Questions of Note: Dan Baker

When we look around we find breweries popping up everywhere, it almost seems like it happens over night.  The reality is building a brewery is a demanding process.  The side rarely seen by the outside world is all the paper work, the endless meetings (with backers, contractors, equipment, realators and on and on), build out on the brew space, I could go on but that is a different time and place.  After all that work running a brewery is at heart a labor of love.  This is bonus to the rest of us, otherwise we would have no beer outside our own homes. 

Dan Baker is one of those crazy people fighting the good fight to build a brewery home. We can look forward to Barking Cat Brewing Co. to be part of the growing Michigan craft beer scene thanks to his efforts.  And so to avoid me prattling on too much more, I will now share with you Dan's answers to the Questions of Note...

1.            What was the beer moment, when you knew you wanted to become involved with the craft beer renaissance?  

In Traverse City, MI - there was a place called 'The Brew Zone', a place where you could make your own beer under the watchful eye of a master brewer, etc.  He had a recipe, 'Hop Head Red'.  This was around 1998 or so.  I had been a Bells fan, but it was hard to get in TC at the time; the beer being made at the Brew Zone turned me on to another world of craft beer.  That place signifies a turning point for me.

 

2.            If you could have any beer in your hand right now, what would it be?  

I'm a 'homer' - Bells, Expedition Stout or Oracle.

3.            Can you describe your beer life in a song lyric/title?  If so what would you choose? 

 All that I could think of is 'What Have You Done for Me Lately?' - only because as a brewer, I am always trying to be better, and right now I am pushing to make better beer.

 

4.            Do you have a steady beer, or do you like to "play the field?"

 

Steady, go to:  always a porter.

5.            Crowded smoky bar or back porch watching the clouds float across the sky?

 Clouds, 72%, fall, cashews, chocolate porter, and a canoe trip down the Manistee in Mesick w/my wife.

And the lame one…

 

If tin whistles are made of tin, what do they make fog horns out of?

Liquid Nitrogen

 

Time for a pint...