Portrait of a Brewer: Peter Howson, Deft Brewing

There are hundreds of talented brewing professionals giving their all to help maintain the San Diego beer industry’s storied reputation. While these industrious practitioners share numerous similarities, each is their own unique person with individual likes, dislikes, methodologies, techniques, inspirations, interests and philosophies. The goal of San Diego Beer News’ Portrait of a Brewer series is to not only introduce readers to local brewers, but dig in to help them gain a deeper appreciation for the people making their beer and how they have contributed to the county’s standout craft-brewing culture.

Today’s featured brewer is…

Peter Howson
of Deft Brewing

What is your current title? 
Brewer, but I’m the brewer, so I am the brewer, packaging guy, cellar man, etc.

Where did you grow up? 
I was born in New Jersey, then we moved around a lot when I was little, but the bulk of my youth was spent in Belgium, specifically Waterloo and Brussels.

What brought you to San Diego? 
My wife (who is a native) was offered her “dream job”, and I had just been laid off from a marketing job after the housing bubble burst, so it was a good time for a change.

What was the first beer and/or alcoholic beverage you ever had? 
My first taste would be early 1970s Budweiser, when my dad had me get one from the fridge. I was about five. My first beer I ever bought would have been a Maes Pils that I purchased at the McDonald’s equivalent in Waterloo when I was about 12. 

What was your a-ha moment that turned you on to craft beer? 
I moved to DC to go to university in 1986, and it was the last year the drinking age for beer and wine was 18. I was used to drinking Belgian beers, everything from dubbel to lambic. So, while my friends who were new to drinking beer were running for the 30-pack of Busch light, I was looking for something with flavor and found a beer called Olde Heurich, which was produced by a small, new brewery using recipes that had been in their family since the late 1800s. My recollection was that it was an amber ale, maybe a Märzen. It lacked the yeast character of the beers I was used to, but it made up for it with great flavor.

What led you to consider a career in brewing? 
I had been working at a startup that closed after the sudden and untimely death of the founder. Then the pandemic hit and, since there weren’t a lot of marketing jobs out there, I was not doing much. Then I saw an article about Abnormal Beer Co. in Rancho Bernardo, which described the way its sister restaurant, The Cork & Craft, worked together, which I found intriguing. A week or so later, I came across a help-wanted ad that said they were looking for a part-time cellarperson and I applied. At the time, I figured it would be a fun way to ride out the pandemic and expand my brewing knowledge way beyond my homebrewing skills. 

What was your first brewing/brewery position? 
My official title was Cellarman, but that was being generous since I started with basically zero knowledge about commercial brewing. 

What breweries have you worked for over your career and in what roles?
Cellarman at Abnormal, and my current position of jack-of-all-trades at Deft.

Who have been the individuals that have helped you the most to learn and advance in your career, and how? 
Based on the sheer volume of knowledge they crammed down my throat in the three years I was there, I would say the entire crew at Abnormal. It was like drinking from a firehose, and they were very patient with all of my questions. 

What singular piece of advice would you give to someone interested in becoming a professional brewer? 
Develop your “mind’s palate”. Taste lots of things and figure out how they will work in or with different beers. Also: No running in the brewery.

What ultimate career goal would you like to achieve? 
I harbor the unhealthy desire to someday own my own tiny little brewpub. 

What is your favorite beer you’ve ever brewed, be it on a professional or amateur level? 
Everytime I try a new fruit in a lambic, I think that’s my favorite beer ever. First it was blueberries, then raspberries, then orange peel, and the latest one used Scharbeek cherries that I got from Lost Cause Meadery after they used them in a mead. 

What is your least-favorite beer you’ve ever brewed on any level? 
Probably the third batch of homebrew I brewed. I tried to make a tripel and got the brewing part right, but the first couple of bottles I opened hadn’t carbonated at all. They were completely flat. I got annoyed and just left it there. I had bottled one magnum and wanted to empty it so I could try again a few months later. A homebrewing friend suggested I bring it over and we could at least try it for flavor. I opened the magnum and, luckily we were outside, because it went off like Old Faithful.

What are your favorite hop varietals at present?
I became a fan of Newport a while back, but it’s really hard to find now. It’s one of the USDA “open” varietals. Also, Barbe Rouge and Strisselspalt are up there. 

What are some of your favorite brewing ingredients that aren’t hops? 
For lambics, I love using fruit (duh), but I’ve brewed a “Belgianized” version of a julebryg during the holidays for a few years now, which has a grain bill that’s heavy on rye and chocolate rye. I also add quite a bit of caraway to complement the rye and give it a pumpernickel vibe. It’s fun to take things I learn from cooking and apply them to brewing.

If you weren’t a brewer, what do you think you would do for a living? 
I think I would make the lateral move into cidermaking. I’ve only made one, but it was a much more relaxing experience than brewing, most likely because I got the raw cider from my friends at Lost Cause and I didn’t have to deal with pressing the apples. Or I’d work as a chef. 

