I’m walking towards a grey door lit by a single weathered streetlight at 3:15 a.m. on a Friday in mid-May. Stepping inside, the fluorescent lights sting my eyes while alternative rock roars in my ears. Water sprays from an open valve next to a tangle of hoses. Standing in the middle of the organized chaos is a man in a black long-sleeve shirt, brown boots, and tan cargo overalls. A pair of black gloves with “Nick” written on the grey cuff sprouts from his back pocket.
Nick Gislason, co-founder of Hanabi Lager in Napa, California, hands me a pair of earplugs, his smile drawing a full line between his furry mutton chops. We’re about to mash in for a triple-decocted lager brewed with a rare, almost unattainable grain called San Juan Bere.
I’m joining Nick and his motley crew for the second day of their arduous brewing season, a three- to four-day stint of sixteen-hour-plus brew days conducted only four times a year. Each is uniquely engineered around one specific, often hard-to-source heritage grain.
Nick bounces away to check a temperature gauge, and I think, “What have I gotten myself into?”
Find out by reading the full story in the new issue of Final Gravity, which graciously gave us the space to tell the story of Hanabi Lager’s obsessive devotion to brewing lagers with rare grains. Seriously, you don’t want to miss this one.
