06 Apr Turning a corner: Sean Brady’s Brewery up and running in muncie
By John Carlson of TheStarPress.com
New Corner Brewing Co. might not be as big as Budweiser, but its beer tastes a whole lot better, and you can bet your paycheck it is fresher.
After all, its initial, signature beer — Rubicon, an American pale ale — is being brewed on the south side of Muncie.
“I’m excited about it,” said Sean Brady, New Corner’s
owner, president, brewer and everything else.
As he spoke, the Yorktown High School graduate was
showing some interested visitors through his brew house. Leading us to a garage-sized area where large, shiny receptacles sat inside a bigger structure, he pointed out the hot liquor tank, the mash tun and the 155-gallon boil kettle, in which he brews eight barrels of beer at a time.
Further describing the process, Brady — a big man with a short haircut — used terms like “heat strike” and “doughing in,” the latter describing when 250 pounds of grains are dumped into his mix, speaking with military precision. That only seemed fitting for a fellow who is also a lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard.
“I let the enzymes break down the sugar that the yeast can eat,” he said, going on to describe how the sugar wort goes into the boil kettle for the “first runnings” before “sparging” takes place, as a frantic note taker madly scribbled away.
Then it was on to adding the hops, boiling the stuff, cooling it on the “plate chiller,” routing it to the fermenting room and into the brite beer tank for conditioning and carbonating with a carbonation stone, which Brady described as being “just like an aerator for your fish tank.”
And speaking of water …
If you are wondering about the water he brews with, it’s Muncie’s own, perhaps lacking the cachet of Coors’ Rocky Mountain streams, but heavily filtered to take the chlorine out and any particulate matter down to five microns. Anyway, about the time your typical beer lover processed all this,
you were just grateful to get to taste it and let ambitious guys like Brady make it.
“There’s a lot of science that goes on with it,” he explained, perhaps unnecessarily, sitting in his office where military memorabilia hung on one wall, and the business notes on a whiteboard included
the circled message in a child’s hand, “I love daddy very much!”
A Ball State University graduate who, with his wife, Lauren, has five children and a sweet Great Dane puppy named Brauer that must already weigh 60 pounds, he started home brewing on a hobbyist’s scale after serving a tour in Afghanistan, where he was a captain in the 1st Battalion,
151st Infantry. Soon enough, his hobby went from brewing kits to mash tuns to running his own brewery.
At one point, he noted, his brewing gear crammed his back porch, until his wife ordered him to “Get it out of here.”
Is brewing still a hobby?
“Not anymore,” he deadpanned, noting he launched New Corner after leaving years of full-time service in the National Guard for part-time, going pro as a brewer in January and acquiring the necessary state and federal permits to go into business.
His maiden shipments of Rubicon will likely leave the brewery in a week or so, heading for his first local customers, The Fickle Peach, Heorot, Savage’s Ale House and the Delaware Country Club. In Muncie, obviously, Brady has something of a unique customer base, given our city’sreputation as a craft-beer oasis.
“Muncie has that passion, and I feel like I can provide that product, a quality hand-crafted beer,” Brady said, adding that he feels part of a definite trend of local brewers making great beers for the areas where they work and live. “I’m excited about it. I think the industry is going to local brewers again.”
Dave Bilger thinks so, too.
One-half, along with Derrick Ayers, of The Star Press’ Talking Pints team, Bilger is an old friend of Brady’s from Yorktown High School days, plus an old Army buddy, having gone through ROTC with him.
“I agree with Sean, the way the beer industry is moving,” Bilger said. “Muncie is a smart, educated beer town. Having a great production brewery is the next logical thing here. To see (New Town Brewing Co.) actually lift off is a really exciting thing.”
In calling Rubicon an American pale ale, Brady differentiates it from the more ubiquitous British-style India pale ales, noting his hops and grains are grown in America. His hops, in fact, are grown in
Muncie. Once Rubicon is established, he added, he plans on adding seasonal beers, including Muntucky Rye in the summer, an Irish Red for fall and Dry Irish Stout for winter.
Besides kegs for bars and such, he added, his beer will be available in growlers, though not in 12 ounce bottles.
By the way, if you are wondering about the name, New Town, it represents a place where Brady has a long family history, a place now better known as Gaston. An old plat map of New Town graces Brady’s company logo.
All in all, what Brady — a man who looks like he could easily haul around a keg under each arm — is doing, appears challenging on any number of levels.
