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Address
740 Moowaa St Suite A, Honolulu, HI 96817 Hours of Operation Monday: Closed Tuesday-Friday: 4p–11p Saturday: 12p–10p Sunday: 12p-7p Phone Number (808) 754-6816 https://brokenboundarybrewery.com/ |
About The Brewery
Broken Boundary Brewing, Kalihi’s first brewery since the closure of National Brewery Co, aims to push the potential of brewing through authentic innovation while respecting tradition. Hawaii Beverage Guide had the opportunity to talk to founder and brewer Christopher Cook to learn more about the brewery.
Brewery Name (How was it chosen)
According to Chris, “We started looking at a couple of Hawaii place names, which was tricky as neither my business partner [at the time] nor I were born and raised here. Both of us have an immense respect for Hawaiian culture, and we did not and do not want to put ourselves into the position of explaining or translating the language to others who, like us, are not from here. In searching for inspiration for the name, I looked to understand how Kalihi got its place name. When I learned that Kalihi meant boundary, I started thinking about what boundaries meant to me. The ideas started to click together and the brand started to emerge. Speaking from a meta-perspective, boundaries are necessary for understanding limits when you're learning how to be or do something new. But at some point, boundaries stifle innovation. I think ultimately, greatness comes when we figure out where to push the limit, and exceed the boundaries. I wanted to get this idea across in our brand-- the idea that boundaries are very important as we move through life, but that unlocking our full potential requires us to eventually break them. ”
Brewery Logo
“On a literal level, the logo is composed of three lower-case “b”’s which stand for “Broken Boundary Brewery.” But the logo is intended to work on a conceptual level as well. The circle represents the sum of brewing tradition to this point-- all the knowledge and technique that has shaped the way that beer is brewed around the world. Our approach to making beer is anchored in these traditions just as the circle is anchored at the bottom of the logo. The arrows breaking away from the circle represent our pursuit of innovations in the brewing process that break away from brewing traditions.”
Brewery Location
Broken Boundary Brewery’s Kalihi location was a matter of circumstance, as the brewery is an offshoot of Homebrew in Paradise, a homebrew shop founded in 1994 by Dave Campbell. “My former business partner, Bill Sumrow, had purchased the homebrew store in January 2017. It was Mr. Sumrow who had approached me about partnering on a new brewery in Honolulu. The owner before him had moved the business from Mapunapuna in the hopes that one day he would open a brewery [in this] larger warehouse space. When Mr. Sumrow purchased Homebrew In Paradise, he maintained opening a brewery as a primary goal of the business. That's how I came into the picture. I'm the brewer. After planning and building for two and a half years, COVID-19 came and really disrupted my partner's life [causing him] to back out, so I bought the homebrew store and the brewery. Kalihi was all a function of where the homebrew store was at the time. I'm not in charge of my own destiny, you know? You watch the dominos fall and then you climb them as you can,” said Chris.
He added, “I think there's a lot of upside to Kalihi. Though we don't have a lot of foot traffic or tourist traffic like some of the other neighborhoods in town, there's some really good stuff going on in Kalihi. Helena's Hawaiian food is amazing; Ethel's is amazing; I love being so close to Tamashiro’s. There are people in Kalihi doing really great work because they have a passion for the work and for the service they provide. That’s something that inspires us. We want the brewery to be a place where everyone involved can thrive in the pursuit of greatness, from our team to our customers to our community. Kalihi feels like a place that really supports that energy. We hope that we can be a part of moving Kalihi in a positive direction.”
To help cultivate positive growth, the intent is to work with nonprofits in Kalihi and to host their events with a portion of sales proceeds being donated back to the organization. “Beer is sexy. There is an active, passionate crowd that will go and seek it out. I feel like we can use this to call attention to other really good things going on in the community,” Chris noted.
According to Chris, “We started looking at a couple of Hawaii place names, which was tricky as neither my business partner [at the time] nor I were born and raised here. Both of us have an immense respect for Hawaiian culture, and we did not and do not want to put ourselves into the position of explaining or translating the language to others who, like us, are not from here. In searching for inspiration for the name, I looked to understand how Kalihi got its place name. When I learned that Kalihi meant boundary, I started thinking about what boundaries meant to me. The ideas started to click together and the brand started to emerge. Speaking from a meta-perspective, boundaries are necessary for understanding limits when you're learning how to be or do something new. But at some point, boundaries stifle innovation. I think ultimately, greatness comes when we figure out where to push the limit, and exceed the boundaries. I wanted to get this idea across in our brand-- the idea that boundaries are very important as we move through life, but that unlocking our full potential requires us to eventually break them. ”
Brewery Logo
“On a literal level, the logo is composed of three lower-case “b”’s which stand for “Broken Boundary Brewery.” But the logo is intended to work on a conceptual level as well. The circle represents the sum of brewing tradition to this point-- all the knowledge and technique that has shaped the way that beer is brewed around the world. Our approach to making beer is anchored in these traditions just as the circle is anchored at the bottom of the logo. The arrows breaking away from the circle represent our pursuit of innovations in the brewing process that break away from brewing traditions.”
