Root + Branch’s first offering, a double IPA called Dead Man On Holiday, is a delight. • Photo courtesy of Root + Branch
As bartenders at Tørst in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Anthony Sorice and Ryan Mauban served beers from some of the world’s premier breweries. Now they plan to open their own brewery, called Root + Branch, on the South Shore of Long Island, where Sorice is originally from.
Until then, Root + Branch will be, well, rootless. Sorice, who lives in Williamsburg, and Mauban, a California native now in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood, recently started their company as contract, or “gypsy,” brewers, who rent time and space at established breweries to produce and package their beer. Popularized by thriving international brands like Mikkeller and Evil Twin Brewing of Copenhagen and Stillwater Artisanal of Baltimore, all of which have leveraged the business model into existing or soon-to-be-built physical locations, gypsy brewing requires no expensive infrastructure. Rather than immediately invest in a facility, which “can easily cost like a million dollars before you blink,” Sorice said, the budding entrepreneurs will first realize their recipes by utilizing excess capacity at other breweries. “It grants us the opportunity to be completely hands on, which is very important to us, without financial or any other kinds of stress,” Mauban said. “We want to make sure everything is right about the beer before anything else.”
Root + Branch’s first offering, a double IPA called Dead Man On Holiday (the name comes from a line in “Darkness at Noon,” the Arthur Koestler novel), is a delight, easy to drink and easy to enjoy. Juicy and refreshing, with soft carbonation and vibrant flavors of citrus and tropical fruit, it was created early last month at Thimble Island Brewing in Branford, Connecticut, in partnership with Twelve Percent Beer Project, the contract-brewing arm of distributor Twelve Percent Imports. The day was an “emotional rollercoaster,” Sorice, who has been brewing commercially for four years, most of that time as the head brewer at LIC Beer Project in Long Island City, Queens, said. “Twelve-plus hours of learning the ins and outs on a new, at least to us, brewing system.”
Mauban will handle the company’s operations. A Certified Cicerone, he assisted with the beverage pairings at Luksus, the tiny restaurant in the back of Tørst that was the first to earn a Michelin star without a wine menu, and managed the beer program at Lupulo, a Chelsea restaurant from Michelin-starred chef George Mendes. (Both have since closed.) Mauban was selected by Wine Enthusiast as one of the Top 40 Under 40 Tastemakers of 2017 for his work at the latter. “It was nerve-wracking, for sure,” he said of the brew day. “But we’re really excited with the outcome and can’t wait to share it.”
In the weeks after making Dead Men On Holiday, Sorice and Mauban visited four New York breweries—Hudson Valley, Sand City, Threes and Folksbier—to create collaboration beers in celebration of Root + Branch’s launch. “Not only are they our good friends, but they’re big influences too,” Sorice said. All five brews will be featured, on draft, in a string of events starting tonight at the Haymaker Kitchen and Bar in Chelsea and commencing Sunday at Tørst. “Now we’re behind the bar in a different way,” Mauban said.
There will also be a limited quantity of Dead Man On Holiday released in 16-ounce cans at the launch events as well as at Thimble Island on Saturday morning. Over several of them at Sorice’s apartment, the partners spoke about their influences, what kinds of beers they want to make, and where they are looking for a space. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
SORICE: [Laughs.] Before I landed my first professional brewing job at Threes Brewing, I fully intended on completing a Ph.D. in Soviet history. A few days before defending my master’s thesis, I got the job.
SORICE: Three years. I’ve been brewing for about seven years now, professionally for four.
SORICE: I was traveling a bit to brewery releases for barrel-aged sour beers and mixed-fermentation styles. From there I started reading brewing books, as I became interested in learning more about their history, and how they were brewed. That sparked my interest. I started homebrewing with two close friends that I met as a bartender at the Black Sheep Ale House in Mineola.
SORICE: Yeah, we shared shifts for about four years. We’re both total beer nerds, into the trading game and all of that jazz. We also have similar palates.
MAUBAN: We’ve looked around the Huntington area for the most part. But we came across a potential space in Lindenhurst that we both like. It’s about 5,000 square feet.
MAUBAN: In a perfect world, late this year. But sometime in 2019 is a more realistic estimate.
SORICE: We never intended on gypsy brewing. For the past year, our major focus was on solidifying our funding to build the brewery. After figuring that out, we started meeting with a bunch of town officials across the island and browsing around for spaces. It’s been a slow process for us, as we were both working full-time jobs to support ourselves. The opportunity to gypsy brew arose late this past summer, and we contemplated it heavily. We didn’t pull the trigger on it until early December. It’s certainly made things easier for us now, in that I can get the beer into people’s hands.
