Aviator

Mark Doble opened Aviator Brewing last November in Fuquay-Varina. This production brewery is tucked away in a hangar of the airport. From this humble beginnings Mark puts his passion daily into his two loves brewing and flying. Know Your Brewer recently stopped in to visit Mark and his brewery.

KYB: Why the hangar for the brewery?

Mark: I don’t really have much of a plan for anything so I had a plane that was pretty tiny with a lot of extra space. That’s really the truth.

KYB: Where did the name come from?

Mark: I was on the way downtown to file the corporate papers and I came up with the name.

KYB: So no extensive research involved?

Mark: No I am kind of a one man shop for everything. I design my labels, I do all my own taxes, I do everything.

KYB: So was opening a brewery a flight of fancy or something in your blood would you say?

Mark: I say it’s something I had to do. You have to be committed to something like this or you just don’t do it. It’s definitely got work. It’s like playing poker when you go all-in, building a brewery is kind of like that.

KYB: When did you first get interested in brewing?

Mark: I started brewing when I left home. I was 17 when I went to England. I was born in Wales so when I left high school went to Wales. When I was there I went to a pub way back up in the hills. These guys brought out this wooden cask and put it on the bar. They closed and said go ahead and finish it off. I started to ask them questions about it. Where it came from? That’s when I became interested in beer. I started homebrewing then it just went years and years of experimentation. Always trying something different.

KYB: Where else have you brewed before Aviator?

Mark: My older brother and I had a homebrew store. We started that together it was called the Brew Shack. We ran that for years. Once we made enough money from that we put a business plan together to approach the bank for a SBA loan. We opened the Tampa Bay Brewing Company. The whole family opened it together I think that was 1996 or 1997. They are still running today down there in Tampa. I brewed down there with my older brother and my younger brother, we brewed on the system. We shared in the jobs. We all had certain jobs we liked to do or not, for example I didn’t like to filter so I didn’t do that. It was pretty much a family thing.

KYB: What is your brewing system?

Mark: I don’t know the actual manufacturer of this brewing system. I am guessing it was Santa Rosa Stainless as far as anyone can tell. It’s a 12 barrel system that is pseudo-direct fired. It has a heatbox on the bottom to avoid the scorching of the wort as it’s boiling so it’s kind of indirect heat. It works pretty well so I don’t get a lot of darkening. I have a Combi-Tank mash lauter tun which is unique.

KYB: and then your fermenters?

Mark: I have horizontal dairy tanks because to do a Belgian beer that’s really the best way to do it. They provide the best flavor profile, as opposed to the vertical tanks, you can taste the difference. If you really want to be authentic that’s the way to go. I do have three new 29 barrel fermenters. it will expand our capacity significantly.

KYB: Would you say the Belgian inspire your brewing?

Mark: I am not totally focused on Belgian beers, a lot of my influence comes from being in Wales and the English styles for example a Yorkshire Bitter. I love that beer. I love stout, it’s one of my favorite styles. I lived in Belgium for two-two and half years I got to love certain beers over there. Saint Sixtus same beer as Westvleteren 12 pretty much. I used to drink that all the time. The Gueze and the Lambic styles. I have always been intrigued by that. I like the fact that they are not filtered and that the Belgian style of brewing is do pretty much what ever you want and it’s all good. That’s what I like about the Belgian brewing scene.

KYB: Any thoughts for doing Gueze or something in that order?

Mark: I do have plans to do that but I don’t know when. That’s down the road, I need to get our beers established. I need to get some space in here, I need to reorganize the brewery, but that is the plan. I’d like to build a 15 barrel oak open fermentation vessel. That is a little bit less space consuming than the current horizontel tanks and use that for all our Belgian styles. Let it get a little crazy if it picks up a little Brett or whatever that’s fine. I don’t mind that it would give it a unique taste.

KYB: What beers are you currently brewing?

Mark: Big Bolt American Pale Ale, Hot Rod American Irish Red, Kraken Stout, Old Bulldog ESB with a little bit of an American twist on it with some of the hops. I have Saison Royale, MadMonk Belgian Dubbel, Devil’s Tramping Ground Tripel which I modified the standard Tripel recipe to make it more drinkable, it seems to go over really well. I have a barleywine coming out and the newest project is the pilsner, Crazy Pills.

KYB: You are also talking about doing a second runnings beer? Is that the Pils or is that something else?

Mark: Something else, I am going to do that. I like to pull the second runnings of the Belgian beers because I like to do a simple wit beer and a lot of our beers use pilsner malt with some wheat. From the second runnings I like to pull a 4% Belgian white.

KYB: You are also doing work with casks and wood aging?

Mark: Yes, I currently have two bourbon barrels. I have more coming, I would eventually like to have ten. I am looking at some space to build a rack to put some beers up there with maybe expand that a little bit more. So I could end up bottling those beers. I would like to barrel age the Stout, the Tripel, we have the Tripel in there now. I have more casks coming I think the casks events are cool, I like doing them. It’s interesting to introduce people to cask ale, but serve it to them a beer engine, not a cask where you just pour it out of a tap. I just think that is only half, you are missing the other half. Serving it with a beer engine gives the beer a different flavor profile, especially sparkler on there. Beer served out of a barrel is great. it’s traditional, you can’t get any better than that as far as if you are a beer lover.

KYB: What are your thoughts on the North Carolina brewing scene?

Mark: I think right now because Pop the Cap we are getting a lot of new breweries. If we can get some support from the government, like they support North Carolina wine, North Carolina could become a focus on the East Coast for the brewing scene. It really can. There is a huge concentration in breweries in Asheville.

The Raleigh area is really starting to become big. We have Mother Earth brewing starting in Kinston. There is Sean Wilson starting Fullsteam, we have Big Boss, we have Boylan Bridge and Natty Green is coming to Raleigh. We have a huge potential, if we can get everyone together to cooperate we can make North Carolina a huge brewing scene. Instead of competing with each other, cooperate with each other then we can have more momentum together as a group of breweries to push North Carolina forward. Let’s put up a billboard on 401 coming into Raleigh that says North Carolina Breweries, instead of North Carolina wine.

KYB: What’s the future market for Aviator Brewing?

Mark: To be honest we are happy with Raleigh, Fuquay, Garner, Apex, Holly Springs, North Raleigh, Wake Forest. To me that is my market. I want to focus on that market. I want to bring unique and different beers, I don’t want to make the same beer a million times to send it all over the state. I don’t mind doing some small distribution. I will have some Belgian beer bottles with some of our beers, I don’t mind shipping those out, but I don’t want to be shipping kegs all over the US. It’s just not really the core of the business. The brewery is really about the variety. The different kind of beers you can have and the local market is fine with us.

KYB: Final thoughts about Aviator?

Mark: When I make beer here, the first thing I concentrate on is when we buy the finest quality ingredients I can buy. I don’t ever skimp on malt, I don’t skimp on anything. When I make a beer, I interpret it in our own way, you have to make it your own you just can’t just do scotch ale like someone else does it or do pale ale the way Sierra Nevada does it. Those are great beers but we don’t want to do them that way. So always focus on quality that’s the number one thing. Then I go out, I drink the beer at most of the accounts, because I want to know how is being presented there? How does it taste? That is our biggest thing is quality. I want to make sure that when people drink Aviator beer they know their going to get a product that is the best we can make it. That I didn’t buy malt cheaper because we got cheaper shipping from another supplier. I just can’t find any better malt, I am always willing to experiment and try new things but I won’t change malt because of price.