Brewery Location
Broken Boundary Brewery’s Kalihi location was a matter of circumstance, as the brewery is an offshoot of Homebrew in Paradise, a homebrew shop founded in 1994 by Dave Campbell. “My former business partner, Bill Sumrow, had purchased the homebrew store in January 2017. It was Mr. Sumrow who had approached me about partnering on a new brewery in Honolulu. The owner before him had moved the business from Mapunapuna in the hopes that one day he would open a brewery [in this] larger warehouse space. When Mr. Sumrow purchased Homebrew In Paradise, he maintained opening a brewery as a primary goal of the business. That's how I came into the picture. I'm the brewer. After planning and building for two and a half years, COVID-19 came and really disrupted my partner's life [causing him] to back out, so I bought the homebrew store and the brewery. Kalihi was all a function of where the homebrew store was at the time. I'm not in charge of my own destiny, you know? You watch the dominos fall and then you climb them as you can,” said Chris.
He added, “I think there's a lot of upside to Kalihi. Though we don't have a lot of foot traffic or tourist traffic like some of the other neighborhoods in town, there's some really good stuff going on in Kalihi. Helena's Hawaiian food is amazing; Ethel's is amazing; I love being so close to Tamashiro’s. There are people in Kalihi doing really great work because they have a passion for the work and for the service they provide. That’s something that inspires us. We want the brewery to be a place where everyone involved can thrive in the pursuit of greatness, from our team to our customers to our community. Kalihi feels like a place that really supports that energy. We hope that we can be a part of moving Kalihi in a positive direction.”
To help cultivate positive growth, the intent is to work with nonprofits in Kalihi and to host their events with a portion of sales proceeds being donated back to the organization. “Beer is sexy. There is an active, passionate crowd that will go and seek it out. I feel like we can use this to call attention to other really good things going on in the community,” Chris noted.
Chris’ initial career intent was to become a traveling photojournalist after graduating from Humboldt State University in Northern California with degrees in Studio Art, Photography and Journalism, and Mass Communication in late 2004. However, technology had other ideas as film photography evolved into becoming digitalized and newspapers were beginning to consolidate even while he was still in college. This prompted Chris to make photography work through a combination of weddings and fine-arts landscapes. “[However, the industry] was getting more and more competitive and less and less profitable,” he said.” Shortly after moving to O’ahu in 2008, one of his wife Liv’s three brothers (all of whom home-brew) bought and sent them a home-brewing kit. “Eventually, Liv completely lost interest in brewing, so I eventually took [completely] over. I was trying different recipes, throwing wild harvested fruit in batches, using different hops, learning about different malts and how they produce different flavors…”
When Aloha Beer Co closed its original location in Sam Choy’s Breakfast Lunch and Crab in 2012, there were no breweries on the island until Honolulu Beerworks opened in 2014. This inspired Chris to open a brewery. “I can't just work for money, I don't hold motivation very well if there’s no passion in what I’m doing,” said Chris. So, around 2012 or 2013, Chris considered brewing professionally. “Of course, I was incredibly naive. If somebody had given me startup money right then, I would have failed inside of a year. I started telling people I wanted to start a brewery, and I ended up meeting Steve [Haumschild] from Lanikai Brewing Co.(LBC) who offered me a job as a brewer as LBC was opening. That's where I really learned [over the course of two years] what it was like to brew professionally and to understand what went into opening a brewery successfully.”
Chris left Lanikai Brewing Company in late 2016 in search of options for opening his own brewery. After looking at several options he chose to stay on O’ahu, taking an offer to start what became Broken Boundary Brewery in the same warehouse space that houses Homebrew In Paradise. Planning in earnest began in late 2017 with buildout starting in the summer of 2018. The building permit took just over a year to be approved, and the electrical upgrade from HECO took another eight months. After over two years of planning and building, Chris began brewing his first batches and planning the soft openings.
“Here's a funny thing, our first soft opening was scheduled for March 20th, 2020. That is the day that Mayor Caldwell said bars and restaurants had to close to slow the pandemic. From two and a half years out, we hit it on the day. It wasn't a week off, it was THE day. It just blows my mind. Earlier that week, we were already inviting people to the soft opening, only to tell them a few days later, ‘You can't come!’”
Between March and December, a multitude of challenges were faced, and solutions were created in order to remain as open as possible during the pandemic. These [solutions] included purchasing a can seamer, so that crowlers (32oz aluminum cans, filled and sealed on-site) could be sold; these didn’t arrive until May of 2020. A small kitchen was also constructed to be in compliance with pandemic rules. Eventually, in November, there were a couple of soft openings for the food and by the end of December, the brewery opened three nights a week. Chris added, “For me, from a business perspective, I think of May 2021 as our opening date. The fourteen months before that weren’t about growing a business; they were about surviving global circumstances well out of our control. Since May, my feeling is that the success of the brewery is more about the decisions that we are making than the decisions our political leaders and Municipal administrators are making. We’re not out of the woods yet, but we’re close."