Still, you get the feeling he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It’s a labor of love right now,” he said.
New Corner Brewing Co. might not be as big as Budweiser, but its beer tastes a whole lot better, and you can bet your paycheck it is fresher.
After all, its initial, signature beer — Rubicon, an American pale ale — is being brewed on the south side of Muncie.
“I’m excited about it,” said Sean Brady, New Corner’s
owner, president, brewer and everything else.
As he spoke, the Yorktown High School graduate was
showing some interested visitors through his brew house. Leading us to a garage-sized area where large, shiny receptacles sat inside a bigger structure, he pointed out the hot liquor tank, the mash tun and the 155-gallon boil kettle, in which he brews eight barrels of beer at a time.
Further describing the process, Brady — a big man with a short haircut — used terms like “heat strike” and “doughing in,” the latter describing when 250 pounds of grains are dumped into his mix, speaking with military precision. That only seemed fitting for a fellow who is also a lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard.
“I let the enzymes break down the sugar that the yeast can eat,” he said, going on to describe how the sugar wort goes into the boil kettle for the “first runnings” before “sparging” takes place, as a frantic note taker madly scribbled away.
Then it was on to adding the hops, boiling the stuff, cooling it on the “plate chiller,” routing it to the fermenting room and into the brite beer tank for conditioning and carbonating with a carbonation stone, which Brady described as being “just like an aerator for your fish tank.”
And speaking of water …
If you are wondering about the water he brews with, it’s Muncie’s own, perhaps lacking the cachet of Coors’ Rocky Mountain streams, but heavily filtered to take the chlorine out and any particulate matter down to five microns. Anyway, about the time your typical beer lover processed all this,
you were just grateful to get to taste it and let ambitious guys like Brady make it.
“There’s a lot of science that goes on with it,” he explained, perhaps unnecessarily, sitting in his office where military memorabilia hung on one wall, and the business notes on a whiteboard included
the circled message in a child’s hand, “I love daddy very much!”
A Ball State University graduate who, with his wife, Lauren, has five children and a sweet Great Dane puppy named Brauer that must already weigh 60 pounds, he started home brewing on a hobbyist’s scale after serving a tour in Afghanistan, where he was a captain in the 1st Battalion,
151st Infantry. Soon enough, his hobby went from brewing kits to mash tuns to running his own brewery.
At one point, he noted, his brewing gear crammed his back porch, until his wife ordered him to “Get it out of here.”
Is brewing still a hobby?
“Not anymore,” he deadpanned, noting he launched New Corner after leaving years of full-time service in the National Guard for part-time, going pro as a brewer in January and acquiring the necessary state and federal permits to go into business.
His maiden shipments of Rubicon will likely leave the brewery in a week or so, heading for his first local customers, The Fickle Peach, Heorot, Savage’s Ale House and the Delaware Country Club. In Muncie, obviously, Brady has something of a unique customer base, given our city’sreputation as a craft-beer oasis.
“Muncie has that passion, and I feel like I can provide that product, a quality hand-crafted beer,” Brady said, adding that he feels part of a definite trend of local brewers making great beers for the areas where they work and live. “I’m excited about it. I think the industry is going to local brewers again.”
Dave Bilger thinks so, too.
One-half, along with Derrick Ayers, of The Star Press’ Talking Pints team, Bilger is an old friend of Brady’s from Yorktown High School days, plus an old Army buddy, having gone through ROTC with him.
“I agree with Sean, the way the beer industry is moving,” Bilger said. “Muncie is a smart, educated beer town. Having a great production brewery is the next logical thing here. To see (New Town Brewing Co.) actually lift off is a really exciting thing.”
In calling Rubicon an American pale ale, Brady differentiates it from the more ubiquitous British-style India pale ales, noting his hops and grains are grown in America. His hops, in fact, are grown in
Muncie. Once Rubicon is established, he added, he plans on adding seasonal beers, including Muntucky Rye in the summer, an Irish Red for fall and Dry Irish Stout for winter.
Besides kegs for bars and such, he added, his beer will be available in growlers, though not in 12 ounce bottles.
By the way, if you are wondering about the name, New Town, it represents a place where Brady has a long family history, a place now better known as Gaston. An old plat map of New Town graces Brady’s company logo.
All in all, what Brady — a man who looks like he could easily haul around a keg under each arm — is doing, appears challenging on any number of levels.
Still, you get the feeling he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It’s a labor of love right now,” he said.
Photo by Jordan Kartholl/ The Star Press
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