His combined experience brewing Heady Topper, assisting Hill Farmstead’s barrel program mastermind, and learning from Cantillon — the producers of some of the most beloved traditional sour beers in the world — might tell you where The Veil’s Head Brewer Matt Tarpey is now. How did he get here though?
This article was featured in RVAMag #27: Winter 2016. You can read all of issue #27 here or pick it up at local shops around RVA right now.
Once you meet Tarpey, you understand how. The road that he traveled towards starting his own brewery was clearly paved by his seemingly constant drive, plus gobs of enthusiasm and charisma. He started out as a volunteer at O’Connor Brewing in Norfolk, before moving to New England to pursue opportunities at Portsmouth and The Alchemist. After a chance meeting with Cantillon’s Van Roy, Tarpey hopped the pond to Brussels, Belgium to learn from the highly regarded brewery. Coming back to Vermont, he continued on at The Alchemist, and helped out at Hill Farmstead in his spare time, eventually going on to work directly under Head Brewer and namesake Shaun Hill.
Although reasons for Tarpey’s move from Vermont to Virginia were not entirely beer-related, he couldn’t have picked a better time join Virginia’s beer community, with more breweries producing more quality beer than ever before. The Veil’s contributions to that community thus far have mainly been big, flavorful IPAs, and while those aren’t going away, there’s a wide variety of things to come. Tarpey recently took time out of his always busy schedule to tell me about those future projects, the whimsical nature of spontaneous fermentation, and the over the top hopping schedules for their IPAs.
A lot of your popular beers are hazy, hop-forward ales that utilize newer, less well-known varieties of hops. What would you say are the main contributing factors to the consistent direction of your IPA program, and how do you manage to coax such vivid flavors and aromas out of the hop varieties that you use?
In terms of consistency, I would say that would just kind of go back to one: experience, and two: I guess it would be my OCD about different quality checks throughout the process. In my opinion, there hasn’t been one hundred percent consistency in the last six months, because I have been making subtle changes to adjust to our system, the particular yeast blend that we use. They may not be as noticeable to the average beer drinker, the difference between batch two of Crucial Taunt and batch six of Crucial Taunt, but to me they’re noticeable. I think we’re really starting to dial in how to work with the particular yeast blend that we’re working with, our system setup; we’ve been experimenting with different base malts. So I think, in terms of consistency, I think we’re really starting to hone in our process and our system here. Contributing factors to extreme aromatics and flavor profiles, hop-wise, that we have for our beers, I think, again, is a combination of experience, experimentation, and recklessness. [Laughs]
I’ve told a lot of brewers how much hops I use in our beers. Like I tell Trillium, and I’ll tell Monkish, and I’ll tell Bissell Brothers, and Other Half how we use our hops. Sometimes, those brewers have said I’m crazy. They start talking to me about diminishing returns, and all that kind of stuff, and it’s not important to me. That’s how it’s been, that’s how our business has been set up from day one. Of course, we are still a business, so we have to focus on profit margin and that kind of stuff, but that’s not the first and foremost, most important factor in our beer production. It’s the beer, and make the beer the best we know how, the best we can to the best of our abilities, with the best ingredients that we can get our hands on, and hope and cross our fingers that we can make some money off of it too. The money has never been, from day one, the interest or the focus of this brewery. It’s about seriously making the best beer we know how to make.
I’ve noticed some subtle changes in Crucial Taunt. Some batches to me are less what I call “pink,” less grapefruit, bubblegum, et cetera flavor. Sometimes, it’s even super bright.