When Aloha Beer Co closed its original location in Sam Choy’s Breakfast Lunch and Crab in 2012, there were no breweries on the island until Honolulu Beerworks opened in 2014. This inspired Chris to open a brewery. “I can't just work for money, I don't hold motivation very well if there’s no passion in what I’m doing,” said Chris. So, around 2012 or 2013, Chris considered brewing professionally. “Of course, I was incredibly naive. If somebody had given me startup money right then, I would have failed inside of a year. I started telling people I wanted to start a brewery, and I ended up meeting Steve [Haumschild] from Lanikai Brewing Co.(LBC) who offered me a job as a brewer as LBC was opening. That's where I really learned [over the course of two years] what it was like to brew professionally and to understand what went into opening a brewery successfully.”
Chris left Lanikai Brewing Company in late 2016 in search of options for opening his own brewery. After looking at several options he chose to stay on O’ahu, taking an offer to start what became Broken Boundary Brewery in the same warehouse space that houses Homebrew In Paradise. Planning in earnest began in late 2017 with buildout starting in the summer of 2018. The building permit took just over a year to be approved, and the electrical upgrade from HECO took another eight months. After over two years of planning and building, Chris began brewing his first batches and planning the soft openings.
“Here's a funny thing, our first soft opening was scheduled for March 20th, 2020. That is the day that Mayor Caldwell said bars and restaurants had to close to slow the pandemic. From two and a half years out, we hit it on the day. It wasn't a week off, it was THE day. It just blows my mind. Earlier that week, we were already inviting people to the soft opening, only to tell them a few days later, ‘You can't come!’”
Between March and December, a multitude of challenges were faced, and solutions were created in order to remain as open as possible during the pandemic. These [solutions] included purchasing a can seamer, so that crowlers (32oz aluminum cans, filled and sealed on-site) could be sold; these didn’t arrive until May of 2020. A small kitchen was also constructed to be in compliance with pandemic rules. Eventually, in November, there were a couple of soft openings for the food and by the end of December, the brewery opened three nights a week. Chris added, “For me, from a business perspective, I think of May 2021 as our opening date. The fourteen months before that weren’t about growing a business; they were about surviving global circumstances well out of our control. Since May, my feeling is that the success of the brewery is more about the decisions that we are making than the decisions our political leaders and Municipal administrators are making. We’re not out of the woods yet, but we’re close."
Broken Boundary Brewery’s tagline, and the general approach to brewing is: "Respect for tradition, authentic innovation." “We respect the traditional styles [of beer] because, over hundreds of years, people perfected the combination of the ingredients they had available. There's a lot of knowledge that comes from the traditional styles and the brewers that made them. We try to learn from those styles and then come up with new and innovative directions to move in; new beers to make.” Said Chris.
When asked what the Broken Boundary Brewery’s tagline looks like in practice, Chris explained, “When we approach a traditional style, we start by tasting as many commercial examples of that style that we can get our hands on. Next, we talk about what we like and what we don’t like in those samples, then we study how the beers (that we liked) are brewed, looking to understand how those breweries produce the flavors we like, and how we can accomplish similar results with our equipment.”
Belgian beers are a great example. The Belgians take their mashing very seriously. They know they can produce different flavor profiles by stepping their mash through a variety of temperatures. So we study the different temperatures they’re employing, understand which enzymes are promoted at those temperatures and how they affect the flavor of the final product, then try to affect those temperature steps in our process with our equipment in order to produce a quality beer that is directly inspired by the traditional process used in Belgium.”
Chris continued to explain, “When looking at new beer trends, we look at the science behind them to understand how these flavors are being produced in the beer. Right now, this is especially notable in the production of Hazy IPA’s, which is a relatively new style with a limited amount of traditional knowledge available to study. As craft beers in the U.S. have been pursuing ever greater hop flavor in their beers, the researchers have been keeping pace. We know more now about what makes hop flavor than ever before. When we look at this research at Broken Boundary Brewery, we are inspired to apply this knowledge in our own way. From trying to get unusual aromas from a pale ale without dry hopping, to choosing yeast strains that are specifically able to unlock the aroma potential of specific hops, we look to contemporary scientific research to guide us.”
“As for Innovation, beer is a complicated beverage. You’ve got at least two agricultural products in the barley malt and in the hops that are subject to variation in strain, climate, and farming technique. You’ve got water chemistry that varies from location to location, and you’ve got a living, single-celled organism in yeast that, in their trillions, turns a sweet barley tea into beer. On top of that, various yeast strains go about their molecular alchemy in stunningly different ways. We’re drastically oversimplifying here, but you can see the permutations are enormous. Beer styles evolved in a world where brewers were largely limited to the local ingredients available to them. In contemporary brewing, we have access to a dizzying variety of hops, malts, and yeast strains, and the ability to match most water profiles from around the world through a knowledge of water chemistry that didn’t exist when traditional beer styles evolved.” Said Chris.
When asked what the Broken Boundary Brewery’s tagline looks like in practice, Chris explained, “When we approach a traditional style, we start by tasting as many commercial examples of that style that we can get our hands on. Next, we talk about what we like and what we don’t like in those samples, then we study how the beers (that we liked) are brewed, looking to understand how those breweries produce the flavors we like, and how we can accomplish similar results with our equipment.”
