The Summer Collection with New York Brewmaster Garrett Oliver

Garrett Oliver’s path to becoming the long-standing brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery, as well as an internationally-recognised expert, author, Patron Saint of Pilsner, and the first brewer to win a James Beard award, was a happy accident. 

During his last year at Boston University in the early 80s, where he studied broadcasting and film, Oliver took charge of the school’s entertainment programme. “I booked a band called R.E.M., Eddie Murphy’s first tour, and went bowling with The Ramones!” he says with a chuckle. “I moved to London to manage a venue for a bit… and that’s where I discovered a thing called beer.”

As Oliver tells it, the beer that he was used to drinking at college in America was “fizzy, yellow and, if you were lucky, didn't have much flavour to it at all. When I got to England, I discovered the pub, and it was like a whole world opened up to me, it was fascinating.”

He spent time travelling around Europe, immersing himself in the diverse brewing and drinking cultures of Germany, Belgium and The Czech Republic. Returning to New York, Oliver started dreaming up his own DIY concoctions. “The only way to have the beer that I wanted was to make it myself,” he says. “There was no craft culture or anything of the sort back then, so we had to use our initiative.”

This burgeoning obsession eventually lead to Oliver quitting a “cushy job” with an office on the 52nd floor of the Pan Am building to apprentice for a friend who was running the Manhattan Brewing Company. “I basically grabbed him by the collar and said I needed that job.” 

In 1994, the founders of Brooklyn Brewery talked Oliver into coming onboard to build a new brewery and head up their beer-making operation. “At the time everything was made Upstate and we only sold two different beers. It seemed like an interesting challenge. I’ve been there ever since.”

“In everything I do, including the way I make beer, I’m looking for structure, balance, and elegance,” he says. “I want it to be interesting to drink, and to hold your attention. You need technical knowhow, but also something to say.” 

We meet Oliver on a muggy day in Brooklyn, thunder rumbling overhead, in the house where he’s lived since 1996. The interior is a testament to his travels and wide-ranging interests, with a rooftop surrounded by greenery and shade. “The Tiki torches aren’t just for show,” he says with a glint in his eye. There are vintage beer posters, paintings and furniture that he’s picked up for a song at auction houses; African masks and Japanese scrolls. “I have my father’s drafting table in one corner, and chairs that I found in a dumpster in another,” he says. “I subscribe to this idea of eclecticism. Some people may say its cluttered, but I use the space in a way that makes me happy.”

“The saddest thing in the world is when you hear someone says they hired an interior designer,” he adds. “You mean you needed to pay someone to design your personality?”

As a young man who was out and about in New York during the 80s, Oliver was exposed to the diverse and transgressive style of the era. He and his friends made and designed their own clothes. “Nobody looked like us. We had our own clothes, we repurposed stuff, it was fun, it was another mode of self-expression. My style has changed over the years, but I’m still looking for that feeling.”

“Whether it’s the beer, the food, the clothes, the paintings hanging on my walls, it’s basically all one thing. It’s another way to show the world who you are.”