In your opinion, what non-brewing position is of great importance at a craft-beer company but often gets overlooked or less credit than those making the beer?
Anyone who can keep a canning machine of any size running is a fucking hero. In my experience, those things are temperamental as all get out and someone who can keep it running at peak performance with low dissolved-oxygen levels is a wizard. (Shout out to Omar at Pure Project Brewing!)

What is your favorite beer style? 
That depends on the time of year and the people I’m drinking with, if any, but if you put a gun to my head, I’d say saison.

If you could wipe one style of beer off the face of the earth, what would it be? 
I don’t know if this counts as a style, but any beer that has tea in it. One of the worst beers I’ve ever had was an Earl Grey pale ale. But even then, as I went to pour it down the drain, I had to get the flavor out of my mouth and went for a box of Thin Mints in the freezer. It turns out the pairing was weirdly good, so I finished the bottle. 

What single brewing company’s beers and/or ethos/style has been most influential on your style? 
Probably Russian River Brewing from the point of managing a brand, attention to quality and sustainably growing a business. From the point of view of beer flavor, I’d say any of the Trappist breweries. 

What is your favorite San Diego County brewing company? 
I’m a big fan of Pure Project. Roes Red is a great beer, as is their Rain Pilsner and anything coming out of their sour program. That being said, if memory serves, there are around 150 breweries in San Diego County and I think I can name maybe 35 or 40 off the top of my head. 

What is your favorite brewing company outside of San Diego? 
Russian River

What three breweries that you haven’t yet visited—local or elsewhere—are on your current must-see bucket list?
Cantillon, because I want to sit in the tasting room and drink lambic without taking any pictures or notes. If you have seen the documentary Bottle Conditioned, that will make sense. Also, Brasserie DuPont and Trumer Privatbrauerei in Austria.

What are your favorite local beer events?
I really miss Colabapalooza because it was a great event for the industry and beer nerds where you got to taste all these crazy beers that almost never made it to store shelves or bars.  

If you were to leave San Diego, where would be the next-best place you’d want to brew? 
Belgium, preferably around Brussels. 

Which musical genre or artists are on your brew-day soundtrack/playlist? 
I listen to pretty much everything except country. Today I started with Otyken, which was recommended by a friend in Taiwan. It’s a weird blend of native Siberian folk music reimagined as electronic dance music with a bit of Mongolian throat singing thrown in for flavor. Tomorrow I will probably go back to Basement Freaks or it could be Miles Davis…

What motto rules the way you brew and approach brewing in a professional brewhouse? 
Stop freaking out, it’s beer not brain surgery. 

What do you consider your greatest professional accomplishments? 
The smoked saison we made as part of the Homebrew Summer program. It came to me without an actual recipe, just a description of a beer Matthew Smiley had at a brewery in Oregon eight years prior, which had since closed. It was the first recipe I contributed to the Deft lineup and, in spite of being a smoked beer and a saison, the whole two-barrel batch was gone in three weeks. Shout-out to Jacob Bauch at Puesto Cerveceria for helping me come up with a guesstimate for the level of oak-smoked wheat to add to the grain bill. That has morphed into the four saisons we now have (usually) seasonally: a standard table saison for spring, a petite saison d’été (lighter and lower in alcohol), smoked saison for autumn and a rye saison for winter. 

What are you proud of having achieved in your personal life? 
My daughter is without a doubt my greatest achievement. 

When you’re not at work, what do you like to do for fun? 
Cooking, though I do not have as much time to indulge that particular passion as I would like these days.

Where do you like to drink off-the-clock? 
Roaming North Park is always a good time – starting at Fall Brewing, heading down to Pure, then over to Seek Beer Co., down to North Park Beer Co., then getting in a cab and going home. Also, La Puerta has $2 Tecates at happy hour. Nothing wrong with a $2 Tecate.

What is your favorite beer-and-food pairing of all time? 
I don’t know that I have one pairing that would be the ne plus ultra, but I’ve never met a food that didn’t pair well with a good brown ale.

If you could somehow plan your last beer dinner before dying, what would you drink and eat, and who would you invite to join you? 
We’d start with moules frites and Saison DuPont; then chicken waterzooi with Roes Red; then move to pan-fried duck breast with a cherry mead (from Lost Cause) reduction, wild rice and green beans with a 3 Fonteinen Kriek Gueuze; then a fromage course with some Chimay cheese and the Chimay Trappist single; then finish with a chocolate mousse with vanilla whipped cream and lambic from Cantillon. As far as company goes, if it’s my last meal, I would want my family and all of the friends I’ve made throughout my life but don’t get to see nearly enough. Oh, and my dog. 

Who do you think you are (a purposely broad question)? 
Dad, friend, brewer, cook.

If you’re a brewer at a San Diego brewing company and would like to be featured in our Portrait of a Brewer series, drop us a line at [email protected].