Belgian beers are a great example. The Belgians take their mashing very seriously. They know they can produce different flavor profiles by stepping their mash through a variety of temperatures. So we study the different temperatures they’re employing, understand which enzymes are promoted at those temperatures and how they affect the flavor of the final product, then try to affect those temperature steps in our process with our equipment in order to produce a quality beer that is directly inspired by the traditional process used in Belgium.”
Chris continued to explain, “When looking at new beer trends, we look at the science behind them to understand how these flavors are being produced in the beer. Right now, this is especially notable in the production of Hazy IPA’s, which is a relatively new style with a limited amount of traditional knowledge available to study. As craft beers in the U.S. have been pursuing ever greater hop flavor in their beers, the researchers have been keeping pace. We know more now about what makes hop flavor than ever before. When we look at this research at Broken Boundary Brewery, we are inspired to apply this knowledge in our own way. From trying to get unusual aromas from a pale ale without dry hopping, to choosing yeast strains that are specifically able to unlock the aroma potential of specific hops, we look to contemporary scientific research to guide us.”
“As for Innovation, beer is a complicated beverage. You’ve got at least two agricultural products in the barley malt and in the hops that are subject to variation in strain, climate, and farming technique. You’ve got water chemistry that varies from location to location, and you’ve got a living, single-celled organism in yeast that, in their trillions, turns a sweet barley tea into beer. On top of that, various yeast strains go about their molecular alchemy in stunningly different ways. We’re drastically oversimplifying here, but you can see the permutations are enormous. Beer styles evolved in a world where brewers were largely limited to the local ingredients available to them. In contemporary brewing, we have access to a dizzying variety of hops, malts, and yeast strains, and the ability to match most water profiles from around the world through a knowledge of water chemistry that didn’t exist when traditional beer styles evolved.” Said Chris.
Chris, a self described beer geek, is currently the sole recipe developer, though he does bounce ideas off his assistant brewer at Broken Beer Brewery, and is looking to eventually expand the creative team. His process starts with a lot of reading and participating in as many brewing conferences as he can. “If I'm interested in something, then I’ll read a lot about it. Being a creative-minded person, if something really intrigues me, I start thinking, ‘Well maybe I can use it this way, this way, or this way,’ and some of those turn out to be good ideas.”
He then discusses new ideas with the “other beer geeks” on the island. “Eulerson’s [Pajimula], at Beer Lab, knowledge of yeast is really amazing. Josh at Hana Koa is a great beer geek. Tim from Village is also a great resource; I like bouncing ideas off of him. Actually, I call [Village Bottleshop] the library. When I want to study a new style, I go to Village Bottleshop and ask Tim to help me find as many examples of the style as possible.” After collecting sample beers to use as reference, test batches are performed on a homebrew system. This cross referencing provides an understanding of the different flavors produced by variations in ingredients and processes.
However, in the development process, everything doesn’t go smoothly. “Sometimes, I make a beer, and there’s some aspect of the flavor that I just don’t like. These ‘misses’ are opportunities. At the moment, it’s disappointing that the beer won’t go into production right away and that it won’t contribute to the income of the business, but as a brewer and as a creative, these moments are valuable because they are the moments when I can clearly see how to improve my processes. These undesirable flavors are targets that I can focus my research on. I just have to learn what they are, how I produced them, and then fit that knowledge into the process to avoid producing them in the next batch. The great thing is that this increased understanding of the process doesn’t just improve the beer I’m working on, it informs the process for making every other beer. The knowledge gained has compounded benefits to the production process as a whole.” Explained Chris.
Like in the culinary world, recipe development is also predicated on equipment. Chris gave the following analogy, “It’s like being in a kitchen, if you don't have a blender, there [will be] some [dishs] that [will] be very hard to [prepare]. No matter who you are, your equipment is going to provide limitations as well as capabilities.” He then provided the following example, “We do a Kolsch fairly regularly. It's one of our best-selling beers. We do as much traditional processing as we can. I've never been to Cologne, but I've talked to several people who are from Germany or have spent time there who say that we're getting pretty close to the traditional examples brewed there. But there are some things that they do over there that we cannot [do here], like decorate the mash, which is where you take a portion of your mash out and boil it and then put it back in to raise the temperature to another step. We don't have a slurry pump and we don't have that secondary kettle. So instead we research: "Why do they decoction mash? What are the chemicals that they're trying to get out of it? What are the reactions they're trying to do?" And then we try to approximate those flavors the best we can, given our equipment and our knowledge. You know the old saying, there's more than one way to skin a cat? That's how we approach everything. We look at lots of different ways that we can produce those flavors and sometimes we can take an amalgamation of different techniques to get where we're going.”
He then discusses new ideas with the “other beer geeks” on the island. “Eulerson’s [Pajimula], at Beer Lab, knowledge of yeast is really amazing. Josh at Hana Koa is a great beer geek. Tim from Village is also a great resource; I like bouncing ideas off of him. Actually, I call [Village Bottleshop] the library. When I want to study a new style, I go to Village Bottleshop and ask Tim to help me find as many examples of the style as possible.” After collecting sample beers to use as reference, test batches are performed on a homebrew system. This cross referencing provides an understanding of the different flavors produced by variations in ingredients and processes.