I’ve been dialing back a few different things, trying to incorporate less bitterness in all of the beers. Trying to… well, I don’t really try but I’ve noticed that our yeast strain reacts differently over time, through different generations. We do a proprietary blend, and one of the yeast strains “flocs out” or drops out more, which creates a less turbid beer, so less hazy beer. I’ve noticed that people have said that there are inconsistencies because [they see that] one batch is hazy and another batch is a little more clear or bright… which is not the case. There’s no inconsistency. If you look at the brew logs, every step is exactly the same as the previous batch. It’s just that the yeast blend, over time, becomes different. It’s not a fifty-fifty blend anymore, it’s a thirty-seventy blend. It’s just the clarity of the beer. Otherwise, there’s no difference. Everything is completely the same as the last batch. I’ve been trying to work on that and shorten the length of generations of yeast and stuff like that, just so that, in the appearance of the beer, we can remain consistent for the public’s eye, and believe that we’re being consistent because the clarity is the same. I’ve been slowly working on some things and I’ve been very happy with how our beer has been coming out recently, especially in the last month, month and a half. I’ve been really proud of where we came from, to where we are now.
What is your process for choosing which beers to brew again? You put out a lot of beers that seem like one-offs, but then they’ll pop up again a month later.
The process for when beers return is first and foremost decided by… if I like the beer. We don’t do a ton of test batching here. We have a pilot system, we do small batches, but if you follow our social media, a lot of times we take that pilot batch and we make very approachable beers. We do the exact opposite of what we should be doing. We should be making approachable beers on the large scale, and then making these crazy hop bombs on the small scale, so we’re not having to use as much hops. We make approachable beers, like Mexican Lagers, and Saisons, and Wit Beers all on the small scale. A lot of times — we do a charity event every third Thursday of the month — and we debut ‘em on that day. So selection for beers that return: We don’t do a lot of test batching, so a lot of times we just jump into a fifteen, or a double batch, a thirty barrel, of a new recipe we’ve never brewed before, which is a little crazy, but it seems to be working. And in all reality, they’re probably just slight variations of a different beer. It’s the same malt recipe as one beer, but we changed the hops. Or, it’s a similar hopping schedule to one beer, but we slightly changed the malt, so they’re not that crazy different recipe-wise.
I’d say the main contributing factor of when a beer returns is if I liked it or not. If I don’t like it, then I probably won’t bring it back. There’s a few, which will remain nameless, that I did not like, that we will never brew again. I would say the second contributing factor to that is… I kind of go back when I’m writing the schedule out — because I usually write about six to seven weeks in advance — I go out and I say “Is there a beer that we brewed in the past that was pretty cool, but hasn’t made it back?” We either haven’t re-released it, or it hasn’t been brewed in a while or something like that. Sometimes I’ll throw that in there. Sometimes when I just have a creativity block, I’ll just go back and say “Well, we haven’t brewed that one in a while,” and then we just throw that in there because I can’t think of another new beer to make. We’ve been open seven months today and I think we have sixty different beers we’ve released. That’s like eleven or twelve new beers a month. That’s pretty crazy.
Is seasonality a factor? It’s odd and very nice to be able to taste tropical flavors in beer even as it gets colder outside. I know you have stouts, and saisons, and other styles, but is it a factor for your hoppy beer?
It’s never been a factor for us. Again, we don’t really operate like a lot of other breweries. I suppose in terms of production, we’re very selfish, or I’m very selfish. I brew beers that I want to brew. I don’t really brew beers because I think “The public might like this one” or, “Yeah, it’s October, we probably should make pumpkin beer, or an Oktoberfest or Märzen, something like that.” I don’t really operate that way. I’ve never really operated that way. So I kind of just make beers for us, and for what seems right, and what I want to make. I don’t believe seasonality will ever be a factor. We’ve released robust, milk stouts and imperial stouts in the middle of summer. We’re about to release a very dry, light, one hundred percent wheat saison tomorrow and it’s going to be fifty degrees.
So far we’ve seen a few wild- and mixed-fermentation beers from The Veil, with more to come in the future. Could you talk a little bit about making beer like that? It’s hard for me to comprehend how you weed out an undesirable trait in something that seems somewhat outside of your control.
So with wild beer production, it’s as simple as it sounds. It’s wild. There is not a ton of control. There is control and a lot of it does take experience, but you’re very right. We’ve produced some beers that have been super, super weird in barrels. They taste weird. Especially with the spontaneous — the spontaneous aren’t weird. I’m very happy with the spontaneous project so far. With the spontaneous, there is zero control. All I do is produce wort and then I put that wort in a barrel, then whatever happens, happens. It ferments and conditions with the microflora that’s in the air, and I can’t do anything about that.
