E-Malt.com News article: USA, AL: Folklore Brewery and Meadery in Dothan now produces five beers

It started with a $65 homebrewing kit and the nastiest batch of beer Jeremy Pate had ever tasted. "My first home brew was just horrible," said Jeremy Pate, standing behind the bar of the Dothan microbrewery he and his family opened last year. "I didn't know what I was doing, that was in 1997."

Pate bought the kit from a Florida winery. He wanted to know whether he could actually brew good beer. He couldn't, at least not the first time. Over time, however, the taste of his home-brewed beer improved and kept improving, Dailyjournal.net reported on February 23.

"It was a curiosity," Pate said.

Folklore Brewery and Meadery now brews up to five beers: Wiregrass Wheat, Grateful Red, Front Porch Pale, Shadowcaster Porter and Snipe Hunt IPA. Folklore had its first public tasting in September at the Porktoberque festival and officially opened on October 31.

Pate's brewing background includes working for the popular Dothan brewery Poplar Head in the 1990s. He later moved to Atlanta and worked for the Dogwood Brewing Co. and Texas Cattle Co. When the Texas Cattle owner decided to sell the brewery, Pate helped find a buyer. The commission he received allowed him to move to Auburn in 2007, work part-time at the Olde Auburn Ale House, and take some courses that would help him open his own brewery. During his Auburn days, Pate began market-testing his own beer recipes.

Pate began consulting with brewers in 2009, helping them equip breweries or develop flavors. In 2010, he returned to Dothan and began planning and developing his own brewery, constructed on family-owned land just outside of Dothan.

"They realized I would not stop talking about it," Pate said.

The Folklore name is a nod to the Alabama legends of Pate's childhood ghost stories, myths, traditions or even old colloquial phrases. The owl in its logo was inspired by the number of owls that nest and hunt around the brewery's location.

Folklore is distributed by Adams Beverages and is served on tap at a number of Dothan restaurants. Folklore will soon be served in Eufaula and Auburn.

Pate expects to begin light bottling in the next 90 days and then full bottling by the fall so that Folklore beer can be sold in stores.

It takes about eight hours to brew the beer, which is then fermented for one week and conditioned for two weeks. Then, it goes in the kegs and to the distributor. The freshness, Pate said, is an advantage.

Alabama's laws regulating craft breweries and even homebrewing have been loosened in the last few years, including the Brewery Modernization Act passed in 2011 and last year when the state legislature made homebrewing legal. Before the Brewery Modernization Act, it was nearly impossible to open new brewpubs in Alabama because such establishments had to basically operate as restaurants in historic buildings.

The act removed many of the restrictions on microbreweries and allowed craft brewers to package their beer for distribution and off-premise sales. There is current legislation, House Bill 355, which would allow craft breweries to sell directly to visiting customers.

A number of craft breweries have opened in the state since the restrictions were loosened. There are nearly 30 microbreweries operating now.

Folklore's beers have an alcohol content of 5.8 percent in its wheat beer to 7.9 percent in its full-bodied Shadowcaster Porter. Pate is prepared to go up to 12 percent in a future beer. With the equipment at Folklore, Pate can brew up to 2,000 gallons of beer a month.

Despite the fact that Folklore's brewery is a little off the beaten path on Pate's family's homestead, people are seeking it out, he said.

"I've just come to realize that Dothan is and has been ready for a craft brewery to come to town," Pate said. "Unfortunately, you've got to go just slightly out of town, but you can go all over town and get the beer."

The Wiregrass Wheat is the most popular produced by Folklore, followed by the Grateful Red.


26 February, 2014