However, in the development process, everything doesn’t go smoothly. “Sometimes, I make a beer, and there’s some aspect of the flavor that I just don’t like. These ‘misses’ are opportunities. At the moment, it’s disappointing that the beer won’t go into production right away and that it won’t contribute to the income of the business, but as a brewer and as a creative, these moments are valuable because they are the moments when I can clearly see how to improve my processes. These undesirable flavors are targets that I can focus my research on. I just have to learn what they are, how I produced them, and then fit that knowledge into the process to avoid producing them in the next batch. The great thing is that this increased understanding of the process doesn’t just improve the beer I’m working on, it informs the process for making every other beer. The knowledge gained has compounded benefits to the production process as a whole.” Explained Chris.
Like in the culinary world, recipe development is also predicated on equipment. Chris gave the following analogy, “It’s like being in a kitchen, if you don't have a blender, there [will be] some [dishs] that [will] be very hard to [prepare]. No matter who you are, your equipment is going to provide limitations as well as capabilities.” He then provided the following example, “We do a Kolsch fairly regularly. It's one of our best-selling beers. We do as much traditional processing as we can. I've never been to Cologne, but I've talked to several people who are from Germany or have spent time there who say that we're getting pretty close to the traditional examples brewed there. But there are some things that they do over there that we cannot [do here], like decorate the mash, which is where you take a portion of your mash out and boil it and then put it back in to raise the temperature to another step. We don't have a slurry pump and we don't have that secondary kettle. So instead we research: "Why do they decoction mash? What are the chemicals that they're trying to get out of it? What are the reactions they're trying to do?" And then we try to approximate those flavors the best we can, given our equipment and our knowledge. You know the old saying, there's more than one way to skin a cat? That's how we approach everything. We look at lots of different ways that we can produce those flavors and sometimes we can take an amalgamation of different techniques to get where we're going.”
The three biggest factors of brewing in Hawaii that shape the kind of beer brewed at Broken Boundary Brewing are: 1) availability of ingredients and equipment, 2) The impact of visitors in an economy dominated by tourism and hospitality, and 3) The tropical climate.
Chris elaborated, “Brewing ingredients are more expensive in Hawai’i, and there’s no way around it. Our raw goods prices are 100-150% more than breweries on the mainland pay, at least. To combat this, we tend to bring in larger quantities of ingredients, and a smaller variety. So the game for me is to try and find ingredients with the most versatility so that my products are distinct and provide a greater range of flavor experiences for our guests. The same goes for equipment. While breweries in California can drive their pick-up trucks to a winery and get a few barrels for aging at $25 a piece, the same barrels are going to cost me $400-$500 dollars. So If I’m going to do barrel aging, I’ve got to do more planning to make sure the ROI is going to be there. The same goes for any large piece of equipment.
In our business plan, we recognize an inherent difference between our customers that live in town, and those who are visiting. We know that our immediate community-- the people who work on our block, the students at HCC, and the people who live and work in Kalihi, are hugely important to our success, and so we pay attention to the beers they like to drink and make sure they’re available. At the same time, we pay attention to national trends in the beer industry so that we can anticipate the tastes and preferences of our customers who are visiting the island. In most cases, there is a large disparity between the beers our neighbors like and those the visitors like. [To address this], we craft our production model to ensure that we’re accommodating as many preferences as we can.
Finally, Hawaii’s amazing weather plays a factor in which beers sell well. While I love an Imperial Stout, rarely do I grab a six pack of 10% dark beer before I head to a BBQ. We know that we need to keep in mind the active, outdoor lifestyles of all our customers and ensure that we’re producing products that compliment those lifestyles. Additionally, there is an intriguing side to Hawaii’s climate that informs how we make our beer, and that’s the availability of fresh agricultural products that aren’t available to most breweries on the mainland. We’ve begun to experiment with some of these ingredients, like lilikoi, starfruit, and ginger, and we plan to expand our incorporation of tropical flavors as we grow. The beautiful thing is that in doing so, we’re supporting our local farmers and supporting greater food independence for the whole state.”
Chris elaborated, “Brewing ingredients are more expensive in Hawai’i, and there’s no way around it. Our raw goods prices are 100-150% more than breweries on the mainland pay, at least. To combat this, we tend to bring in larger quantities of ingredients, and a smaller variety. So the game for me is to try and find ingredients with the most versatility so that my products are distinct and provide a greater range of flavor experiences for our guests. The same goes for equipment. While breweries in California can drive their pick-up trucks to a winery and get a few barrels for aging at $25 a piece, the same barrels are going to cost me $400-$500 dollars. So If I’m going to do barrel aging, I’ve got to do more planning to make sure the ROI is going to be there. The same goes for any large piece of equipment.
In our business plan, we recognize an inherent difference between our customers that live in town, and those who are visiting. We know that our immediate community-- the people who work on our block, the students at HCC, and the people who live and work in Kalihi, are hugely important to our success, and so we pay attention to the beers they like to drink and make sure they’re available. At the same time, we pay attention to national trends in the beer industry so that we can anticipate the tastes and preferences of our customers who are visiting the island. In most cases, there is a large disparity between the beers our neighbors like and those the visitors like. [To address this], we craft our production model to ensure that we’re accommodating as many preferences as we can.