It’s a beautiful thing.
Yeah, it’s amazing. I love it. I love the fact that I don’t have any control over it because I have so much control on the IPA production and then I have this other aspect where I don’t have any control. The only thing that really can contribute to the production of something beautiful from something so wild is my palate, or our palates, which is… that’s crazy. I know a lot of people that are extremely book-smart when it comes to beer production. They’re walking textbooks, but they can’t taste diacetyl, they can’t taste off-flavors. They don’t have great palates. It’s also kind of like music to me: You can learn how to play the guitar, you can learn how to play the drums, but if you can’t sing, you can’t sing. You can take singing lessons, but how far are you going to get with that? You just might be able to hold a note. I think that’s way more exciting to me, that palate is the contributing factor in the production of these beers. It’s been awesome. We’ve been experimenting with a lot of different yeast blends, for mixed fermentation.
We’ve got some really, really cool projects going on, and we will continue to have more. We’re going to be using the coolship for the first time tomorrow, with our friends from Oxbow. We’re going to do a collaboration with them, a mixed fermentation Saison with spelt and organic un-malted wheat from Maine, and then Virginia wildflower honey. It’ll go into the coolship, cool overnight, then we’ll rack it in some barrels with two different Saccharomyces strains, and three different Brett [Brettanomyces] strains, and we’ll inoculate it with their cultures too. We’re going to let that condition for a long time. Then, the following [Friday], Black Friday, we’ll be producing our first spontaneous beer of the season, so we’re back at using the coolship, and we’re back down into cold temperatures. I’m very excited about that. We’ve been having a great time with the wild production. We have a Flanders [Red Ale] in barrels, we have a sour Stout in barrels, we have five different mixed fermentation saisons in barrels, we have a Brett Farmhouse Pale Ale in barrels. We’re slowly starting to pick up over there. We’re approaching a hundred barrels at this point, in our other facility, of just wild beer. By the end of March, we’ll be up to two hundred barrels. We just ordered another one hundred barrels and they’ll be all full by the end of March.
All oak?
Yeah, all French oak. Again, me just being selfish — they’re lighter weight, and they’re more porous, so they’re easier. In my opinion, French oak is much easier to work with than American oak.
How did you come to choose Scott’s Addition as the site for your brewery?
Scott’s Addition was kind of on the radar from day one, from when we first started talking about this project back in the beginning of 2015, late 2014. We looked in Manchester. We looked kind of all over Richmond honestly. In all reality, no place had the ceiling height that we needed. The ceiling, the proximity of some residential [property] for foot traffic… it was just hard to find the perfect location. We were going to lease this space down here on the corner, adjacent to the handcraft building, but that didn’t work out. We had another space down there that we were going to work on, or that we signed a lease for, but the zoning was improper, so we canceled that one. This property fell into our lap, from the other two guys that we have a partnership in the ownership in this building. So our business owns half and these other two gentlemen own half of the building. This space was inadequate too, until they said they can raise the roof. Over there, where the tanks are, we actually had to raise the roof six feet.
We saw the potential of Scott’s Addition. I think it was an added bonus that this space was in Scott’s Addition. We would have liked to have been in Scott’s Addition because we saw the potential of the neighborhood, but it actually wasn’t imperative. I think it was the property in general, and the opportunity that we had with this property that drew us to this property, which so happens to be in Scott’s Addition.
Influences from breweries you previously worked in show up in Veil beers — New England-style cloudy IPAs, and Belgian-style wild ales, that kind of stuff. What makes a Veil beer a Veil beer?
There’s a very fine line between inspiration and imitation, and that’s a line that I think a lot of breweries walk, and sometimes I find myself walking that line, and it’s scary. I don’t want to. Everything about The Veil, everything I do here, I use the techniques that I have learned working with previous brewers, and I kind of make them my own. If you showed other brewers that I worked with my recipe sheets, they would be like “Oh, that’s kinda weird that you’re doing that” or “I wouldn’t do it like that” or “I’d do it like that, but I definitely wouldn’t do it like that.” I think it’s important to try to make everything you’re own, which is very hard these days, because there’s so many breweries out there that are making great beer, in Virginia, and all over the world. I think for all brewers, it’s important to do our best. If you find yourself walking that line, to try your best to lean on the inspiration and not the imitation.
