The Unsung Brewer

Brewing Exceptional Beers Behind the Scenes

November 1, 2015 By aab

Jonathan Moxey

Perennial Artisan Ales

St. Louis, Missouri

The month before, Jonathan Moxey had flown from St. Louis to Seattle and Chicago to represent Perennial Artisan Ales at beer week events in those two cities. “Going out and eating good food on an expense account and talking about beer,” he says. “Yeah, that’s a good day at the office.” But not a typical one for him.

This morning he was the first to arrive at the brewery, slipping on his brewing boots at 6 a.m. “I’m in the cellar today. All of us are utility players. We do everything,” he says. He takes a sponge from a bucket of sanitizer and carefully wipes down the inside of a fermentation tank manway door while he describes a beer he started the day before in the brewhouse.

He was a writer at Standard & Poor’s in Manhattan when he discovered it was possible to make quality beer at home. A Missouri native, he knew almost immediately that when he and his wife, Lauren, returned to the Midwest, he wanted to work for a brewery. This is the only professional brewing job he has had, but he’s figured out he’s not interested in working at some place much larger, at least larger than Perennial seems bound to be.

“This is all part of it,” he says, gesturing to a hose neatly coiled at his feet, grabbing one end, hooking it up to piping from a kettle in the brewery upstairs. “It’s integral, one step in creating a beer nobody has ever tasted.”

–Stan Hieronymus

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