Twenty minutes southwest of Pigtown, in a Columbia industrial park, Zachary Michel ’09, spends his days figuring out how to let people know about another fledgling brewery. UMBC’s beer-brewing contingent is the other way around: young, high performers who tried this, tried that, and ultimately figured out they could throw everything they’d learned into beer. Some people know at freshman orientation what they want to do with their lives. Today, there are about 7,000 breweries nationwide, the vast majority of which are small operations, each run by a handful of people, putting out a keg here or a six-pack there of beer that might be called Snow Pants or Trolley Problem or Mistakes Were Made, and which are as alike to a National Bohemian as Camden Yards is to the grassy field behind your parents’ house. In between are lightly bitter pale ales, medium-bitter India pale ales, very bitter double India pale ales, beers brewed with cherries or watermelon or raspberries, beer brewed with Old Bay.Īnd while macro beer isn’t going anywhere - two huge companies, Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors, still produce 90 percent of the beer for the western market - the number of craft breweries increased by 600 percent between 20. There are clean, light Kolsch styles and, on the other end, dark stouts fortified with coffee or chocolate. Now, as anyone who’s drank a beer in the past 15 years knows, the types and brands of beer available are as head-spinningly diverse as the UMBC campus itself. Imported, slightly more expensive, meant Heineken, Amstel Light, maybe a Molson. This writer is old enough to remember the days, not so long ago, when restaurants divided their beers into two categories: “domestic” or “imported.” Domestic meant Budweiser, Bud Light, Miller Light, maybe Michelob. Not Your Dad’s Beer A Hysteria Brewing Company brew. Josey Schwartz ’11, Yasmin Karimian ’11, George Himonas ’11, and Amir Karimian ’08 of Suspended Brewing Company. As if either of them needed even one more thing to do. “You should be a professor,” says Karimian, half-joking, herself by day a contracts attorney with Amazon. “I could go on and on forever about ‘why beer.’” All of which means that, increasingly, that next six pack you take home or pint you sip just may have been made by someone who’s spent some time in, say, Patapsco Hall. They also research it, and study it, and market it, and sell it, and package it, and obsess about it. They brew it, yes, but that’s just the start. But for a remarkable group of UMBC graduates who consider beer more of a calling are devoting their professional lives to beer, and specifically to craft beer - complex, interesting, sometimes far-out beer. Many of us enjoy beer some would even say we love it. I’ve slept in the lab, voluntarily and involuntarily.” “We’re the brewers, the bartenders, janitors, the taxmen. “We’re everything,” Schwartz says, of the roles he and co-owner Yasmin Karimian ’11, political science, fill at their shop. With a low-key indie-rock mix as his only company, he was sweeping up. It was the end of a long day - one of many, many long days to come until they finally sold their first beer in their new home. On a cold night in a converted Pigtown theater, Josey Schwartz ’11, interdisciplinary studies - one of two owners, brewers, bartenders, marketing managers, painters, and drywall hangers behind Suspended Brewing Company - wasn’t doing any of those jobs. In an industry that rewards ingenuity and thrives on comradery, hard working UMBC alums are making their alma mater proud - one pint at a time.
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