Finally, Hawaii’s amazing weather plays a factor in which beers sell well. While I love an Imperial Stout, rarely do I grab a six pack of 10% dark beer before I head to a BBQ. We know that we need to keep in mind the active, outdoor lifestyles of all our customers and ensure that we’re producing products that compliment those lifestyles. Additionally, there is an intriguing side to Hawaii’s climate that informs how we make our beer, and that’s the availability of fresh agricultural products that aren’t available to most breweries on the mainland. We’ve begun to experiment with some of these ingredients, like lilikoi, starfruit, and ginger, and we plan to expand our incorporation of tropical flavors as we grow. The beautiful thing is that in doing so, we’re supporting our local farmers and supporting greater food independence for the whole state.”
Ingredients
“With every beer style that we try to emulate, we research how the beer has been made, then do our best to use authentic ingredients and to replicate techniques so that our traditional styles are legit. This is our [way of] honoring tradition.” Said Chris
Chris explained, “We purchase the majority of our malts through Sysco, who is contracted with Brewers Supply Group and warehouses several varieties of malt on island. Sysco and BSG are able to offer us more competitive rates than other malt suppliers because of the volume of shipping Sysco brings to the islands. The savings is so great that if I have a recipe that calls for something that Sysco isn't bringing in, then I'll change the recipe. It's that significant.”
Chris noted that beer is now made all over the world using a base malt and then adding specialty malts to affect the flavor. He went on to say, “BSG works with several malting companies, but for base malts, we're mostly using Rahr Pale Ale Malt and Weyermann Pilsner.”
“I also use a lot of Munich malts from Weyermanns. In IPAs, especially West Coast IPAs, people like to use roasted malts like caramel or crystal. I find that these particular malts produce a butterscotch-like flavor. Maybe I just have a different palette than everybody, but I don't really like that malty sweetness. I tend to use Vienna and Munich (kilned malts) instead of the caramel malts. It gives a little bit more breadiness, but also offers similar unfermented sugars to the profile to give the beer a greater sense of body. We do use some of the Crystal Malts in our porters and stouts. We prefer the English style drum roasted crystal malts to the more readily available Caramel Malts,” explained Chris.
Chris noted that beer is now made all over the world using a base malt and then adding specialty malts to affect the flavor. He went on to say, “BSG works with several malting companies, but for base malts, we're mostly using Rahr Pale Ale Malt and Weyermann Pilsner.”
“I also use a lot of Munich malts from Weyermanns. In IPAs, especially West Coast IPAs, people like to use roasted malts like caramel or crystal. I find that these particular malts produce a butterscotch-like flavor. Maybe I just have a different palette than everybody, but I don't really like that malty sweetness. I tend to use Vienna and Munich (kilned malts) instead of the caramel malts. It gives a little bit more breadiness, but also offers similar unfermented sugars to the profile to give the beer a greater sense of body. We do use some of the Crystal Malts in our porters and stouts. We prefer the English style drum roasted crystal malts to the more readily available Caramel Malts,” explained Chris.
“Hops are problematic for us because everything comes back to the pandemic. We couldn't contract anything, so we’re buying everything at premiums on the spot market. Until we can establish a reliable baseline for sales, we don’t know how much of which varieties of hops to contract. That creates a problem in the short term because the shipping costs of overnighting hops to Hawai’i makes it discouraging to order the amount of inventory needed to brew just a few batches of beers. We’ll end up paying more for the shipping than we do for the hops if we don’t bring them in in large quantities.” Explained Chris.
Filters of five microns, two microns, and a charcoal filter.
We looked at using Reverse Osmosis and it's expensive. The desirable thing is that you can build your water profile from scratch, adding in the minerals and ions to match any water profile in the world. The problematic part is that the best RO systems have waste product, which is water laden with excessive levels of salt and minerals. We were concerned about the impacts that waste stream could have, and so we decided to use filtered municipal water. The great thing is that our municipal water, with just a minor amount of treatment, is great for brewing.
We looked at using Reverse Osmosis and it's expensive. The desirable thing is that you can build your water profile from scratch, adding in the minerals and ions to match any water profile in the world. The problematic part is that the best RO systems have waste product, which is water laden with excessive levels of salt and minerals. We were concerned about the impacts that waste stream could have, and so we decided to use filtered municipal water. The great thing is that our municipal water, with just a minor amount of treatment, is great for brewing.
“Our pre-pandemic plan was to use primarily wet yeast. The advantage of wet yeast is that there is a greater variety of available strains and it performs slightly better (due to less stress placed on the yeast cells). However, wet yeast is far more expensive than dry yeast and must be overnighted in cold containers to avoid damaging the active, live yeast cells. Brewers spread that cost out among several batches by harvesting the yeast from one batch and using it in the next. This option wasn’t pragmatic for us as we opened [amidst] the beginning of a pandemic; our production schedule was sporadic at best for our first year of operations. Thus, we’ve relied on dry yeast.
