Master Brew Revival: Hermitage Brewing

Hermitage Brewing is a Welcome Catalyst for Silicon Valley’s Beer Renaissance

Those arriving to grab a pint at The Tied House in San Jose’s San Pedro Square in May 2009 were dealt a rude shock. The place had just closed, and those peering through the windows into the dim light saw huge holes hacked out of the internal brick walls so the brewing equipment could be hauled out. While ominous looking, this turned out to be a starting point for a Silicon Valley brewing revival that continues to this day.

The equipment was carted three miles south to an industrial section of San Jose to form a production brewery for The Tied House, which was still going strong at their other location in downtown Mountain View. They named it Hermitage Brewing and focused on contract brewing, a common brewing industry practice that spares companies the high expense of building their own brewery. Instead, they effectively rent a brewery’s equipment to brew and package the beer under their own label. Contract brewing allows small local businesses to quickly bootstrap their organizations, and several prominent Bay Area breweries quietly got their start at the Hermitage facility before branching out into larger operations.

Contract brewing still accounts for about 75% of Hermitage’s operations. Today at Hermitage, Head Brewer and Cellar Master Greg Filippi handles the brewing production while Brewmaster Peter Licht oversees the facility operations. Little remains of the original equipment that formed Hermitage, but through luck and experience it has found its own identity.

With Single Hop IPAs, Less Is Sometimes More

One of Hermitage’s early commercial hits was a beer akin to a home brewing experiment: Citra Single Hop IPA, which was brewed with only one hop variety called Citra. Most IPAs are brewed with a blend of hop varieties to create depth of flavor, so Citra was an unlikely commercial success for Hermitage after Greg stumbled upon it seven years ago while experimenting with a single-hop IPA series.

“The first couple beers were Columbus Hops and then Amarillo Hops, and they didn’t sell too well. But then we released Citra Hop and things really took off.” Hermitage’s Citra Hop Single IPA took the Gold Medal in the 2011 and 2012 California Craft Brew Competition and is now a year-round fixture in Hermitage’s lineup. Hop growers constantly breed new varieties, which Greg seeks out. “Any given calendar year, there are three to five new varieties the growers release, and we usually try to get our hands on those.”

Hermitage’s single-hop series lets beer drinkers discover new and unique flavors hop growers create in their fields through breeding programs, though the single-hop IPA series. For those hesitating to try oddly named hops like Idaho7, Motueka and Exp 07270, Hermitage always keeps IPAs on hand with familiar hops proven to work. “There are about half a dozen that we know work really, really well, like the Citra we make year round is always good. Simcoe is good every time we make it.”

Sour Power

Hermitage’s drive for continual experimentation is evident in their barrel-aged sour ale program. Sour ales are often fermented with slow-acting yeasts that require a few months to fully mature. Hermitage usually incorporates fruit into the ales and ages them in wine or spirit barrels. Between its own operation and contract clients, Hermitage manages about 1,800 barrels, mostly from local wineries, including San Jose’s J. Lohr.

While fruit-infused sour ales are a recent brewing trend, they have a long tradition in Europe going back hundreds of years. “It was very traditional to use things like cherries and peaches and strawberries in sour beer,” explains Greg. “We draw some inspiration from that. We also like to play around with whatever fruits we can find that are in season.”

Hermitage typically fills 20 to 40 separate vessels to ferment the beer, which are then carefully blended together. “We’ll go through and try everything, making sure we like the way everything tastes,” says Greg. “Then we’ll start working on our blend, on how we want to cut everything back.” Hermitage uses five different yeast varieties in their sour cellar with complicated names like Brett Bruxellensis or Sacc Bruxellensis Trois. Some barrels are inoculated with bacteria to sour flavors. “Over the course of 40 barrels, you get a lot of variation. It’s about how can we combine all in a way so it’s rich, complex, and at the same time people actually want to drink more than one of them.”

Creating a South Bay Beer Destination

The gritty industrial area just south of downtown San Jose where Hermitage resides has emerged as a beer destination in the last five years, with no fewer than five brewery taprooms opening in roughly a square mile. Hermitage kicked this off, opening the region’s first taproom in the summer of 2013, mostly on a lark.

“We were already here, we had the space and we didn’t spend a whole lot of money to open it,” says Peter Licht. “So we just said, ‘Let’s open it and see what happens.’” People soon ventured into the industrial space full of junkyards and warehouses to sample local beer. To Peter’s pleasant surprise, crowds begin filling up the taproom, which quickly became profitable. While plenty of IPAs and sour ales can be found on the Hermitage tap list, visitors will also find other beer styles such as lagers, pale ales, stouts and Scotch ales.

Not only did Hermitage open the first brewery taproom in what was to become a South Bay beer destination, Hermitage was highly instrumental in the opening of second and third taprooms. That’s because Strike Brewing, which opened their brewery and taproom in late 2014, started as a contract brewery through Hermitage. And Santa Clara Valley Brewing, which opened their brewery and taproom in the summer of 2015, also began as a Hermitage contract brewing client. (Clandestine Brewing and Camino Brewing also opened up in the region this past year.)

So what does Peter think about the fact Hermitage helped create the breweries they ostensibly compete with? “I think it’s great. It’s cool for a place like San Jose to have a beer district, where people are looking for beer and can come south of downtown, and there’re a bunch of cool breweries here almost within walking distance of one another. I think it helps everybody.”