Trust your own instincts. Trust your own ideas.
Exactly. Just go with your gut, your intuition. Just try to make it your own. In my opinion, one of the most exciting things about The Veil is that we aren’t tied to a big distributor, we aren’t tied to distribution in general. We don’t really distribute beer that we produce. All of our canned products are sold in-house, and then ninety-five percent of our draft is sold in-house. I think that’s the beauty of our situation — it’s that we brew for us, we don’t brew for the market, which is important. I think that helps us be true to ourselves. We don’t see a growing trend and jump on it. We brew the beers that we like. Sometimes you’ll walk in here and there’ll be nine different Double IPAs on, and that’s all we have. We don’t have a brown ale, and a golden ale, and a lager, and something else. We’re not brewing these hazy, juicy — whatever you call ‘em — New England-style IPAs. We just call ‘em Double IPA. We aren’t brewing these beers because they’re popular. We’re brewing these beers because we love these beers, and that’s what I feel comfortable brewing.
It’s where you came from.
Yeah, exactly. I’ve been a part of this growing trend of hazy, juicy IPAs in some shape or form, for the last four years. I started working at The Alchemist at the end of 2012, so this isn’t a trend for me. This is something that I love, that I’ve been a part of for years. I think it’s important to just do what you love, and do what you know, and hone in on that, and not just make beer for other people. Don’t make beer like “Yeah, y’know, we love making these beers, but we still have to have something approachable” or “We’ve been making a lot of approachable beers, and we see that this brewery’s doing really well making these beers. Maybe we should try to make a beer like that.” Neither of those are our mindsets. Our mindset for the brewery has been from day one: Do what we love, and love what we do, and stay true to ourselves, and do our best to make our beers recognized as being Veil beers. Not, “Oh that reminds me of someone else’s beer.” Which is hard, but, like I said, there’s that line that every brewery has a hard time walking, the line of imitation and inspiration. We always try to lean on the side of inspiration so we don’t find ourselves imitating.
You mentioned distribution. I heard months ago that you guys were interested in starting your own distribution company. Is that still happening? Why have you chosen to not go with any of the Virginia distributors?
We work with a new distribution company called Reverie Distribution. In the state of Virginia, you are not allowed to self-distribute. If you own a brewery, you are not allowed to have ownership in a distribution company. So, myself, my partner Dave, my partner Dustin, we have ownership in the brewery, so we cannot have ownership in the distribution company. Some close people to us have started a distribution company and we work closely with that distribution company. Like I said, ninety-five plus percent of our product is sold in-house so we don’t really send a lot of product out. While we have a contract with Reverie Distribution, Reverie does not pressure us to distribute. They say “We’ll take what we can get from you, when we can get it.” We love that relationship. Reverie also distributes Commonwealth and Ocelot, and they’re working on a few other brands too to distribute. Oxbow from Portland, Maine; they’re going to start distributing them into the state, so that’s the whole situation. The reason why we decided not to work with a big distributor is, big distributors have a lot of breweries in their portfolio.
You could get lost.
We can get lost in their portfolio. Also, big distributors have different views of what success is. They see that the more beer you can make, and the more stores you are in, you are successful. I go into grocery stores and I look at every can date, and a lot of times I see these beers that are in these grocery stores, and they’re three months old — a hoppy beer that was canned three months ago.
That’s tragic.