Fortunately, recent technological advances in dry yeast production has meant that there is very little drop in quality or performance from wet yeasts to dry yeasts. We have been very pleased with several strains that we source from Lallemand and Safale. As our production schedule accelerates and stabilizes, we plan to bring in some wet strains to experiment with. Said Chris.
Fortunately, recent technological advances in dry yeast production has meant that there is very little drop in quality or performance from wet yeasts to dry yeasts. We have been very pleased with several strains that we source from Lallemand and Safale. As our production schedule accelerates and stabilizes, we plan to bring in some wet strains to experiment with. Said Chris.
Adjuncts including local produce
“Very, generally speaking, I have no problem with using any ingredients so long as it is in service of the flavor of the beer. If there's a reason to use the adjunct, [like when it is style appropriate], then I'll use it, but I'm not going to use it to cut costs. [My aim is to produce] the best possible beer that I can make, and not necessarily the most profitable beer I can make.” Said Chris
Chris provided the example of a Mexican lager that uses 30% flaked corn called, Hella Telenovela, which was brewed in collaboration with Hana Koa Brewing. “The reason why we're doing this is because Modello does it. That's what a Mexican lager is; it's a beer that has that corn flavor,” Chris explained. He added, “There's a good reason why Budweiser started putting rice in their beer, and it wasn’t to improve the bottom line. To make a very long story short, when Adolphus Busch the First tried to make Pilsner in America, he ran into a problem because American six-row barley has a higher protein to starch ratio than the two-row varieties of barley grown in Europe. 6-row Barley was making Busch’s beer far maltier than those being brewed in Bohemia. To get his beer as crisp and light as a Pilsner, Busch added rice to his malt bill. It was an innovative solution to the problem, and that innovation changed the way most of the beer around the world was brewed for 100 years until us craft breweries came along and started putting flavor back into beer. Eventually, rice became far cheaper than Barley, but that's not why he did in the late 1800s. He did it to make a better beer. I can get behind that.”
“We use table sugar too. That [technique] comes straight from Russian River’s Pliney the Elder. Pretty much every West Coast Double IPA uses sugar now, but it's a Belgian technique.. The Belgians actually make candy sugar. It's how they get their beers up over 8% ABV without them becoming cloying. We put 3% to 5% table sugar in all of our IPAs that approach 8% ABV. That bumps the alcohol content without any unfermentable sugars so that you don't get a really sweet beer.” Said Chris
He added, “we’re very interested in finding locally grown sources of sugars and starches. We’ve begun working with Kiawe and Monkeypod as a source, and are interested in the potential of Taro and Breadfruit as sources of fermentable sugars. We’ll begin researching and testing more local ingredients as we transition further away from survival mode and into a growth phase with the easing of pandemic restrictions."
Chris provided the example of a Mexican lager that uses 30% flaked corn called, Hella Telenovela, which was brewed in collaboration with Hana Koa Brewing. “The reason why we're doing this is because Modello does it. That's what a Mexican lager is; it's a beer that has that corn flavor,” Chris explained. He added, “There's a good reason why Budweiser started putting rice in their beer, and it wasn’t to improve the bottom line. To make a very long story short, when Adolphus Busch the First tried to make Pilsner in America, he ran into a problem because American six-row barley has a higher protein to starch ratio than the two-row varieties of barley grown in Europe. 6-row Barley was making Busch’s beer far maltier than those being brewed in Bohemia. To get his beer as crisp and light as a Pilsner, Busch added rice to his malt bill. It was an innovative solution to the problem, and that innovation changed the way most of the beer around the world was brewed for 100 years until us craft breweries came along and started putting flavor back into beer. Eventually, rice became far cheaper than Barley, but that's not why he did in the late 1800s. He did it to make a better beer. I can get behind that.”
“We use table sugar too. That [technique] comes straight from Russian River’s Pliney the Elder. Pretty much every West Coast Double IPA uses sugar now, but it's a Belgian technique.. The Belgians actually make candy sugar. It's how they get their beers up over 8% ABV without them becoming cloying. We put 3% to 5% table sugar in all of our IPAs that approach 8% ABV. That bumps the alcohol content without any unfermentable sugars so that you don't get a really sweet beer.” Said Chris
He added, “we’re very interested in finding locally grown sources of sugars and starches. We’ve begun working with Kiawe and Monkeypod as a source, and are interested in the potential of Taro and Breadfruit as sources of fermentable sugars. We’ll begin researching and testing more local ingredients as we transition further away from survival mode and into a growth phase with the easing of pandemic restrictions."
Production Notes
Brewhouse size: 7 BBL
Tank Set-up
Six fermenters and six bright tanks mirroring each other. The bright tanks are in a custom-built cold room. The model calls for the transferring of the brew from the fermenter into the bright tanks. Next, the bright tanks are tapped and used as service tanks. Then, when another beer needs to be transferred into the bright tank from the fermenter, the remainder of the beer in the bright tank is kegged, the tank is cleaned, and the next beer is brought in. To be able to adequately chill the beer, the glycol chiller is oversized.
