Belly up to the bar: Sonoma brewery pours again

Sonoma Springs brewmaster Tim Goeppinger, now 40, has spent the last half of his life doing what most guys would like to do for a living: drink beer.

Not just drink, of course – the preferable word might be “taste,” though to get a deep sense of the brew’s appeal, flavor profile, texture and components, sometimes it’s necessary to take more than a sip.

About seven years ago – after learning the craft at Chicago’s Goose Island, Paso Robles’ Firestone-Walker and for a short time at Petaluma’s Lagunitas – Goeppinger and his brother Tom opened their own brewery on West Napa Street, under the name Sonoma Springs Brewing Co. The “springs” as it turns out is a bit of hyperbole: Goeppinger uses water from the Valley of the Moon Water District, which is ultimately from the Russian River, which he finds flavorful and clean enough to make an ideal base for his brews.

Wherever it comes from, the brewing process turns it into something different – one of, if not the, oldest known alcoholic beverages on earth. Fermented grain, hops, yeast and water, that’s all it takes to make beer – by law, according to the 500-year-old German purity decree “Reinheitsgebot.”

Goeppinger himself favors the Germanic style of beers, which can mean using German or Bavarian yeast cultures and even malted barley delivered from the Koln region for the Kolsch, one of Sonoma Springs’ signature brews.

As well as the Kolsch – which used to be called Uncle Jack’s, for reasons to be explained later – many of the Sonoma Springs beers are in the “Noma” group. There’s Noma Tribe, Noma Cloud, Noma Weiss Bavarian, and the delightfully named Noma Coma.

It started as a family business and it still is. Though brother Tom lives in Milwaukee, he’s officially COO. Kathy Powell – who goes by the in-house nickname “Mom,” because she is – is the business manager, and her other children Toby, Tyson and Tracy are all involved in one way or another.

Brew master Tim is setting up a new “brewhouse” in the brewery, which may sound redundant but makes a beery kind of sense: a brewhouse is one name for the stainless steel tank where the fermentation takes place. He’s especially proud of a brand-new Criveller fermenter, made in Santa Rosa, and a 10-year-old “copper kettle” style brewhouse with its own secret history.

“For being in the middle of wine country, it was quite a popular place,” he said of the first Sonoma Springs brewpub, originally located on West Napa across from the library. It was less than half a mile from the new location, at 19449 Riverside Drive, just outside Sonoma city limits in the El Verano area. “I was amazed how many winemakers were easy to convert to beer drinkers.”

He probably shouldn’t have been, since one of the hoariest mottos of viticulture is, “It takes a lot of good beer to make a good wine.” And Sonoma Springs is good beer, of that there’s no doubt: back in production after a layoff of almost two years, their entries to the California State Fair earned several first and second places in the beer competition this year.

That’s no easy feat. There are dozens if not hundreds of craft breweries in California these days. Petaluma, with its newer entries HenHouse, 101 North and Petaluma Hills, has become a hotbed of the trend only in the years since Sonoma Springs first opened, in 2008. Then there’s Lagunitas, to say nothing of Healdsburg’s Bear Republic and Santa Rosa’s Russian River Brewery, among half-a-dozen other breweries in the county.

But it’s the town of Sonoma itself that can lay claim as the legitimate birthplace of the craft micro-brewery, not only in California but nationwide. It’s not an idle boast.

In 1976, Jack McAuliffe decided he could brew beer as good as Steam Beer, a cult brew back in the day, which emerged from San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Company – at one time a thriving regional brewery that had fallen on hard times until appliance scion Fritz Maytag took it over in the mid-1960s.

McAuliffe didn’t have Maytag’s money, but he did have a lust for brew. He leased a warehouse on the outskirts of Sonoma, on Eighth Street East, picked up some surplus winemaking equipment and Pepsi aluminum tanks, and started producing under the New Albion label in 1977. They produced pale ale, porter and stout, and created a sensation.

Though New Albion closed in 1982 due to lack of funding, it was an influential failure. Don Barkley took the equipment (and probably some of the yeast) up to Hopland to start Mendocino; former employee Ken Grossman headed for Chico to start Sierra Nevada; faraway fan Jim Koch started brewing Samuel Adams – and the rest is beer history.

So in answer to our lingering question, that’s where Uncle Jack’s came from, named for Jack McAuliffe. But, funny story, apparently Jack Daniels has copyright on all variations of the name “Jack” in anything alcoholic. That’s according to Derek Drennan, who came aboard the Sonoma Springs family about the time the first incarnation of the brewpub closed down in 2013.

“It was too small,” said Drennan of the West Napa Street location. “The first thing we noticed when we came on board was that it wasn’t going to work with that amount of square feet. It’s just impossible in terms of scale, managing the costs, and having a big enough tap room to drive the kind of sales you need.”

They found the current location at the Riverside Business Building, in the same complex where the consignment shop Bon Marche was formerly located – which almost burned down last November, taking everybody’s investment (and Sonoma’s beer future) with it.

“We want to produce a special beer, and partner with the fire department to do some fundraising with them. They really saved our butts,” said Drennan.

The resurrection of Sonoma Springs marks a return to form for the Sonoma beer scene. They’re brewing a “core group” of beers year-round, with occasional and seasonal brews to add to the mix. There are no plans for bottled beer in the future – they won’t go shelf-to-shelf against Lagunitas’ increasingly national distribution – but they do plan to increase production, from the current 1,000 barrels a year to three times that in a year or two.

They’ve got the distribution to realize those plans, thanks to Drennan and Robert Raney, both new partners in the company who on the one hand are CEO and CFO respectively, and on the other hand pick up kegs, take them to likely brewpubs, and make the sale.

“The way self-distribution works,” explained Drennan, “you show up with kegs, and if they like the beer they buy it. Then you show up the next week with a different style.”

At this point, according to Raney, they have a large number of “highly valued partners in Sonoma and elsewhere” pouring their beer, but are forbidden to name specific places by distribution contract. You can however find their Kolsch in at least two restaurants around the Plaza, and in Petaluma, the East Bay and San Francisco.

Even after almost a two-plus year layoff, Sonoma Springs’ reputation remained strong. “We’ve absolutely re-engaged with our old clients, and many of them have welcomed us back with open arms,” said Drennan.

All this planning, construction, and brewing finally pays off next week, when the new Sonoma Springs Brewing Co. officially opens its doors at the Riverside location. (It’s been unofficially open for a couple months now, but they promise final improvements to the tasting room will make it better still that will be complete by Sept. 9.)

Opening Week will include several special events, including a beer and food pairing, two new beer releases, a Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting and other events to climax their two-year, third-of-a-mile journey from West Napa Street to Riverside Drive. Details are on their Sonoma Springs Brewing Co. Facebook page.

“I truly believe we have something special brewing in Sonoma Springs,” said Drennan with a sly smile. “No pun intended.”