Suds was used to having bizarre correspondence with customers. On Monday mornings, his brewery’s answering machine was always full of rambling meditations from fans, in the throes of booze-fueled mysticism at their local watering hole. But my winded message was different. Much different. I had a proposition for him. The ultimate random and, almost stalker-like, proposition: would he climb Germany’s largest mountain with a perfect stranger to locate a monk brewmaster who claims to have created an unrivaled holy beer. I expressed how I hoped to bring a fistful of cutting-edge growlers and transport the "golden nectar" back to the states to serve to our guests at the wedding. This would be the ultimate bachelor party (Sorry mom) and adventure for a guy who pretty much has shunned adventure his entire life. I shiver at Six Flag roller coasters and I’ve never been to a strip club — nor do I have any friends who would go to one with me.
Apparently my sincerity (desperation?) spoke to Suds’s own exploratory ambitions for himself and Barecove Brewery: to make beers so revolutionary and dynamic that they couldn’t be judged by ordinary standards, and to live a life less ordinary and extraordinary — always challenging the norms of the clockwork universe. And so, a week later, Suds gave me a call: "Come down to my beach cottage on Brant Rock this Saturday," he said. "We’ll talk shop and drink like The Prohibition might make a comeback."
I, by then, of course had begun to have second thoughts. What am I doing? Shouldn’t I be home with my wife-to-be updating our Knot page and editing our seating plan? A twelve-hour bus ride across Munich followed by a half day’s mountain expedition into the wilderness is crazy for anyone — especially a high school teacher who TiVos Jeopardy every night so he can carefully grade his students’ papers.
The day I met Suds at his brewery he was wearing flip-flops, warm-up pants, and a Larry Bird throwback jersey, and looked about as concerned with refreshing himself as the customers bellied up at the bar, drinking free samples. When tour groups visit Barecove Brewing, they’re greeted by a quote on the back wall from Benjamin Franklin: "Beer is proof that Gods loves us and wants us to be happy." From what I know of Suds so far, this playful creed could be etched on his tombstone. His eccentricity is of an agreeable sort: brewing beer, shunning corporate drudgery, living on the beach. For a while after college, he did some acting, and he still looks as if he belonged in, well, a Kevin Costner movie. He has a swimmer’s lean, long-muscled frame and a perpetual tan. His chiseled features are set in a blockish head and topped by a messy, spiked dirty blond quaff. When he talks, his lips twist slightly to the side and his voice comes out gruff, like a smoker singing karaoke in the back room of a Chinese restaurant.
Barecove’s reputation has been built on extreme ales like its Manmeat I.P.A., one of the strongest beers of its kind in the world. This was the first beer I sampled from them and its power instantly hit me like a torrential downpour. I was buzzed after one pint. It has more hops than LeBron James and it’s stronger than him too. "A typical I.P.A. has six percent alcohol and a busload of bittering," said Suds. "My version has eighteen percent alcohol and it’s brewed for two hours, with continuous infusions of hops, and then fermented with a barrage of more."
Although I appreciate its ingenuity and brilliant alchemy, I don’t care for it. To me it tastes like dead worms after an acid rainstorm — but I would never admit that to Suds. Plus, it’s a bestseller so maybe my palette is just not mature or refined enough yet.
"When you’re trying to create new brewing techniques and beer styles, you have to challenge the norms," explained Suds. "I admit, I’m an intrepid iconoclast, but I have a stellar palate. Those who don’t agree with that are probably just sober."
Like most successful craft brewers, Suds came to beer from something else. He grew up in Cohasset, the middle child of a real estate lawyer and the heir to a long line of pastry chefs. His mother and grandmother have won numerous national awards for their elegant and awe-inspiring wedding cakes. He never graduated from high school, though he went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in English, at Roger Williams University, in Rhode Island. In 1992, he moved to Manhattan, to take film classes at NYU and work toward a Master of Fine Arts. It was there, while waiting tables at Cuchi Cuchi Brew in Gramercy, that he had his first taste of craft beer. Before long, he was brewing beer in his cramped studio — his first was a pumpkin spice ale — and spending his afternoons at the New York Public Library, researching the beer industry.