SORICE: While we’re in the gypsy-brewing phase, I’ll focus on IPA and double IPA, as we have the means to package them in both can and keg with Twelve Percent. At the moment, we’re only aiming to produce one or two batches a month. When we have our space, I’ll brew a diverse range of styles that require a considerable amount of attention and time.
SORICE: Berliner weisse and saison are my favorites. I plan to referment these beers on berries and stone fruit grown on the East End and allow them to undergo a third fermentation in the bottle. The bottle-conditioning phase on mixed-culture beers is mysterious and lengthy. The beers undergo some weird phases; some are matured and ready for release in three months, while others can take longer than a year.
SORICE: Hill Farmstead, undoubtedly. I think their early works changed brewing in America. My first visit to Tired Hands, back in 2013, was also a transformative experience for me. I’m not sure this is an accurate way to describe their beer, but I see it as focused, nuanced experimentation.
SORICE: That’s tough. I will say that my all-time favorite brewer is Phil Markowski. I spent a considerable amount of time on the East End with family growing up, and have been going to the Southampton Publick House for as far back as I can remember. I had my first craft beer there, and fell in love with Phil’s specialty releases: Homage, Peconic County Reserve, Black Raspberry Lambic, Berliner Weisse, Scotch Ale, Russian Imperial Stout.
MAUBAN: For me, it was 2 Turtle Doves from The Bruery. It not only struck me as unique but ultimately led me down a path of a career in craft beer. It was brewed with cocoa nibs, toasted pecans and caramel malts so when you drank it, it really did taste like biting into a Turtle candy. Up until that, I was a Corona-Heineken guy. But 2 Turtle Doves blew my mind and I went through close to two cases of it. It also got me thinking, If this brewery is just down the street from me, I wonder what other breweries are out there for me to try? Once I went down that rabbit hole, there was no going back.
MAUBAN: I have two young children, so the better question might be: “What interests did I have before most of my free time disappeared?” I’m a pretty big NBA fan. My best beer trade ever was about $90 worth of beer for a pair of tickets five rows behind the Knicks bench, worth $1800.
w/Threes Brewing (Brooklyn, NY)
3.5% ABV
Lichtenhainer
Brewing something hoppy with Threes would have been a disservice to Greg Doroski, the former head brewer, so we went the peculiar route, like Greg. I began my professional brewing career at Threes, and it was here, under Greg’s mentorship, that I learned to “hate” brewing IPA. Thus, we whipped up a tiny old-world smoky sour, as close to the German style as we could. It’s light bodied and features moderate smokiness, delicate tartness and soft cereal grain character.Powers, Roots, and Radicals
w/Sand City Brewing (Northport, NY)
Double IPA
8.5% ABV
Kevin Sihler, the head brewer and an owner, and myself both have an affinity for hop-forward beers. I think we both brew them well, and we naturally came to the decision of brewing a double dry hopped double IPA that showcase our favorite hops: Galaxy, Nelson and Motueka. The beer has a very soft bitterness and is bursting with tropical fruits in the aroma and flavor.An Outstanding Contribution to the Historical Process
w/Hudson Valley Brewery (Beacon, NY)
Sour IPA w/lactose and blueberries
6.0% ABV
Hudson Valley is really pushing boundaries with its sour IPAs, and I’ve been a huge fan of their lower-pH hoppy beers since co-owners and brewers Jason Synan and Mike Renganeschi were both brewing at Bacchus. We were toying around with the idea of brewing a Berliner weisse and splitting the batch to dry hop one portion, and condition the other on fruit. As we continued to develop the recipe, the idea of marrying fruit with hops came to fruition, and we felt that the sour-IPA base would best serve this purpose. We constructed a foundation around Mosaic hops. From there we accented it with Citra and Galaxy hops; added milk sugar for a bit of sweetness and to balance the acidity; and we conditioned the beer on blueberries to bolster Mosaic’s dank blueberry notes.
I See You
w/Folksbier Brauerei (Brooklyn, NY)
Pale Ale w/satsumas
5.6% ABV
Head brewer Joey Pepper and I met back in 2012, at a Hill Farmstead bottle share. At the time, Hill Farmstead and breweries like Tired Hands were messing around with incorporating citrus juice and fresh zest into some of their hop-forward beers. I’d say they impacted the two of us equally, as we both began brewing citrus beers at home. We knew early on that we wanted to brew a pale ale, and we both had an “ah-ha” moment at the discussion table when figuring out the aroma and flavor we were going to shoot for. We decided to brew this with satsumas, for their pungent flavor and oily skin. Hop-wise, the beer is primarily hopped with Citra hops, but was also battered with Columbus, and whirlpooled with a touch of Galaxy. The title of the beer is a play on the ICU, or International Citrus Unit, calculation that Hill Farmstead owner Shaun Hill implemented to roughly quantify the amount of citrus oils he was incorporating into his beers.