That is very tragic. That is, in my opinion, a piss-poor example of your product. If someone was to purchase that six pack or four pack, whatever it is, they take that beer home, and they drink it — that is not what that beer was intended to be, and I know that no matter what brewery you are. If it’s a hoppy beer and it was canned three months ago, that’s not what that beer was intended to be. So if they take that beer home, they have a piss-poor experience and then now they think that you can’t make great beer and now they don’t support you. More beer in more places, in my opinion, does not mean success. That is the exact opposite mindset of distributors. Also, freshness and storage conditions are imperative to us. Our product is one hundred percent cold at all times. Reverie Distribution’s delivery truck is refrigerated. A lot of big distributors don’t have refrigerated trucks, or they don’t use them as frequently as they should. They also do not store all of their product cold. They store it at ambient room temperature or sixty degrees, which is still not ideal for an unfiltered product like ours — all of our beers are unfiltered. Then, freshness. So if we’re to take this beer and say “Hey distributor, we have five half-barrel kegs for you.” They say “Okay.” They pick it up and bring it back to their warehouse to be logged into their inventory before their sales reps can sell the beer. The earliest that keg will hit the market is going to be six to fourteen days after they pick it up from our facility. With Reverie Distribution, they pick the keg up from us, and it is out to the market within twenty-four to forty-eight hours or less. We’ve actually kegged beer, Reverie has picked the beer up twenty minutes after the beer has been kegged, and it’s been delivered to wherever, Mekong, Heritage, whatever, within twenty minutes. So it’ll be under an hour that that beer has actually been delivered.
Incredible.
Yeah. So those are the reasons that we do not work with these bigger distribution companies. Also, I don’t want to be tied to a macro distributor. I don’t want to have any association with Budweiser or Miller or anything like that. Yes, you might have a craft division, but are you really focused on craft? No, you have the mindset of a big distributor, of a Budweiser. A sales model of Budweiser, which is not the sales model of The Veil, and the interests that we have.
You’re selling directly to the public here, so you’re serving a community of like-minded people, like-minded beer drinkers, even if they’re from out of state, or even if they’re buying a bunch of beer to trade some of it, or whatever. I think it’s a good thing.
Thank you, and I agree. They are confident in the product that they are receiving. They know it’s fresh, they know it’s cold, they know it’s stored properly. They know they’re getting the best value for these beers. They’re not getting marked up and price-gouged at bottles shops, because we’re not selling the beer to the distribution company at a discounted price and then the distribution company has to make their margin, so they mark it up. Then the bottle shop has profit margin that they have to reach too, so they mark it up even further. So they know they’re getting the best value, and they trust in the conditions of the beer, and they know it’s the freshest they could possibly get. I think it’s incredible and very humbling, that we’re able to have the support that we have from the local community and beer drinkers in general. That they continue to purchase the beer from the source. I wish that was the case for all breweries. I wish every brewery could do that, because every consumer would be receiving these beers in the conditions that they were intended to be, instead of a sick distribution-marketing game.
I imagine people complain about the prices of your beers, being fourteen to eighteen dollars a four pack. I can’t even imagine how much more expensive it would be in a bottle shop. It’s a little pricy for a reason, because you use a boatload of hops on all of your IPAs, and it is as fresh as could be.
Yeah, you think about it, there’s beers where like — we did IdonteverEVERwanttoBU, which is the double dry-hopped version of our double IPA IdonteverwanttoBU. Typically, the dry-hop for that beer is eighty-eight pounds, so times that by two. Total, for the entire batch, we’re using… I don’t even know, two hundred and something, two hundred and sixty pounds or something. Times that by fifteen dollars. We’re talking about thousands and thousands of pounds for one single batch of beer. We’re still not really making a ton of money off of these beers, y’know. In all reality, when you factor in malt, and all the utilities, and all the salaries, and all that stuff, we’re not just like swimming in, backstroking in money. We’re making profit, but everything is extremely reasonable. You look at the same beers that we’re producing versus the beers that our friends in like bigger cities are producing. Other Half and Trillium, y’know, they can afford to charge those prices. We’re still extremely cheaper than those breweries. We’re not charging twenty dollars for a four pack. There’re some other breweries up there that are doing that for their double IPAs. I think we’re still much lower than all of that. I don’t even think we’ve sold a four pack that has a “2” in front of it, for the first number. If you look at these other breweries, their prices are much higher than ours, which their locale might warrant that. We do our best to still remain fair for the product that we’re producing, which is all anyone can ask, in my opinion.
Words by Cody Endres
