Interviews

(Return to Interview list)

3/4/04: Brian O'Reilly, Sly Fox: 

I recently interviewed Brian O’Reilly, the brewer at Sly Fox in Phoenixville, PA. Brian’s been a great addition to our local brewing scene with his fiercely discriminating palate (often seen in the company of a gift for plain speaking that would have made Harry Truman proud), Irish good looks (don’t get my wife started), and his excellent range of malt beverages. I apologize for the delay between interview and transcription – the Amarillo IPA is already out and gone – but there’s plenty to glean here; details on the upcoming second Sly Fox in Royersford, for instance.

Brian: It’s going to be called Sly Fox. I don’t know if we’re just going to call it Sly Fox Brewery...it’s going to have a pub. This is going to retain the name Brewhouse and Eatery, and we’re not going to go with numbers, like I and II. They’re still discussing that. It will be called Sly Fox.

The kitchen’s going to be double the size; the pub’s going to be a little bigger.

Right. But we’re also going to have a game room, with pool tables, and the last I knew, shuffleboard was still in the room. I like shuffleboard. A lot. The other thing that makes it confusing is that we’re looking at the option of opening some of it in portions. It’s also going to have a room we’ll be able to separate to hold two parties of 40 or one bigger party.

It’s tight at 50 upstairs, downstairs is a funny count. It’s about 100, with the patio on it’s another 40. We have a couple hundred seats here, Royersford will be about 300.

The brewery will be able to produce probably 7 to 10 times the amount we produce here. They call this one a 15 bbl. brewhouse, but it’s really a glorified 10 bbl. system. The new system is a 20 bbl. Beraplan brewhouse, and we’ve got a lot of double-batch fermenters.

It’s a lot more. The brewery’s going to take up the back portion of the building. We’ll have our own entrance, a loading dock and all that good stuff, like most people who do real work.

We’re going to try to make the menu a little bit smaller than this one. We’ve got a guy working on that, so I don’t want to speak for him, but I think it might be a bit more eclectic – the most overworked word in restaurant lingo lately. It’s going to be two different menus (at the two places) for now. We’re making a menu change, but just like we always would, seasonally. We’ll look at tweaking (Phoenixville’s) menu down the road. We want to continue to improve quality here, but we don’t really want to change anything, especially not until we get rolling with the other place. At that point we may have some feedback from things we’re doing there that we may apply here.

We are going to have a liquor license at that location.

I think it only becomes competition if the management and staff don’t really support the idea of pushing the beer. We’ve had a good enough example here on how much we can impact sales that it will be fine. It may take away from some of the beer sales, but the appeal’s bigger and we’ll pull in more people.

There’s a lot of new housing in Royersford. It’s really close to Rt. 422, it’s right off the highway. Well, it’s about two miles, but you just turn left and go two miles, and it’s right there, so it will be easy to find. We’re just trying to build a pubby restaurant and get a place where we can pump out some more beer.

Initially there’s going to one hire. We’re negotiating that now. (Tim Ohst of Flying Fish) will be starting here in a couple weeks. We don’t want to get in over our heads and hire a huge staff. I’m going to get one key guy, and I have a feeling that with a few months of that place opening we’re going to have another position.

Well, we’re having a lot of success with the outside sales here, but even with the small amount we’re doing there’s a constant challenge between having seven beers on draft here, or have ten, and still sell some outside... We just think there’s a market for it. Owning a brewery is kind of like being in a rock band; you’re either on the way up or the way down. You’re either moving up to be the next Beatles, or you’re moving down and playing clubs.

We’re very happy with the product, we’re proud of it, we’re getting great response and want to supply more. The first phase is definitely going to be the draft. We’ve purchased the bottling line and we’re going to pop it in place and probably not going to deal with it until we get things rolling with the draft. If the draft sales are busier than we expect, we may put the bottling on hold for a little bit until we get caught up on that.

No. Right now I take one day out of my week to go deliver beer. It’s great to have that personal contact, but I’d be much better served to take one day of the week and do sales. It’s tough. We’re going to get a cargo van and do a lot of distribution in the two counties where we have accounts. We’ll probably keep the counties we have. But there are a lot of opportunities we don’t get because we self-distribute, like the Drafting Room up in Springhouse; they expressed some interest and they’re willing to take two kegs at a time, but it’s just really out of the way; everything I do is around here or in the city. Things like that we’ll be able to pick up. The guy who owns the All Star Café, up near Limerick, lives in Phoenixville and he actually picks up the beer on his way to work. That works, but it would be nice for him to just be able to place an order with his distributor. It’s impossible for us to service all that. We’d have to hire a full-time delivery guy, and I think our time is better spent making it. We’re going to be moving beer back and forth between the two places enough as it is.

Right. Stage two for this place, and I’m not sure when that will happen, is to start a cask ale program here. When we replaced the draft system here we freed up two trunk lines under the floor. One of them is going to be replaced with a housing for a triple hand-pump. My plan is to do a British-style pale as a house beer, that will always be on hand-pump. The other two would be used for, oh, Friday night we throw on a firkin of porter that I’d pulled off (the tank), or maybe for a specialty that had come and gone, or isn’t on yet, throw that up there. I’m not sure when we’ll get that rolling. We’ve had a lot of success with – replacing the draft system has paid off big-time. The (Giannopoulos family) is more and more open to spending money on things like that. We’ve got a promotion this month where we’re really pushing growlers, now that we’re able to fill them efficiently. So far everything’s really paid off.

