We don’t follow trends, but we do keep an eye on them, and I’d be lying if I said that we never listen to what our sales team is asking for. If you remain curious, there’s always going to be something that gets you excited about brewing something new. I recently went on a brewing sabbatical to Belgium, and came home with a lot of ideas, some of which helped me formulate beers like Fly Jack and most recently Double Mind Haze. Working at Goose Island and being a part of their Bourbon County Stout program, which gave me the experience to launch our own barrel aging program.

Trying an Italian hoppy pilsner called Tipopils is what got me excited to create a beer like Pivo. For example, Easy Jack was inspired by my travels to family hop farms in Bavaria-I came across these hops that I thought would be perfect for a session IPA.

First and foremost, it has to come from a place of inspiration. David and Adam not only got a new brewery-they inherited a brewmaster! The rest is history.ĪCB: As Brewmaster you oversee a lot at Firestone Walker including new beer projects…How does a new beer come about and how does it make it into the brewery’s lineup? I was still lurking around the brewhouse, trying to keep the bankers’ hands off my beer. It wasn’t the smartest move because within a year, that brewery went under, however, Adam Firestone and David Walker acquired the brewing facility in 2001, as they were outgrowing their own original brewery. In 2000 I moved to California to become the brewmaster at the then SLO Brewing Company in Paso Robles, on California’s Central Coast. I was still homebrewing and voraciously consumed any and all information I could get my hands on related to beer making.Ī couple of years later, I attended the Siebel Institute in Chicago and went to work for Goose Island, which was an incredible proving ground. I later joined the company fulltime after graduation working as a Hop Chemist, which started a lifelong love affair with hops.

I was mostly a lab rat, but I was exposed to real brewing science. I studied chemistry and did an internship at KALSEC (Kalamazoo Spice Extraction Company) fortuitously being placed in their hops lab. I was initially planning on going into medicine, but I also got into homebrewing in college, and now you know how that ended up. I spent my college years in Kalamazoo MI, home of Bell’s Brewery, which was my first exposure to craft beer. Can we start with a little history? How’d you get into brewing and make your way to Firestone Walker? When Firestone Walker co-founders Adam Firestone and David Walker moved their brewing operations to Paso Robles in 2001, they also landed “the perfect brewmaster at the perfect time” and Brynildson’s been guiding the brewery’s brewing directions ever since.Īmerican Craft Beer recently had the opportunity to sit down with Matt, one of craft beer’s leading brewmasters, and get his get his thoughts on “all things brewing” including the Hazy IPA phenomenon that is sweeping the nation.ĪCB: Thanks for taking time with us today Matt, we know you’re a busy guy. Enchant Ring - Devotion of Versatility 92.Few brewer’s command the kind the kind of respect that Firestone Walker’s Matt Brynildson does.Enchant Ring - Devotion of Critical Strike 100%.However, simulating your own character will always give the most accurate stat weights. As mentioned there, the recommended Stat Priority (which determines these recomendations) are generalized to be well-suited for most players. Below are the recommended gems & enchants based on the Stat Priority Guide.

Brewmaster gems