A year and a half ago, Head Brewer Elijah Lawrence joined Apponaug Brewing Company in Warwick because it gave him the opportunity to be creative, he related.
And he immediately got down to work, making the first of a trio of beers whose names all end in “naut.”
“It was an idea that I’d had for a number of years,” he said in an interview at the brewery, which is located in an old mill on Knight Street in Warwick that overlooks the Pawtuxet River. “The concept was to craft a series of beers, and do one batch of each one every other month.”
Lawrence named the first one Juggernaut. It’s an old school India Pale Ale (IPA), with New Zealand hops. “The beer has a smooth and soft first sip, and is aromatic. It has a higher-than-average carbonation, and comes across as punchy,” he said.
Juggernaut goes well with the pub’s Korean Beef tacos.
Next came Cybernaut. It’s made with hops from the Pacific Northwest, and offers flavors of strawberry and orange. “It’s the smoothest and most approachable of the three,” he commented.
Cybernaut pairs with the taproom’s Swarm flat bread which is topped with hop honey and Italian deli meats.
Rounding out the trio is Supernaut, whose moniker was inspired by the namesake Black Sabbath song, Lawrence said. A thiolized IPA, it uses a special yeast strain to release an aromatic compound from barley and enhance the tropical fruit flavors of the beer, he explained.
Akin to a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, Supernaut is ideal with the pub’s fish tacos, according to the head brewer.
“The biggest kick I get out of my job is when the first batch of a new beer is done, and I compare what I thought was going to happen to what actually happened,” Lawrence said.
And that’s when the tweaking comes in, he added.
It could be a matter of balancing the hops while Lawrence does a few things at once. One of the biggest tweaks is changing the water chemistry of the mash. Brewing involves precise temperatures, timing, and ingredient combinations in six key steps: malting, mashing, lautering, boiling, fermentation, and conditioning.
Lawrence started out in the business as a line cook. He got interested in home brewing with some coworkers, and eventually decided to go that route, drawn by the math and science of it.
He worked at Two Roads Brewing Company in Stratford, CT, for 13 years. It’s one of the biggest craft breweries on the East Coast. He then served as production manager with East Rock Brewing Company in New Haven, CT, before joining Apponaug Brewing.
Typically when crafting a new beer, Lawrence will let the idea bounce around in his head for a time. Then, he’ll put down a few iterations on paper. Next, he’ll write a draft, which will be put aside until he decides to make the first batch.
“You never know how it’ll turn out until you make that first batch,” he emphasized. “It’s all about trying what you thought, to watching how it comes out.”
Lawrence is flirting with the idea of making a fourth “naut” beer. First, he wants to come up with a name. Right now he’s thinking of Taikonaut, which is what Chinese astronauts are commonly called.
Will it take flight? Stay tuned.