Scott Watson on the Sensory Moments of Brewing Beer & Making Chocolate
By David Nilsen
Scott Watson was a craft brewer long before founding Loon Chocolate in the town of Manchester in southern New Hampshire. Scott brewed at now-closed Nutfield Brewing in Derry, New Hampshire, from 1995 to 2002, and his memories and experiences of brewing beer definitely informed his approach to making bean to bar chocolate. Working on the production side in both industries has given him a unique perspective on what craft beer and craft chocolate have in common, and insights into what drives him in these creative but technical fields:
“I really enjoy the process of multiple stages to get to that final development. To look at a ripened cacao pod sliced open and you see those fresh beans and say This right here is going to be transformed into a chocolate bar. To me that's where my love of the industry is. Going back into the beer world to look at high quality malted barley and some dry, whole hops and say We're going to pour this out of a draft in 10 to 14 days. Even when I'm scheduling, when we're forecasting what we need to do for the next two weeks for production, being able to look at a 14-day window and say, Okay, we need to be roasting beans here. We need to crack 'em here. It's going to take three days for us to grind it, and then we want to age it a little before we temper and form it into bars. That scheduling is how I used to forecast brewing beer, and it’s been a benefit for me to be able to forecast my beer schedule for seven years and say This is what we're going to do today so we can bottle in 10 days from now. All of those processes, which I've always enjoyed, have made the transition into chocolate making very smooth for me.”
What’s most intriguing in hearing Scott talk about brewing beer and making chocolate is his sensory impressions of both processes. While there are many aromatic flavor compatibilities between beer and chocolate, most people never become familiar with the smells and other sensory experiences involved in making both.
“There is was nothing more romantic than sitting in the brewhouse at five on a snowy morning and mashing in or just adding the first edition of hops. It's weird. I can totally see every little part of the brewhouse, the smell. I miss those experiences a lot. Being able to get up on the ladder in the morning and overlook five different batches of beer and just how the yeast was fermenting. You knew, okay, that beer right there is at 48 hours, that might be a little too cold and I need to check the temperature on that right now, or that one's done fermenting. I need to check the gravity on that and maybe we're done over there. I certainly miss all of that, but getting a clump of 180 degree bent grain in my boot and trying to whip that boot off as fast as I can burning my foot, I don't miss those days.
We use Cocoa Town melangers that handle a hundred pounds of [cacao]. We do a pre-grind before we go into the melanger and getting that initial 70 pounds of nibs going you get that really astringent smell, and you hear that motor work a little harder like, what's going on here? That real raw aroma is something that it makes me smile every time. And watching that spin, it can be as mesmerizing as a campfire, at least to me, where slowly over the course of 30 minutes I can just watch those nibs turn into something that many people still can't fathom. They have no idea what it's doing, but seeing that temperature heat up and some of that butter being released and liquefying and breaking down and just that real stringent smell, to me, it's just a joy to do.”
I can listen to brewers and chocolate makers talk about these behind-the-scenes sensory experiences all day. Our senses tell the stories of our life, where and who we’ve been, what we’ve lived. A sensory vocabulary is a biography written in smells and tastes. I’m grateful to Scott for sharing part of his with us.
You can listen to my entire conversation with Scott, in which he tells us more about Loon and some of the other similarities between brewing beer and making chocolate, in this episode: