An American Life in Istanbul

Now that I have more free time I decided I should make the most of it. I have signed myself up to take the GREs and the GMAT so that I can apply to graduate programs. I am also half heartedly looking for a new job, and I am planning some trips within Turkey. This week however, I decided to do something that very few have ever done. I toured the Taps Brewery in Gebze, Istanbul.

I have known the head brewer there for sometime and have been to the Taps restarant on several occasions. The brewery was started as a restaurant with in house brewing in 2001 by an American Brewer named William Kemper. He later moved the brewing to a microbrewery outside of Istanbul and about a year ago turned the reins over to his assistant (my friend), the California born Mark Harvey Kenney, or just Harvey. Harvey has been running the brewery ever since with his Kenyan assistant Daniel. Yesterday, I made the trip all the way to the far stretches of the Asian side of the city with Harvey to spend a day at work with him.

As far as I know, the taps brewery is the only real microbrewery in Turkey. They currently produce, Dunkel, Kolsch, Pilsner, Red Ale, Strong Ale, Stout, Vienna Lager, Golden Ale and Hefeweizen. They also have one beer that has not been released to the general public yet: Taps IPA! Taps is by far the best beer made in Turkey. When I am in the store I buy their bottles if I see them and I go to the restaurant occasionally. However the music in the restaurant (which closed on Friday) is so awful and so loud, that I go there very rarely, and only at Harvey’s invitation. For those of you that are living in Turkey who haven’t had Taps beer, you really must try it. It is very good and better than all the Turkish made and foreign imported beer available in Turkey.

For your viewing pleasure here are the pictures and explanations from my day at Turkey’s one and only craft brewery.

That’s me on site at the brewery. I am sitting on the platform between the three tanks where the raw ingredients are mixed and cooked together to form the wort, which later gets mixed with yeast and stored for fermentation. Each of the tanks is stainless steel with temperature sensors that are connected to the master control system for the brewery. Each tank has a hollow shell that is filled with steam to help regulate the temperature. Although a very high-tech and highly automated brewery, careful attention must be paid by the brewer and his assistant.

It doesn’t look like much, and it seems like this kind of system would be standard, but apparently it’s not. Harvey’s assistant, Daniel, who worked in a brewery in England said a lot of the breweries there don’t have any of this advanced computer technology to control the processes. From this computer you can monitor every tank in the whole brewery, you can control the steam flow in each segment of each tank, you can control the valves in the system and monitor flow rates at various parts of the system. I am sure there is more that you can do, but I wasn’t too interested in the computer.

Here are four views of the different tanks. I can’t describe to you in great deal what each one is used for but I can say that the top right one is the raw malt being brought in from the floor above, and mixed with hot water. The bottom right one is the cooked wort being drained into the storage tank for fermentation. I got to see the whole process start to finish and it was quite impressive.

These are condensed hops from Germany. They smelled great! Just like a heavily hopped beer. Somewhere in the brewery they had the American Cascade Hops, which give American craft beers their unique flavor. Harvey used them to make his IPA.

Harvey! That’s the storage room where kegs are kept until they are ready to be shipped. Since it’s a young brewery and there isn’t much of a beer industry in Turkey, they aren’t producing very high quantities yet. On a side note Harvey pointed out to me while we were having lunch at a restarant that he’s usually the only foreigner at that restaurant and he’s always the one wearing workman’s overalls. Everyone else had suits on.

There is something in the beer that bonds to something else in the beer and forms little chunks. This makes it easier to filter. I didn’t quite catch what chemical was going on, but it did look strange.

Harvey at work in the lab. Each batch has to be checked for alcohol content among other things. Harvey hasn’t been able to find distilled water for sale in Turkey so he also uses his lab to distill his own water.

Using a microscope, I got to count the yeast cell density in the finished product. It’s important to make sure there is enough yeast in the tank before leaving it to ferment. I think this batch was low, but I am not the expert. On a side note, you will notice my ring is a beer bottle opener.

Yeast being added to the beer inline on it’s way into the storage tank for fermentation. Since yeast is a living organism, you can take simply take yeast from one tank, and use it to ferment the next tank, and then the next tank and so on.

Beer on it’s way to the fermentation tanks.

This is the outlet for the carbon dioxide produced during fermentation. It keeps the pressure from building up too much.

Of course, if you work in a brewery, there is always time to grab a fresh beer straight from the fermentation tank! That’s me holding Turkey’s first every IPA (India pale ale). This is without a doubt my favorite beer. This one wasn’t perfect Harvey admitted, but I thought the taste was good. When it ferments a little more and the carbonation gets up to where it should be, I think it’s going to be a fantastic beer. For now, it’s still sitting in the tank, waiting.

Thank you Harvey for giving me the opportunity to go to work with you. It was great!

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