Jamie Floyd's Mission in Life Seems to Be to Bring Happiness to Other People. And Maybe to Get Them Kinda Drunk
Your Friendly, Neighborhood Sasquatch.
BoozeWeek was on the scene at the Sasquatch Brewfest to sample the beers and enjoy what has got to be the most civilized beer festival on the planet. Cornucopia took pity on us as we sorted the pennies from the lint balls in our wallets and gave us an amazing tempeh Philly sandwich for cheap. We accidentally got in the wrong Ninkasi line but the kind person at the booth gave us a sample of the Imperial Sasquatch anyway, meaning we got to try the festival’s blockbuster brew without having to wait in the humongous line winding its way towards the stoic line of Honey Buckets. We met people wearing necklaces with teeny bier steins (with teeny dregs of beer in them) who insisted we take their seats. And the next week we caught up with Ninkasi owner/brewer and Brew Fest organizer Jamie Floyd, who was kind enough to tell BW about the history of the festival and beyond.
BW: So what did you think about this year’s festival? How has the festival grown since it first started?
Well over the years it’s grown in a lot of ways. This year we had 150 people at the Brewers’ Dinner and in the past I think 90 was the most that we had, so we had a significant increase in that. We sold out early. It’s also grown in terms of the number of people that have come. We actually sold out of glasses at about 7 PM. There were 3600 people that came through the door and we probably turned away 400 this year. Sometimes at festivals people will give them plastic cups and charge them less money, but we knew there would be less beer on tap so we didn’t want to let people in and just have 15 of the original 40 beers on tap or them. We intentionally run out of beer at that festival. A one-day fest is different than a two-day fest. We have a bunch of beer on tap ad then it’s gone it’s gone and it works itself out that by the end of the festival, usually mostly what’s left at the end is the lighter beers, because everyone goes for the big ones right away.
BW: What was the first brew to run out?
JF: I’m not sure. It might have been Imperial Sasquatch.
BW: Yeah, there was a big line for that one.
JF: There was a mix-up; there was supposed to be two kegs of it, but only one showed up. So we ended up replacing it with Believer instead of Imperial Sasquatch. We had intended to have two full kegs, but it was 3 or 4 in the afternoon and it was gone, so this might have been the one. There were a lot of people who wanted to drink it.
BW: Was this the first year that Imperial Sasquatch came out?
It’s the first time it was re-constructed since the Wild Duck went out of business about six years ago. Glen passed away seven years ago and it was maybe a little over a year later that the Duck went out of business.
I wanted to ask you about the different special brews at the festival. There’s imperial, legacy, and Glen brews.
JF: Well, Imperial is more directly related to beer itself. Imperial and “double” are used to describe styles of beer that are bigger than normal. Imperial has been used for a long time with stouts; it’s actually been around since czarist Russia. The British would send beer to czarist Russia, and the beer was higher in alcohol content and hoppier than normal beer like an India pale ale so that it would make the journey across the continent. Alcohol is a preservative and hops help fight off bacterial infection. It won’t prevent it, but it creates an environment that isn’t as happy for things to grow in it.
BW: So it wasn’t made stronger just to satisfy crazy Russian alcoholic appetites.
JF: It was a diplomatic relationship. India pale ale was created in the same way. They’d ship beer to India to the colonials when the British were in charge, and IPAs were also stronger and hoppier than normal pale ales. There’s archaelogical evidence to suggest that once the beer got to India it was diluted a little bit; so instead of staying as strong, they’d get more out of it. It seems like that beer wouldn’t be all that good, because it’s not that easy to just add water to it. There are a lot of things that could go wrong with that. This is a new theory, but they’re pretty sure that they did that. It was always assumed that the beer just stayed the same, but there’s been some evidence that they actually diluted it once it got to India.
Now this wasn’t the case with the Russian stout. That’s a whole different story. The word “Imperial” got added to other beers towards the late ’90s, so double IPAs were called Imperial IPAs. Sasquatch was a strong ale that the Wild Duck made and they made an imperial version of it. Sasquatch is from the Wild Duck Brewery; Glen Falconer’s nickame was “Sasquatch.” The big statue out in the front actually has his face carved into it. So that’s a big tribute to him; he was a very special guy. The statue was commissioned by the guy who owned the Wild Duck, and made by an old friend of Glen’s. It was in the Villard St. Pub this past year and before that it was at the Bier Stein, and before that it was at Rogue. So it’s more of a Eugene statue than somebody’s statue, which is pretty cool.
