train pretty early and started making them regularly at CCB in 2016. I think the softer bitterness and fruit-forward expression of the yeast creates a fun and approachable canvas to present the hops. I drank a bunch of them when they first came out but eventually started getting a little “hazed out”. That said, I think brewing hazy IPA helped me improve our West Coast beers also. Back in the day West Coast IPA felt like a bitterness arms race. Everybody was trying to out-bitter the next guy which led to a lot of overly-bitter and undrinkable beers. I also think the low bitterness trend of hazy IPAs helped to create a more modern interpretation of West Coast IPAs. These new takes on the style are much more aroma and flavor driven than the overly-bitter IPAs of old. I also think a lot of drinkers who drink mostly hazy IPAs would love this modern take on West Coast beers but just haven’t been exposed to them yet. A lot of people think they don’t like West Coast IPAs because they don’t like the bitterness but there are a lot of really great breweries pumping out awesome West Coast beers that aren’t an all-out assault on your palate.

DRENNON: I’m almost positive you have zero free time, but what do enjoy doing most when it is not surveying the world from your own brew deck or most excellent outdoor patio at Liquid Gravity?

GOUGH: My free time is certainly limited these days. I do still try to get out for a round of golf from time to time. I also have my wife, two kids and three cats at home, so if I’m not at the brewery I’m usually trying to get some family time in.

DRENNON:  Let’s play the desert island beer game. You can only take four, so what would they be?

GOUGH: Hmmm…I haven’t done this in a while. I’m going to have to go with Tipopils – Birrificio Italiano (runner-up is Pivo Pils from Firestone but Tipopils was the inspiration for Pivo so we’ll go with the original); any West Coast IPA from the OG Alpine pub; Death & Taxes by Moonlight Brewing and, last but not least, Cantillon Gueuze.

DRENNON:  Excellent list!  So, if you weren’t a brewer, what would you be?

GOUGH:  A ballerina. And a damn good one.

DRENNON: (laughs) I’d like to say I can picture that, but I’d rather not. Let’s wrap up with your own assessment of yourself. If you had to describe yourself in one word or phrase, what would it be?

GOUGH:  I just asked my wife. She said neurotic. I think I’ll get a second opinion.