Dec. 2012
This story was a part of a Maryland craft beer interactive project done for Capital News Service Maryland
By Anna Weaver
FREDERICK – When it came to picking a major in college, Tom Flores took a different approach to one many college advisers might suggest.
“I figured I’d pick a degree in what I struggled with the most in high school so that I could tackle it and not feel defeated by it,” he said.
That meant biochemistry, which had challenged him in high school. The degree in turn led to Flores’ decision to make his homebrewing hobby into a full-fledged career as a brewer. Today, Flores is the brewmaster at Brewer’s Alley in Frederick and he still loves a challenge.
Tom Flores, the brewmaster at Brewer’s Alley in Frederick cleans squash for the brewer’s autumn seasonal Oh My Gourd! Pumpkin Ale while brewer Maggie Lenz preps more squash.
On an early fall afternoon in the brewery’s new Monocacy Brewing Company facility, he and head brewer Maggie Lenz slowly but surely made their way through barrel after barrel of local squash as they prepped the ingredient for the brewery’s seasonal Oh My Gourd! Pumpkin Ale.
As Lenz cleaned pulp and seeds out of halved pieces, Flores carefully watched squash roasting in an industrial-sized oven.
“What we’re trying to be consistent at is delivering the fullest, most complex, most intriguing flavor that we can for any given beer,” Flores said.
He has been at Brewer’s Alley for 15 years, and his boss, Phil Bowers, said Flores has helped streamline the brewery and helped it grow through its recent expansion.
“He’s very meticulous, very quality conscious,” said Bowers, adding that Flores also loves to talk beer with anyone. “You can pretty much get cornered by him for hours at a time because he’s very passionate about it.”
Flores knew he was interested in beer long before he was legally allowed to drink it. His childhood friend Ashton Lewis’ parents would bring back beer from trips to places like the Caribbean and Israel and let the two then high school-aged boys try them.
Together the high schoolers commandeered brewing equipment owned by another friend’s dad and started experimenting. Lewis remembers the first beer they made from an Irish stout beer kit had way too much roasted barley in it and was “god awful.”
But they eventually turned out some good batches. Flores pointed out that the beer he made as a high schooler was legally his parents. “I just happened to be the one making it,” he chuckled.
While studying biochemistry at the University of Maryland, College Park, Flores interned one summer with Wild Goose Brewery in Cambridge. That internship firmed up his decision to be a brewer. In 1992, he went to UC Davis for a master’s degree in food science and technology with an emphasis in brewing. It was the only accredited university brewing program at the time.
While he was at UC Davis, Flores met Hugh Sisson, a Baltimore restaurateur who was starting up Clipper City Brewing Company and had come out to California for a short brewing course. Flores introduced himself to Sisson, “letting him know he wasn’t the only Marylander in L.A.”
Sisson was impressed enough with Flores to offer him a job with Clipper City even though Flores was not yet done with his masters.
“He took a really big risk on me because at that point I only had about three months of practical brewing experience,” Flores said.
Flores found himself finishing his master’s thesis back in Baltimore while assisting with site scouting, digging trenches and designing Clipper City’s brewing facilities. He helped launch the company, which now is better known for its Heavy Seas Beer brand.
“This was like jumping into the deep end,” Sisson said. But Flores was a quick learner.
“Tom is a scientist,” Sisson said. “He’s going to approach things from a very analytical, very detail-oriented, very documents-focused approach.”
That led to a high-quality product at Clipper City. But Sisson thinks production brewing, with its emphasis on getting beer out in large quantities on a certain time schedule, didn’t exactly hit Flores’ brewing sweet spot.
In 1997, the brewmaster opportunity at Brewer’s Alley, which is a brew pub that also distributes beer, presented itself. Flores said he was looking for a new challenge, so he took it. He’s created most of the seasonals and a few year round beers at the brewery while perfecting the quality of others.
Sisson regularly runs into Flores at brewery events and said that Brewer’s Alley seems like a great fit for him.
“Doing the flat out production side like we do, that’s not for everybody. But that’s not a reflection of talent or ability,” Sisson said. “I think he can be successful on my side of the business but I think he’s happier on the side he’s in.”
Flores, who almost double-majored in history in college, is also on a historical brewing kick thanks to two outside commissions. St. Mary’s City asked Brewer’s Alley to brew a beer for its 375th anniversary. He used a recipe and ingredients that would have been used by colonists. Thus was born “1634 Ale,” which is now on regular rotation at the brewery.
The brewery is currently in the midst of a two-year brewing project where it will make nine Civil War era beers for the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in commemoration of the war’s 150th anniversary. Flores said the experience has been like “alternative history.” He’s tried to create a beer that would’ve been recognizable to someone alive during the Civil War or colonial America.
“It’s a little bit of a stretch of fantasy to imagine this person tasting your beer who would have been alive back then,” he said. “The neatest part of that is when you actually have someone who is alive today go and taste it and love it.”
The historic recipes match with Flores’ brewing philosophy — melding time-tested recipes and techniques with new tools and technology.
Childhood friend Lewis said you might call Flores a beer geek. “Tom’s very analytical. He really likes to dig into the details,” Lewis said. “And that’s the cool thing about beer, there’s a lot of opportunity to dig into details.”
Sisson also classified Flores as a beer geek. “But you have to understand that this industry was built on the backs of beer geeks,” he said. “God bless the beer geeks. The industry wouldn’t be the same without them.”
Flores admits that he’s a methodical and detail-oriented brewer. But he said that while beer is often described as “an art and a science,” he sees it as an art first and foremost.
“[Science] really is subordinate to the most powerful tools of brewing which are the palate and the mind,” he said.
Phil Bowers said that Flores does not do anything fast. “He takes the time to investigate what we need to do,” he said. “He’s very focused on putting out best product that we can.”
But Flores says that just because he is deliberative in his brewing doesn’t mean he avoids experimentation.
“Some of the greatest adventurers in the world spent years planning their adventure,” he said. “The entire brewing experience is one great adventure.”