BW: Cool! His face!
JF: Yep, that’s old Sassy right there. His assistant brewer was nicknamed “Spank,” and SpankDog was of one of their brews, too. So they did that a lot. Now basically, people use the word “Imperial” for a lot of beers. When I worked at Steelhead, Hoppasaurus Rex was an imperial IPA, but when I started Ninkasi I changed to double. This is because I think “imperial” is really a reference for a stout. “Double” is a better description and is used by a lot of people to describe a stronger style of beer.
BW: In terms of alcohol content?
JF: Or hoppiness. It can be bigger in every way than normal. So that’s Imperial’s story. The word “Legacy” is associated with the Glen Hay Falconer Foundation. Walking Man has their legacy beers, and every year the winners of the scholarship go to Walking Ma and brew a beer, and all the profits the beer generates are given to the foundation as a part of the legacy. So Walking Man always has legacy beers. Obviously, we’ve done legacy beers – beers that are for Glen – and Rogue has a beer for Glen. Actually, at the brewers’ dinner, John Myer took wash from Glen and made whiskey, distilled it into whiskey. So now there’s Glen whiskey on the planet. And then other breweries have made beer with the name Glen in it that are a tribute to him. Not all of them are people who knew Glen, but they are people who would like to be associated with the festival and the idea behind it. So that’s the legacy part of it all. And again with Glen, there have been a lot of beers that are tributes to him. My friend Chip, who owns the Bier Stein, made a beer called Falconer’s Flight. He and I made a scotch ale together and called it “Glen Loved It,” because he was a big scotch fan. And now there’s a Glen distilled spirit. Basically the Sasquatch Brew Fest is a big love-fest where everyone just loves each other.
BW: You looked very happy there.
JF: It’s a happy day. It’s gotten to the point where I do pre- and post-work more than the day of, so I can enjoy it. I also host the brewers’ dinner the night before, so I’m on for that and everyone ends up staying up late, so Saturday… I got up 9:30 and judged home brew!
BW: How’d that go?
JF: It went well. There were 50 entries this year. The entries came from Northern California up though Washington. There are six categories, which is a smaller set of categories than with normal beer fests. There’s a British bitter category, because Glen made an ESB, and Glen’s Best Bitter was really popular. There’s a Glen tribute category, which is for beers kind of like Sasquatch or really crazy beers dedicated to Glen. There’s an IPA category; there’s a Belgian golden ale category. There’s a barley wine category…
BW: Are there limitations that restrict what a home brewer can do, and therefore the kind of categories?
JF: It depends on the process and what goes on. If you’re an extract brewer and not using grains to make beer but buying the extract, it’s really difficult to make barley wine because there’s a maximum amount of sugar involved, and so the only thing you can do is make less beer. Normally you would make five gallons, but to get a barley wine with extract, you would only make 2 to 3 gallons of it with the same extract. Otherwise you would need a mash tun and an all-grain operation so you can control the amount of sugar. But even in a normal brewing situation, typically that beer is the same way, where we make a smaller batch than normal to get the same amount of extract from it so that it’s strong enough. So for example, with our Imperial Sasquatch we used our 30-barrel system, but we got about 23 barrels out of it. That’s 46 kegs instead of 60 out of the batch, and it was 9% alcohol. So you have to stuff your mash tun full of grain and not take as much liquid out of it to get it stronger.
BW: Who won the home brew competition?
JF: It was an extra-special bitter that won first place. A barley wine took second place, and a black IPA took third place in the Glen tribute category.
BW: I read that you had won a blind taste-test where you identified a dozen IPAs and got to go to Munich? Did you prepare for it?
JF: You know, I didn’t. We entered that competition and I went with the intention of getting my own right. It turned out I missed two; they were two beers I had never tasted before. And so if I had ever tasted one or the other, I might have gotten those right. And then there were pale ales, too, and I actually tied the winners in the pale category, too. They got five right, and I got five right, too. I wasn’t eligible for the drawing because I’d won the other category, but maybe if I’d gotten six out of twelve, they would have been forced to give me two trips to Munich. This was associated with the Oregon Brewers’ Festival. I won the trip in July and went for Oktoberfest.
What got you interested in the Sasquatch Brew Fest in particular, and how did you end up running it?
