By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Two years after opening the doors of Juniper Brewing Company on Main Street in Bowling Green, Zach and Chris Tracy decided it was time send their beer out into the world to compete with the best.
“The competitions are always something we aspired to do,” said Zach Tracy, the brew master. It’s taken all the past two years “to get our feet under us with everything we’ve navigated through. But we felt it was time. My wife was pushing and saying we need to do these things for exposure.”
[RELATED: Zach & Chris Tracy’s dream is brewing in downtown BG]
Still Tracy admits he was a nervous making the move. “It’s not the easiest thing for me to do. … You’re putting what you do out there and letting someone judge it. … You never know what the interpretations will be. You’re leaving it up to someone else’s interpretation.”
But Chris Tracy said they should “put it out there and see what comes back.”
Juniper submitted two beers to the World Beer Championships hosted by the Beverage Testing Institute in Chicago. The beers, Zach Tracy said, are graded on how well they represent the qualities of a particular style of beer.
Juniper submitted its Soulshine IPA, in the West Coast style American IPA category, and their Interstellar Overdrive, in the hazy, or New England style, IPA. And both scored well with the Soulshine earning a gold medal with a score of 92 on a scale of 100. The top score of 95 or over earns a platinum. Interstellar earned a silver medal with a score of 86.
While most customers aren’t concerned about competitions, “it helps us exposure wise and helps get our name out there,” Tracy said. “It allows us as we continue to push out on distribution. This helps us with exposure in a crowded marketplace. But it’s also something personal. We’ve put a lot of work into it, and we want to see how it stacks up against everyone else who’s out there.”
Soulshine has been a mainstay for Tracy since his early days as a home brewer about 15 years ago. “It was the first beer Chris and I felt we dialed in. There was a lot of back and forth between the two of us. Oh, man, there were some awful iterations of that beer.”
The trend in brewing was “to jam as many hops in without enough thought of how we’re going to do that and how it might affect the beer.”
Zach would brew, and Chris would taste. “She has always been my grounding force,” he said. She’s honest, at times blunt. “With her feedback that’s how I learned .”
Working together, they tweaked the brew, “maximizing these hops flavors without making it extreme,” he said. “What we ended up with was a beer that was very approachable.”
Even drinkers who say they don’t like IPAs because they associated them with bitterness will admit that even if they don’t appreciate the beer style, they can understand why other people like this beer.
Interstellar Overdrive was one of the first hazy IPAs that Tracy developed. It has just a bit of bitterness, he said. “The hops are added in the back end of the process where you’re not getting any of that bitterness. You’re getting that juicy flavor and aromas that are characteristic of a hazy IPA.”
When he started brewing at home, hazy beers weren’t that popular. But he drew on the expertise of folks he met working in brewing in Cleveland and studying through the American Brewers Guild to guide him in developing his own brews in that style. “One of the coolest things about the brewing world is that if you ask, people are willing to help.”
Interstellar Overdrive has now been incorporated as one of the five beers in the brewery’s year-round rotation.
The feedback from judges won’t change the beers much. Soulshine “is pretty much where it needs to be.” Interstellar Overdrive has its own following. “Whenever we’ve taken it off, we’ve had people ask when is it coming back,” he said. “We certainly don’t want to change it so it’s not recognizable.” But the recipe may get minor tweaks.
He estimates he’s produced 50 different beers in the time the nanobrewery has been in operation. The brewery has a dozen taps. One is devoted to Funky Turtle hard cider, which is not made in house. There are five flagship brews: Soulshine, Interstellar Overdrive, Seven Storey Mountain, Rusty Cage, and Tall Boy. That leaves a half-dozen taps for seasonal beers and experiments.
In 2022, he said, production was up 67 percent.
He now has help in the brew house. Elena Wasserman, who has worked at Juniper since it opened, is now learning the craft of brewing. Her progress “is amazing,” Tracy said.
Juniper also distributes beer to about 15 other locations including Easy Street, Grumpy Dave’s, and his neighbors at Beckett’s Burger Bar, in Bowling Green, and Village Idiot in Maumee and Swig in Perrysburg as well as several Fricker’s and Beer Barrel Pizza & Grill locations.
Mostly they’ll get the flagship beers, though if there’s enough of a new beer, Tracy will offer that up.
Juniper is getting ready to participate later this year in the World Beer Cup and the Crafts Brewing Conference.
The couple, who are Falcon Flames, continued “to plug away” at the business. Things haven’t necessarily worked out as the business plan spelled out, like a pandemic delaying opening for a year. “We knew it was going to be a lot of work,” he said. “We continue to be happy about the decision we made.”
[RELATED: Juniper Brewing set to open without the beer for now]
And customers like both the beverages whether the beers or the coffees, and the food from early morning nourishment to nighttime snacks, as well as the atmosphere. Chris Tracy is 100 percent responsible for the look of the place, her husband said.
“We are in the process of expanding,” he said. They will add two more two tanks in the brewhouse. They will also be taking over neighboring space, formerly a tattoo parlor, for more tanks.
“We have some exciting things that coming for 2023,” he said. “We can’t speak on them yet, but that have helped spur that decision.”
