Brewery Snapshot: Left Hand Brewery

Re-posted from my blog: Malted Musings.

The other week I got a chance to sample some beer from a company new to the Connecticut scene: Left Hand Brewing Company. Though new to CT, Left Hand Brewing Co. has been brewing award winning beer in Colorado since 1993. I had the chance to sit down, have a beer, and discuss the biz with Brian Sweeney, the Eastern Regional Sales Manager when he represented their tasting at Eli Cannons the other week.

According to Brian, Left Hand launched to instant success. One of their flagship beers, the Sawtooth Ale, won gold at the Great American Beer Festival the first year the brewery opened, and just won gold again this past year at the World Beer Cup. Their rather impressive list of awards aside, Left Hand can now boast being distributed almost coast to coast. They have been up in Massachusetts for the past seven to eight years, but they just expanded into Connecticut as of this month. They are going to expand soon into Rhode Island, Vermont, and Maine soon, as well as looking at possible options to open up into California as well. Not bad for a brewing company that was started by two buddies hacking a homebrew kit back in 1993!

I had to know where this name came from, and Brian filled me in that the name “Left Hand” connects directly with their hometown: the section of which was named after a local Native American chief. This mystery solved, I needed to know the secret to their success. Again, Brian was more then happy to fill me in.

“Though it may sound cliche,” Brian prefaced, “we are very focused on quality.”

Indeed, this is something I’ve heard before, but Brian continued and I found myself impressed. Left Hand Brewing Company actually employs four full time laboratory technicians whose job it is to test, inspect, and otherwise manage the nitty-gritty elements of the beer itself. Besides that, Left Hand employs full time quality control reps that go around the country inspecting warehouses and distribution centers to make absolute certain that all the beer is up to snuff. As if all this wasn’t enough, Left Hand has a team of approved beer tasters that approve the beer as it goes to market (undoubtedly a grueling job). Brian boasted that two out of six need to check off every beer.

In addition to their fanatical devotion to quality control, Left Hand also have been pushing the Nitro before it was cool. Now Nitro is short for ‘Nitrogen’, and it’s a way to make the beer silky (basically); think Guinness’ super smooth body, for instance. While many CT brands are starting to dabble with Nitro, Left Hand has made Nitro a staple for well over the past decade or two. They currently have three Nitro beers for distribution (the Sawtooth Ale, Milk Stout, and Wake up Dead Imperial Stout), even going so far as to pioneering and perfecting a method of bottling Nitro beers with no widget. Impressive stuff.

Let’s break it down. Left Hand Brewing Company has been around forever, has won ridiculous amounts of awards, is crazy for quality control, and is amazingly forward thinking when it comes to brewing technology. I also rather enjoy their beer (if that counts for anything). Needless to say I encourage you to go check these guys out, pronto. If I may be so bold, I suggest starting with their flagship: Sawtooth or Sawtooth Nitro. Let me know what you think, and in the meantime follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and G+ to stay up to date with the CT beer scene!