Basically, this brew festival was created in grief of our friend dying. When Glen passed away, it was in a very tragic fashion. He was basically jump-starting his bus with a screwdriver – people understand that if they have buses; the arc of the electrical current starts up the bus – but it was in gear, and it ran over him. So he charged it and he was underneath the wheel and it killed him. I had been drinking with him the night before… and for a lot of us it was a really tragic situation. In our grief, we decided to throw a beer festival, a wake. A bunch of us got together and threw the festival. The family decided to use the money that was generated to start a scholarship foundation and we’ve been doing it ever since. So this is the seventh year that we’ve put it on. Last year, a group of us locally started the Northwest Legends Foundation, which is a non-profit organization that runs the festival now instead of the family. We use the profits from the festival to give to the scholarship foundation and to do local charity work. Last year we sponsored a swim team, because Glen was a swimmer. It’s usually less political and more community-oriented. We’ve given five hundred soccer balls to KidSports, because he was a soccer coach. White Bird was one of our recipients. He was a Country Faire guy and he spent some time at White Bird… so we try to pick things that are more about the community ad not necessarily political. And we started that foundation last year to separate from the family so just we would run the festival, because it was hard. They’re in Atlanta, and it was too much. Either the festival was going to fall apart dealing with the coast-to-coast aspect or we were going to take it over ourselves. Now, a couple years later, everyone’s happy. The family’s stoked because they just show up. We keep the spirit alive and they don’t have as much stress; because we do it ourselves, the stress is our own, at least, and not intermixed with them.
BW: Is there any way to determine how much beer was consumed at the festival?
JF: I would say roughly 60 kegs of beer. I think we had 47 breweries, and there were probably back-ups. I know we tapped that extra keg of Believer and there were other back-ups… so I would say anywhere from 55 to 60 kegs of beer.
BW: Can you tell me a little bit about your personal history with beer? When was it that you realized that beer wasn’t just something to drink, but something to craft?
JF: I moved to Oregon in 1990 to go to the U of O. A friend of mine and I in high school used to make hard cider, which was terrible. We would just take apple juice and baking yeast and make alcohol with it. It was disgusting, but we made it. We hid it from his family in the attic where it was like 130 degrees. I moved up here from California and within a few months I was calling my friends and telling them that the worst keg of beer I’d seen at parties was Henry’s, and in California Henry’s is kind of a Gucci beer. It wasn’t bottom line like it is up here. But that was absolutely the worst beer I’d see here. I didn’t see any Keystone Light or Bud Lite, all I saw was good beer. I moved out of the dorms and into the Camel Club, and the guy who became my best friend lived in the Lorax, and we started brewing beer in the Lorax together. Then we moved out of the co-ops and were still brewing together. When I graduated from college I got a job at Steelhead in the kitchen, and I brought beer into the brewers for criticism. And then about a year or a year and a half of working there, the head brewer asked if I was interested in working in the brewery with him, which was good. Because I was done cooking. I hadn’t gone to college to cook, and I was getting kind of tired of it. I ended up working for nine and half years in the brewery and about seven and a half as head brewer. In college, brewing was important, but not that important. We drank as much as we made.
BW: What did you study in college?
JF: Sociology. I studied bioregionalism and had a minor in environmental studies and women’s studies, and basically just studied everything I could about community. I’d always wanted to run my own business, and once I got into brewing and realized it was something I wanted to do, it clicked that I wanted to become the village brewer. That’s how Ninkasi was born. Breweries are different. They have different reasons for being in business. A brewer’s business is to make beer for our peeps. We have the opportunity to get involved in things by being Ninkasi, and I don’t have to be a public servant to be influential in my community; I can just do it by doing what I want to do instead.
BW: Do you have any words of wisdom for aspiring brewers?
JF: Making beer for yourself is really empowering. It’s really fun. The words of advice that I always tell people is to start making extract brew first and then get happy with your practices and clean before you start all-grain because you can spend a lot of money and a lot of time making beer taste bad without knowing why, so I always say: start simple. I also tell people that it’s important to have other people taste your beer if you want to get better. You really need other people to taste it and give you evaluations. People think of beer competitions as competitions and really they were set up for your peers to taste it blindly and give you feedback. So it wasn’t an ego-fest, it was more about finding out what was up with your beer in a way that was neutral. The real original orientation was learning. And I’d also say to home brewers.. well, at least for me, I taste home brew and judge it, I don’t mind it.. and you should bring it into a brewery and have them taste it. Don’t be afraid to let people try it. Not all brewers want to taste home brew, but I do. And almost every professional home brewer started as a home brewer. And there’s the Cascade Home Brew Society, which is a great club.If you want to take it to the next level. There are some amazing home brewers in this town that are world-class.