According to Chris, “This is where we get a little bit different from [other breweries] on the island. Having dedicated brite tanks allows us to turn over our fermenters faster than a unitank would, and using our brite tanks as serving tanks allows us to stock fewer kegs, which saves space, labor, and equipment costs.” said Chris.”
According to Chris, “This is where we get a little bit different from [other breweries] on the island. Having dedicated brite tanks allows us to turn over our fermenters faster than a unitank would, and using our brite tanks as serving tanks allows us to stock fewer kegs, which saves space, labor, and equipment costs.” said Chris.”
Approach to Conditioning
As Broken Boundary Brewery is not packaging beer, which requires more careful conditioning to remove yeast so that the flavors do not change in the can or bottle, filtration has not been a priority. Chris added, “We started out using chemical fining agents, and to my taste, it killed the flavor and I didn't like it. To prevent staling in our beers, we've adjusted our procedures to remove any element that might contribute to the development of off flavors. An interesting side effect is that over the course of the 2-5 months it might take us to sell out of a batch of beer, the beer is deliciously dynamic. I think it's awesome and fascinating that the yeast keeps working. And there is precedent for this in traditional brewing.
Berliner Weisse is traditionally a 12-month-old [beer]. Lambics, widely considered the best beers in the world, are aged three years and then blended down into greener beers. There's a long tradition of brewers recognizing the beneficial changes that happen to the beer if you don't filter it or get the yeast out of it. Several very good craft breweries have worked really hard to condition people to think that beer older than three months is no good, and in the case of IPA, that's true because you lose aroma. But many other styles age wonderfully. It’s a part of the process that we really enjoy and so we don’t want to filter and rob our customers of that aging experience.”
Berliner Weisse is traditionally a 12-month-old [beer]. Lambics, widely considered the best beers in the world, are aged three years and then blended down into greener beers. There's a long tradition of brewers recognizing the beneficial changes that happen to the beer if you don't filter it or get the yeast out of it. Several very good craft breweries have worked really hard to condition people to think that beer older than three months is no good, and in the case of IPA, that's true because you lose aroma. But many other styles age wonderfully. It’s a part of the process that we really enjoy and so we don’t want to filter and rob our customers of that aging experience.”
What’s on tap
Before opening, our plan was to have six core brands on tap and between five to eight rotating brands. Chris explained, “We're still trying to figure out how much continuity versus how much novelty people want to see in our tap line-up. There’s not much in the way of hard data, given the fact that we’re starting to come out of a pandemic. Currently, we have three beers that we've had on tap almost continuously, and those are emerging as the core brands. [They are] a Hazy IPA, a Belgian Blonde, and a Kölsch. We've started a rotating series of west-coast IPAs and a series of Stouts that we called Detective Stout.
The West Coast IPA’s are an opportunity for us to experiment with a variety of hop flavors. The great thing about West Coasts is that they hit the bittering and aromatic qualities of the hops equally hard, so you can really feel out a hop variety when brewing them. We’re having a lot of fun using some hops that were maybe famous for a minute, but have fallen by the wayside as the industry trends have moved toward the dominant aromatics found in Hazy IPA’s.
With the Detective Stouts, we invite our customers to take a guess at secret ingredients (in addition to the hops, barley, yeast, and water) that we put into the beer. It’s been awesome and inspiring to see people intensely engage with the beer. I came up with the idea because I felt that my stouts needed some work, but I brew in Hawaii where stouts don’t sell as well unless they are compelling. Hence the mystery ingredients create a sense of intrigue to patrons and allows me to brew four to five of these beers a year, helping me to develop a base recipe and to learn what goes into making a great stout.”
The West Coast IPA’s are an opportunity for us to experiment with a variety of hop flavors. The great thing about West Coasts is that they hit the bittering and aromatic qualities of the hops equally hard, so you can really feel out a hop variety when brewing them. We’re having a lot of fun using some hops that were maybe famous for a minute, but have fallen by the wayside as the industry trends have moved toward the dominant aromatics found in Hazy IPA’s.
With the Detective Stouts, we invite our customers to take a guess at secret ingredients (in addition to the hops, barley, yeast, and water) that we put into the beer. It’s been awesome and inspiring to see people intensely engage with the beer. I came up with the idea because I felt that my stouts needed some work, but I brew in Hawaii where stouts don’t sell as well unless they are compelling. Hence the mystery ingredients create a sense of intrigue to patrons and allows me to brew four to five of these beers a year, helping me to develop a base recipe and to learn what goes into making a great stout.”
Hard Seltzer
Hard seltzers are great to have on tap because not everyone that comes into the brewery will like beer, and if that’s true, then [we lose the business of those entire] groups of friends who don’t come to our brewery because a couple of people in their group don’t like beer. The hard seltzers diversify our product offering and help us to appeal to more people in the market. We apply the same values to our seltzers as we do to our beers-- making decisions that work to create the best product possible while helping our communities thrive. To that end, we turn to our local farmers and their fresh, local fruit to flavor our seltzers. We think [the local fruit] gives our seltzers a fresher taste that sets them apart from seltzers that use flavor extracts.