brewing’ living the dream at Kuhnhenn By Brian C. Louwers WARREN — Eric Kuhnhenn started brewing beer in college; he later introduced the art to his brother Bret Kuhnhenn, who “went nuts with it” and started brewing while he still lived at home with his parents. When the parents wouldn’t let Bret brew at home anymore, he set up shop in the basement of the family business, Lutz Hardware Store on the corner of Mound and Chicago roads. Years later, the “brothers in brewing” find themselves in their dream jobs of running their own brewery, Warren’s Kuhnhenn Brewing Co. The Kuhnhenns’ path to brewery ownership started with their hobby and its logical necessity — access to ingredients and brewing supplies. “He (Bret) said, ‘You know it’s a booming thing where everybody wants to get into this stuff, and there’s not enough places selling it.’ So you have to close up early to go buy home brew supplies, and the guys didn’t have half the stuff we wanted anyway, so we started carrying the home brew supplies out of the hardware store,” said Eric, 40. By that time, they said, business at the hardware store had dropped off, as big-box stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot began to command more of the market for things like nuts and bolts in the early 1990s. “All we made our money on was home brew supplies, and screen and window repairing, key cutting. It was ridiculous,” Eric said. By the end of the decade, the Warren natives’ attention had turned to brewing and setting up the brewery, which officially became licensed in 2002. The equipment they needed to brew in larger quantities was purchased through an evolutionary process of sorts, where they sometimes capitalized on finds at auctions. A set of “brew-on-premise” kettles let them experiment with relatively small batches. The kettles are still used at the brewery by patrons, often during parties, wishing to brew batches of about seven cases of beer onsite to take home. Bret said they picked up an old peanut butter hopper from a cereal company, which is now used as a lauter tun. The mash tun/boil kettle of their two-vessel brewing system was a sourdough yeast starter tank in its previous life at a bread company. The brothers gave their father, Eric Kuhnhenn Sr., credit for many of the system’s modifications. The equipment allows them to brew about 800 barrels of beer a year, and about 90 percent of that is sold by the glass in the brewery’s taproom, which they expanded in 2008. The home brew supply shop, now located across the parking lot from the brewery, offers kits to make wine and beer, and ingredients, including about 60 different kinds of malt used to brew various styles. As brewers prone to experimentation themselves, the brothers said access to the ingredients is important, but so is creativity and patience. “When you look at our beer lineup that’s on tap, you’ll find the regular, like a domestic lager we make, but you’ll find a lot of the hoppy beers,” said Bret, 36. “We kind of specialize in the strong beers. “We’re not afraid to experiment. At nature, we’re really home brewers that experimented a lot. That’s what home brewing is about. You can experiment, just little five gallons at a time, but we experiment with just 230 gallons at a time.” The original building that became the brewery was constructed in 1929, where a wagon wheel and blacksmith shop owned by the Lutz family once stood. In what used to be the basement of the Lutz Hardware Store, the brewers keep casks of wine and used bourbon barrels filled with intriguing specialty beers. “They’re kind of like a sponge. They soak up a lot of the flavors that are associated with the bourbon,” Eric said. “As soon as they’re drained of bourbon they get shipped over to us and then we fill them with a new beer, and a lot of times it’s a higher alcohol beer that complements the flavor, like a barley wine. We’re really known for our bourbon barreled barley wine.” The “painstaking” and expensive process —the bourbon barrels cost about $100 each and can’t be reused — yield character in specialty brews that can’t be achieved in any other way. Bret said “distinctly different” beers are some of their most popular, though their Loonie Kuhnie Pale Ale is still their top-seller. They typically keep about a dozen beers on draft at any given time. Their Imperial Crème Brule Java Stout, brewed with caramelized brown sugar and vanilla beans, is a three-time People’s Choice Award winner at the World Expo of Beer in Frankenmuth. The 4th Dementia Old Ale won a bronze medal at the 2009 Great American Beer Festival in Denver. Kuhnhenn’s other specialty beers include the Raspberry Eisbock, a rich, aged lager blended with black raspberry juice. For lovers of Oktoberfest beers, the brewery’s Kuhnhenn Fest version is available all year long. The brothers relish the fact that the specialty microbrews are growing more and more popular, almost as if it’s a validation of something they’ve known for a while. “We’re right on track for making beers that people are looking for,” Eric said. “That’s why we’re kind of in demand right now for all that stuff.” While eventually the brewery could expand — particularly through wider distribution of their strong, specialty beers — Bret said he’s enjoying doing “the best job in the world.” “Don’t be afraid to dream and pursue it,” Bret said. “There’s a lot of people that have the same story, how they started their brewery from home beer making to … every little step of the way.” The brewery serves a limited menu of food, but also allows patrons to bring food in. They also offer a selection of wines and 23 different varieties of mead. For more information about Kuhnhenn Brewing Co. visit www.kbrewery.com. You can reach Brian C. Louwers at brianlouwers@candgnews.com or at (586) 498-1089. |
