Enter the Parrot
Phil Goularte is outwardly diminutive—barely five-foot-six—but with an inner fortitude that carried him through years as a firefighter and a stint in the navy. He and his wife Carlene opened The Grey Parrot Brewpub in Long Beach, WA on the Fourth of July 2005. It hasn’t been easy. In their first year of business the Goulartes lost their home to fire. Then Phil broke his leg fishing. (“It was a really big fish!” he recalls with a laugh.) Next came a brazen theft of equipment, followed by damaging windstorms. Finally, Phil required surgery. Complications forced him to stop brewing for months.
But if the Grey Parrot’s survival were unlikely enough, Goularte has achieved another notable triumph. He brews several highly drinkable ales spontaneously fermented by ambient microflora native to the Long Beach Peninsula—genuine wild ales.
Like most brewers, Goularte enjoys experimentation. He began as a college student in the late seventies, making wine in his dorm room closet. Then he gained a new housemate, a German exchange student who brought home surplus materials from the Anchor Brewery in San Francisco and taught Phil to brew beer. In the navy, he fermented molasses, honey—whatever he could find on board the ship. When friends suggested he take the next step and turn pro, he and Carlene opened the Grey Parrot.
The Call of the Wild
Every brewer has a moment in their career—usually more than one—when all the elements of a great beer recipe, diligent sanitary technique, and hard work synergistically combine…into a colossal failure. For Phil Goularte, it was the right beer at the right time with the wrong yeast. His Red Scotch Ale had seemingly fermented without difficulty. But when he tasted it a month later, it was unexpectedly sour.
A microscopic survey of his yeast culture revealed it to be entirely dead, suggesting that the red ale had fermented by way of wild yeasts. It’s not hard to imagine. Phil uses no heat exchanger to cool his wort. Instead, he lets it cool overnight in the fermenters. When he opened the fermenter to pitch his yeast, the wild bunch made its play.
But rather than dumping his “spoiled” beer, Phil let it condition. He sampled it monthly and after a full year found that its harshness had waned and the beer’s aggressive sourness had ripened into a tart complexity reminiscent of a Flanders red ale. Phil did what any self-respecting brewpub operator would: he stripped the beer of its “Scotch” handle, renamed it “Belgian,” and sold it to his customers.
Not everyone appreciates wild ales. Their funky, jowl-puckering sourness is an acquired taste that finds only a select audience among visitors to the small, coastal tourist destination of Long Beach. But eventually word got out. European visitors in particular were entranced by the refined artistry of Phil’s deceptively crude beer. He began to brew more.
All the Grey Parrot’s wild ales are brewed to conventional recipes, altering only the fermentation agent from what would otherwise be strong brown ales, Scotch ales, or imperial stout. The unfiltered wort is allowed to cool slowly overnight, creating a potent vacuum within the sealed fermenters. The next day Phil cracks open the top-mounted ball valve and ambient airs rush inside. Half an hour later, the valves are closed and the magic begins.
Fermentation is usually observed within hours. “When it happens, then it’s off and running,” notes Phil. “And when it doesn’t happen, well then you’re off and running.” If fermentation doesn’t take by the next day, the fermenters are fully exposed for half an hour, then resealed. Usually, that does the trick.