The rest is history.
Barecove Brewings and Burgers, the first pub that Suds opened in 1993, sits on the main drag of Nantasket Beach, on Massachusetts’s southern shore. The pub’s name "Barecove" comes from what European settlers first called the town of Hingham — its location was inspired by his father, Bruce, who grew up in Hull’s Gut. He’s now co-owner of the brewery and does all the event planning and catering. The property is a stone’s throw from the ocean and the tavern has been a smashing success from the day it opened. The beer took a little longer. Suds had brewed fewer than ten batches before he decided to hang the OPEN sign, and he rarely used the same recipe twice. "I’d just grab whatever was in the cabinet and throw it in," he says. "I made a canned tuna and Ramen Noodle golden ale that gave me and a handful of customers the backdoor trots for three days!" The pub’s brewing equipment consisted of two eight-gallon kegs on propane burners, and a rack of modified kegs for fermenting the beer. To keep up with demand, Suds had to brew two or three times a day, every day — between shifts he slept on an air mattress in the cellar. When the beer was ready, him and his father would don hockey masks and snowsuits and bottle the beer by hand, with a siphon and mechanical capper. In ten hours they could fill a hundred cases.
By working in small batches, Suds became the MacGyver of experimental brewing. He made a medieval gruit with Twizzlers and wasabi. He made a summer seasonal with baked beans and clam chowder from Legal Seafood. He made a stout with roasted peanuts from Fenway Park and black olives.
His unconventional and bizarre handmade beverages caught on in a flash and he quickly became the Tiger Woods of the extreme-beer era.
My fianc© is sixty percent of my age, and I am old-fashioned enough that it bothers me. Her name is Maureen and she is an accounting manager for a big health insurance firm in Boston. She is neat and efficient in her every little thing, from her shining marmalade hair to her careful calculations of Excel spreadsheets.
On a muggy Wednesday night, we dangled our feet over the edge of the Charles River, watching the listless rowers and sailboats reflect off The Big Dipper.
I had already mentally checked out for my sashay, but there was still a kind of magic in having my arm around the delicate shoulders of a girl by moonlight, hidden from the hustle of the homeless by the Esplanade, breathing the warm, moist air. Maureen plumped her head against my chest and gave me a butterfly kiss under my jaw.
"The summer wind came blowing in," I sang, gently.
"From across the sea," she sang, warm breath on my deltoids.
"It lingered there and touched your hair and walked with me," I sang.
I’d been startled to know that she knew Frank Sinatra. He’d been old news even when I was a teenager. But her parents had given her a thorough — yet eclectic — musical education.
She heaved a dramatic sigh. "I am going to miss you," she said. "You better come back to me in one piece."
"I’m going to come back to you with Reece’s Pieces and a few growlers full of intoxicating ale that even your grumpy uncle Al is going to love."
She reached up and gently tweaked my nipple, and I gave a satisfying little jump.
I felt her smile against my shirt. She loved being engaged — loved hip wedding venues like The Artist For Humanity Center — loved to try to convince me to agree to spend more money on printing out fancy colored menus and place cards.
I loved it all too, but I really loved just sitting there with her, watching the water and the ducks. As much as I was in my glory, I was also fired up for an adventure.
Once I stepped on the plane, my heart dropped and I was consumed by an overwhelming anxiety that stemmed from already missing Maureen. But I overcame the awful feeling in an instant. A sexy and stylish forty-year-old Cougar seated across the aisle told Suds that from certain angles I look just like Ryan Seacrest. Or maybe it’s John Cusack. It’s somebody kind of famous, and by the time I finish feeling good about this, it doesn’t matter. The two pints of Arrogant Bastard we had on the way in start warming my bowels, and anyhow you should see my new hiking boots. Timberlands, baby. I bought them yesterday at Marshall’s for $40 and had them polished twice in the airport prior to takeoff.
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