Effigy in Retrospect: The Early Years, pt. 1
Humble Beginnings: How an Accidentally Delicious Easter Beer Launched My Brewing Obsession
In this series, I explore my introduction to craft brewing and dive into the origins of the project that started an obsession. Effigy Brewing was a vehicle to collaborate with my friends, my heroes, and my favorite breweries. Take it as a cautionary tale, or a road map to a lifetime of back pain and losing money. Anyway, here’s how it all started.
My interest in brewing beer first budded in 2008, while living in Ithaca, New York. Like most professional brewers, I started off as a homebrewer with too much confidence and ambition. I hadn’t been much of a drinker in my early adulthood. I attribute this to my childhood best friend’s cool parents letting us drink a little wine if we agreed to stay home. Either way, my 21st birthday came and went without a drop of alcohol. Fate, however, would drop several thousand gallons of beer on me over the next decade and a half.
Shortly after I turned 21, I took a job as a barista at a local coffee roaster. The café had a tavern and craft bottle shop in the back. On the day I was hired, I was asked if I’d be interested in helping them with their craft beer program; I was the only one on staff of legal drinking age. I agreed, because the job entailed drinking a pint or two whenever they tapped a new keg and taking home one six-pack of bottles per week until I was familiar with the wares. Even for someone who didn’t really drink, this sounded like more than a fair deal.
This was also my first introduction to copywriting—I was asked to write in-store advertisement copy, beer descriptions for the tavern’s menu, and promotional material for monthly “Meet the Brewer” events. It was at this job that I first discovered my love for craft beer, and also for descriptive writing. In retrospect, it was the perfect introduction to enjoying beer thoughtfully and developing my sensory evaluation skills. There were no stakes—no one else who interacted with me on a daily basis seemed to have more experience describing beer than I did. I vividly recall describing one local brewer’s lager as “a creamy butter plane taxiing on the tarmac of my tongue,” as if it were a compliment. If the brewer ever saw that, I apologize.
Over the next few years, I dove headfirst into both craft beer and professional writing. I moved to Brooklyn in 2008, where I lived a very bohemian lifestyle—as all typical straight, white men do in their 20s. I submitted poetry which I hammered out on my Smith and Corona typewriter to obscure journals, and even met with some modest success in that regard.
The craft brewing scene hadn’t yet entered the boom era that would arrive a few years later. My friends and I were limited somewhat to the omnipresent and underwhelming Sixpoint Brewery and the generic Coney Island–themed brews from Schmaltz. We were, however, spoiled by Garrett Oliver’s magic at Brooklyn Brewery and the many German biergartens scattered across the boroughs.
I had never considered making beer myself until I moved back home to Ithaca in 2010. I moved into my friend’s house on the edge of Cornell campus. This friend was a physics doctoral student who had moved to Ithaca from rural Georgia. He fascinated me with stories about selling bootleg cider to college kids in his dorms back home and how he saved on costs by making this “cider” by fermenting Mott’s apple juice with champagne yeast under his bed. “How entrepreneurial,” I thought. Before long, we were scheming to brew a slightly better product in our kitchen.
At the time, the only source of local homebrew supplies in Ithaca was in the original tasting room of Ithaca Beer Company. Their tasting room back then was a humble bar in a retail space with a drop ceiling and fluorescent lights, where they sold tasting flights much like a local winery would. During our trips to pick up equipment and ingredients, we would grab a flight for inspiration. Occasionally, we’d have the opportunity to chat with a brewer or production staff about their favorite brews. Back then, I thought it sounded quite romantic to be a brewer.
But over the weeks, as we sampled the Easter candy monstrosity fermenting in the closet, we noticed something strange—it was shockingly drinkable.
One of the first beers I can ever remember brewing in our kitchen was an abomination straight from the depths of my friend’s depraved mind—an imperial stout made with leftover Easter candy, which we raided from the local CVS the Monday after Easter, when everything went on fire sale. We filmed the entire brew session and posted it to YouTube for clout. He was always scheming for ways like this to become internet famous, which obviously never panned out for us.
The brew day went about as you would expect. We did a decent enough job brewing a stout by the numbers, but during the boil we tossed in at least a dozen marshmallow Peeps, a handful of jelly beans, some Milk Duds, peanut butter cups, a whole box of Nerds, and a full chocolate Easter bunny.
The resulting wort was thick, cloudy, and more of a putrid brown than the expected deep-chocolate-to-black color of a traditional stout. But over the weeks, as we sampled the Easter candy monstrosity fermenting in the closet, we noticed something strange—it was shockingly drinkable.
We watched, astonished, as all the chunks and debris floating in the concoction slowly sank to the bottom of the carboy. The color gradually shifted into what looked like a perfectly acceptable tint for an imperial stout. Soon enough, we had the opportunity to sample the finished product in its intended state: cold, carbonated, and served in a ball jar. To our surprise, it genuinely registered as “pretty good.”
Years later, I would come to understand our luck: while we saturated the beer with additives like food coloring, oils, and fats, we also threw in more than enough gelatin to bind to the junk and clarify the wort. It was sheer luck, and I often wonder if I would have maintained an interest in brewing if that beer had been a total failure. Many failed homebrewers have shared with me that they gave up any desire to brew once they realized how hard it is to make something even remotely drinkable. As a result of my dumb luck, I—on the other hand—felt like I could spin anything to gold.
Emboldened by our mad-scientist-level success, I threw myself into homebrewing. Our equipment was limited. We were only capable of doing what’s known as an extract brew—a wort made by boiling a liquid or powdered malt sugar, often supplemented with steeped grains for added flavor and color. Instead of buying a hop strainer to infuse our beer with bitterness, we strained the wort using a pour-over funnel and coffee filters.
Over the next year, my friend became busy with his schoolwork and left me to brew solo in our kitchen. I made a series of passable beers, which I brought to house parties and hardcore shows. The folks at these parties weren’t exactly discerning, so I enjoyed a nice stretch of friends and acquaintances enthusiastically over-inflating my brewing self-esteem.
Left on my own, I slowly amassed a collection of slightly-improved equipment, and a dangerously coddled ego. I hadn’t yet started calling my brewing project by any particular name; Effigy Brewing was still a few years away. At that point, it was still just a hobby—sticky, chaotic, and full of missteps. But the beer was starting to feel like mine.
In part 2, I’ll describe brewing my first real custom orders, forming a basic brand identity, taking a brief interlude to walk 500 miles, and trading keg of beer for a tattoo. Please subscribe to catch the next edition.
Thanks for reading and cheers,
Ben