Dog & Pony Show

Whiskey Point Brewing:

WHAT IT’S LIKE RUNNING AMERICA’S MOST REMOTE BREWERY

Karl Klockars MiBrewTrail

Whiskey Point Brewing Company, located out in the waters of Lake Michigan on Beaver Island, may very well be the most remote brewery in America. Sure, there are small-town breweries that are separated by more raw mileage, but those are connected by things like “highways” and “dry land.” And yes, there are other island-based breweries, but most are connected by bridges; at most an hour long ferry ride. If you want to try a pint of Whiskey Point beer, it requires a two-hour ferry ride or a 15-minute flight over a 30-mile stretch of Great Lakes water, meaning once you get to the historic grocery store that houses the Whiskey Point brewery, you have definitely earned that pour of blonde ale, IPA or porter. I was gone for school and work close again. [laughs] We spoke with owner and and things, then came back in Q: Tell me about your brewing brewer Patrick McGinnity about 2013. journey, and why you wanted what it’s like to run a brewing Fun fact: I once spent more to bring a brewery back home business so distant from the than 12 months without leaving to Beaver Island. mainland, on an island with just a few hundred year-round residents: Q: Before we “ I moved here when I was 8, I graduated from high school here in a class of four — and 50% of us A: When I was teaching composition at Central Michigan University, someone got start talking went on to get master’s degrees. me a kit for about the brewery itself, let’s talk about the location: Have you been So yeah, I’ve been here my whole life, pretty much. ” Christmas and I started home brewing and really got started to get into it a full-time res- and kind of geek ident of the island for pretty the island at all. It was just a out on the science. And so I was much your entire life? busy time [and] it was about 11 always thinking, “Wouldn't it be A: I moved here when I was 8, I graduated from high school here in a class of four — and 50% of us went on to get master's degrees. So yeah, I've been months before I realized that I hadn’t left the island. And then at that point, I had to just stick it out and try to make it past the 12-month mark because, yeah, great if there was a brewery on the island?” It took quite a while before we even started getting real craft beer on the taps at the bars on the island. here my whole life, pretty much; you're never going to get that I wouldn't have been interested in starting a company somewhere else because I wasn't really into entrepreneurship — it was more that Beaver Island was missing out on the craft beer scene, and I knew that with all the tourism that goes along with craft beer that it would be a destination place if we could get it up and running. Q: How long has Whiskey Point been up and running? A: We’ll be starting our third year on like, the first of July. I won't say we haven't had a good year yet, but we haven't had a normal year yet. Our first year, we had all these building delays and things that pushed it until almost the Fourth of July before we were able to open, and then we just got slammed and ran out of beer. In 18 hours, we were out of beer. And basically we had to close down until we could brew more beer.

6 | www.MiBrewTrail.com MI Brew Trail | Spring 2021

Two lighthouses are on the island: Beaver Island Harbor Light (St. James Light), erected in 1870, on the northern part of the Island, which continues to aid navigation. Beaver Island Head Lighthouse on the southern part of the Island, erected in 1858, was deactivated in 1961.

Then our grain supplier went out of business and didn't tell us. So we were waiting on a couple thousand dollars in grain that never showed up — you know, a perfect storm of things going wrong. We lost almost half a month in our first year because we didn't have any supply. Then we were hoping for good things this last summer but obviously that didn't quite happen. We were running at about 50% throughout the summer. But I have a feeling that we're going to hit our maximum capacity [this year] pretty early on and we’ll have to get equipment upgrades going, because we're trying to streamline things and get as much beer out of the system as we can. Q: What's what's your favorite thing to brew, and what's the most popular beer you guys have? A: We started out with an IPA, a porter and a red ale as our initial lineup. The amber was my favorite recipe that we had, and then when our grain supply dwindled that first summer, we had to try to figure out what we could bring with what we had on hand. So we came up with a blonde ale, just from what we had. And wouldn't you know it - that's everybody's favorite, the one that we created in a hurry because we were trying to do something. Q: And what kind of brewing system are you working on? A: It’s all electric, because otherwise we would have to use propane or something. It’s just an electric system, a two barrel system from Stout [Tanks and Kettles]. We picked it up used from a brewery in Alaska, so it actually had to be shipped by barge from Alaska to Seattle, and then got on a truck and drove here and then got back on a barge to come to the island, so it had quite a trip to get here. So it's it's kind of small and cute, but we produce roughly 70 gallons per batch, and because we're maxing it out and trying to get everything we can out of it, we keep running up against all these things where it's like, “Well, yeah, we can produce more beer but we'll need more cooler space, because we don’t have a big walk in…” So trying to figure out which things to upgrade first is going to be the puzzle. Q: Are there any indigenous ingredients to the island that you’ve had a chance to play with in your beers? I’ve read that you have a Beaver Island native hop varietal... A: Yeah, we've brewed with that a little bit but we aren't really set up to brew with full cone hops for the most part, so I've already done it at a small scale — like homebrew scale. I still haven't had it tested to find out what it is; it may have been something that went wild from somebody's farm back in the 1800s and ended up in the swamp area. Mostly we don't have the liberty to experiment much just

Volume 2 | Spring 2021

See WHISKEY POINT on 31

At 55.8 sq mi (145 km2), it is the largest island in Lake Michigan and the third largest island in Michigan after Isle Royale and Drummond Island. The island is located approximately 32 miles (51 km) from the city of Charlevoix. Beaver Island had a total population of 657 at the 2010 census.

The island describes itself as "America's Emerald Isle" in allusion to the Irish ancestry of many of its residents.