Interview with COAST Brewing Company

I recently read a post on beeractivist about a new organic brewery in South Carolina started by a husband and wife. The brewery is called COAST Brewing Company in Northern Charleston, South Carolina. After reading the article, I decided to contact them for an interview about organic brewing and their involvement with Pop the Cap, a beer advocacy group. Owner Jaime Tenny was nice enough to respond to my questions about organic brewing and their operation.
Without further ado, here is Interview Number 3 (or 4 if you count Chris O'Brien) in my series of interviews with organic brewers:

How long have you been a brewery and how did you get started? We became official in March but it took until September until we were ready to brew. We did 99.8% of everything ourselves.

Why did you make the choice to be a "green brewery?
There was no other option for us. It is how we live our life and we couldn't operate a business any other way. At least we couldn't without a clear conscience.

What are some of the things that you do to be sustainable in your brewing and business practices?
It's not just about using organic grain.We think about the most energy efficient/green way to do something before hand, that's half the battle, and probably the most important one. Our spent grain goes to a local farmer, locally made biodiesel for our boiler, recycle and reuse EVERYTHING. Pretty simple stuff in my opinion.

What has been the most challenging part about starting a brewery, and in particular a green one?
Money. No difference in starting a green brewery vs. "non-green" exept for money. Since there was no other way for us, we simply had to make the better, greener choice but it all comes down to money. Cash flow is a major issue with breweries so spending more money on a better ecological choice is hard to justify up-front. So, since (in our opinions) we had no other choice it was easy. We either did it green now or we didn't do (or have plans to do it later when it can be done right). And of course, being flatout exhausted in the process. And I have no idea if what I just said will make any sense to anyone else.

In addition to organic materials, your website states that you also try to support local ingredients, what are some examples of this?
Well, that is the hardest part. Brewing ingredients are extremely hard to come by locally for us. There are no southern maltsters and hops don't grow well around here. So our only choices are any other additional ingredients. Some things in the works are local herbs (heather, coriander, are a few of what we are growing ourselves this year). Honey, easy to get locally.We are going to start experimenting with local grits to see what may come out of that. Local fruits like blueberries,, peaches etc...problem is I am not a huge fruit beer fan. We have just started looking into the possibility of working with southern wheat/barley growers to see if they can grow malting quality organic grains and then get them malted at Briess or the like. Fuel issues then become something to consider.

Could you talk a little bit about the activism you and your husband have been participating in regarding beer?
I am President of Pop the Cap SC. We are a grass-roots craft beer advocacy group. We worked to get the abv limit raised and it was passed in May 2007. That has literally changed the face of craft beer in SC. We now are focusing on better beer laws for breweries in SC. We have a bill coming out shortly addressing a few things. The ability for one business in a tier (manufacturer, distributor,retail) to be able to own more than 1tier. Onsite tasting and retail sales directly to the consumer. This would be absolutely huge for microbreweries to actually be successful! Honestly,we really need this or we just won't see any growth in SC brewed beer.

What advice do you have for organic homebrewers, or homebrewers in general? Don't stick to a certain recipe, explore on your own. Think about brewing organic for all the above reasons.

Where do you see organic brewing going, especially with the recent surg in popularity with a lot more organic beers on the market?
Who knows in this crazy market. I think the craft beer segment is blessed to have as much support from both local folks and people really into good craftbeer. So I hope they will continue to support their local brewery,especially if they brew organic. I think in time organic won't be looked at as different, you might not even know your drinking organic beer."It's really good beer, and oh, it happens to be organic as well"... and then the ball gets rolling. I also hope it will bring organic grain costs down a bit so we can stay competitive.

For more info on check out their website at: http://www.coastbrewing.com/
Salud!
The Bearded Brewer