It’s going to be 100% CAMRA-approved here. The biggest thing is to buy enough firkins to have inventory. I want to do a batch of beer for cask ale. I can tweak it, design it for cask. I don’t like the idea of "Would you like that cold? Or cask?" It’s a horrible question. I’d rather just say "That’s the beer. It’s cask-conditioned. Joe’s British Pale Ale. That’s how you get it." That’s how I’ve had success with it. Otherwise the server will, inevitably, no matter what you tell them...the customer will get the message of "one’s cold, and one’s something I’ve never heard of." So they always go with cold. That’s the plan here.

I don’t think we’re going to do a lot of cask ale up in Royersford. If there’s a demand, we may look at it later, but I think that’s going to be a niche for here. The brewery’s here. It’s smaller, we can do smaller batches, and with the coldbox set up the way it is, I can hang some plastic up and have a 50° space back here for the casks. Up there, we’ll be busy enough with the other stuff. I’d rather push it at one place. And...if you’re a beer guy and you’re coming to Pennsylvania, I’d rather give you a reason to have to stop by both places. I have a feeling that the other place might be a bigger draw because the brewery’s bigger, and the place is on a bit more of a grand scale, but this place will have its niche with the cask beer. We’ll see.

They’re going to share the profits with me very generously, we’ll put it that way. They’ve found someone who... they like the beer I make, and they like my business model or approach to it...

They might beg to differ. (laughter) And I think I’ve found some people who appreciate what I do.

Hey, I don’t blame you! Whenever you do a new project like this, it’s obviously a big step. My job is to make sure it’s profitable, their job is to make sure I’m happy after that. We’re definitely set up to do that, we’ll see what happens. It’s a lot of changes. So far, so good. I came in here and did what I said I’d do, and they’ve been generous with me. I don’t see why that would change.

I was just filling some casks with our first varietal IPA. Not that they’re all going to be varietal. December’s our ninth anniversary, and we’re going to have a party with nine different IPAs. This is what I realized. Local breweries have had great response with their IPAs. But I don’t like to drink them all the time. It’s just not my kind of beer: it’s too strong, it makes me drunk real quick, it’s really hoppy and kills my palate for anything else. But I realize that when something comes out, and it’s seasonal – for example, Victory’s Hop Wallop – I felt like I had to drink it! I enjoyed drinking it, and the fact that you can’t get it all the time made me drink IPA all night.

So I thought, why not do nine of them? Because every time I make Rt. 113 IPA it’s here and it’s gone, I can’t keep up. I get bored of just making 113, and it doesn’t yield a lot because there’s a lot of trub from the hops. It’s not like making something like Helles, where I get a lot more out of each batch. I get frustrated with that, but this way I figure, hey, I’ll just blow through nine as quickly as I can.

I’m going to save a keg of each for the party, and that night we’ll release the ninth one, which will be a double IPA.

I don’t know, I gotta pick a date.

Um, you know...the ninth leaps out. Nine beers, nine IPAs, nine years...

Is it on a Friday?

Is that good or bad? Hey, it’s a Thursday. That could be interesting. The idea is that the following year would be the tenth anniversary, and we’ll do ten beers.

But that’s what this brewery’s going to be used for. I’ve got a lot of ideas. If it’s really successful, I might even try to market a draft tap of rotating IPAs. This first one is made exclusively with Amarillo hops.

No, not all of them. Many of them, but not all. For instance, 113 is basically my ultimate IPA, a mix of British and American hops. I’m going to do a traditional British one, the next one will be all Cascades, and quite a few varietals: definitely the Cascade, the Amarillo, East Kent Goldings and Styrian Goldings. But I think, I’m getting a lot of pressure to recreate Ballantine IPA, and that might get in there. I’m starting to grab research and if I can...I don’t have a memory of tasting the beer. It’s tough to re-create the beer otherwise. That might be in there or not. Does anyone really remember what it tastes like? People saying things like Sierra Nevada’s not so hoppy anymore...it depends on what you’ve been drinking for the last two years!

I look at the success of IPAs recently, and like I said, it’s not my favorite style, I think it’s way over the top...but I figure if you’re going to go over the top, you might as well dive in.

I figure, do nine, do more than everyone else is, instead of just doing one double IPA for our anniversary, let’s just do nine. I love the idea of coming here and thinking, a sampler will get me f**ked up. Nine different 5 oz. pours will get me shitty! Of course, my goal’s not to get people shitty, but the idea is that there’s too many IPAs. Our regulars will probably just pick the one they loved the most, that’s no longer available, and have one or two pints of those. It’s just pretty cool that it’s that over the top. It should be fun. I’m going to have to arrange a driver for that, because it’s going to be the last time I’m tasting some of these.

I dunno. I really enjoy brewing the Helles. I get to do it frequently, it’s one of my favorite styles of beer, and I think I’ve slowly made some small changes to it over the past year that have just connected. I’ve made fairly big changes to it over the past 15 months. After I went to Germany last year, I tasted the helles over there again, and thought, you know what, I’m close, but... So I’m really happy with that, happy to work with a lager yeast and make that work. Besides that, all the different seasonal beers.

Helles and stout, two of the lower alcohol beers. I’m enjoying the pale ale lately, too. I drink ‘em all. People are funny. I love weissbier, but I don’t usually have a craving for it at night. But on a summer afternoon, out on the patio, a big tall glass of weiss...oh man, if I didn’t have so much work to do... Outside, I don’t know, it’s just the beer for me.

(Return to Interview list)