{"id":12667,"date":"2016-01-12T08:00:36","date_gmt":"2016-01-12T16:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/?p=12667"},"modified":"2016-01-12T10:35:46","modified_gmt":"2016-01-12T18:35:46","slug":"qa-jeff-widerkehr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/2016\/01\/12\/qa-jeff-widerkehr\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&A: Jeff Wiederkehr"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Burning<\/a>
Burning Beard Brewing Co. brewer Jeff Widerkehr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last year, we introduced readers to Burning Beard Brewing Company<\/strong><\/a>, a start-up scheduled to spring up like fire from the follicles of El Cajon. Since then, a great deal of progress has been made. If all goes well, BBBC will open its doors before spring springs. This time around, we\u2019re getting to know one of the business\u2019 brewers, Jeff Wiederkehr<\/strong>. This proud member of QUAFF<\/strong> <\/a>(Quality Ale Fermentation Fraternity) is quite the renaissance man, having studied abroad in England and Spain, taught English Composition at the collegiate level, and played in several bands opening for Stone Temple Pilots (RIP, Scott Weiland), Blink-182, Sprung Monkey and Unwritten Law. Nowadays, brewing is his all-consuming art-form, and he\u2019s excited to share his handiwork with local beer fans.<\/p>\n

West Coaster: How did you get into beer and what\u2019s your approach to brewing it?<\/strong>
\nJeff Wiederkehr: <\/strong>I had some down-time between music projects and, after a night of drinking every beer in San Diego at Small Bar<\/strong><\/a> with (BBBC co-founder) Mike Maass<\/strong>, I thought we should start a new band. But since Mike doesn\u2019t play an instrument, beer became our music. Like with music, sometimes I just jam and do whatever comes to me, then sometimes I try to write the songs that I want to hear.\u00a0BBBC will work the same way.\u00a0Sometimes we will do something weird just because we feel like it, then sometimes we will go off and write our best power ballad\u2026I mean Lager.<\/p>\n

WC: How has being a member of QUAFF influenced you?<\/strong>
\nJW: <\/strong>QUAFF has been great, but I was actually a little leery of joining a club. It sounded like signing up to have people stand over me while I brewed and I\u2019m just not a huge fan of that kind of group work. But a friend kept telling me that it was fun and family-oriented, so I joined to get an invite to the campouts and the Christmas party. (They\u2019re outstanding, by the way.) I had zero idea of the history, resources or legendary brewer\u2019s brother- and sisterhood. The people are amazing and I feel very lucky to have fallen into the best club I could imagine.<\/p>\n

WC: And recently, you won top honors as QUAFF\u2019s Brewer of the Year?<\/strong>
\nJW: <\/strong>To be honest, I thought there was no way I was going to win. I thought I was a distant second place and I knew one of the final beers I had submitted was under-carbonated, so I assumed they all were. I really don\u2019t know what beer in particular fueled the victory, but I\u2019d like to think it was one of the beers fermented with the Westvleteren 12 yeast I cropped up from a recent family trip to Belgium that did the trick. Yes, I know White Labs<\/strong><\/a> has a similar (if not identical) strain, but still, flying to Belgium to do some Euro-yeast cropping while sightseeing is a better story!<\/p>\n

WC: What are you most looking forward to about becoming a pro adding and what are some of the most challenging aspects of opening your own brewery?<\/strong>
\nJW: <\/strong>I\u2019m excited to write our\u00a0own songs, to make beer with Mike and our team.\u00a0I love the creative process and I can’t wait to see what we do and who we become. I think the standard challenges are money and time. It is easy to run out of both. Being a brewery in San Diego County, the challenge for us might be knowing where we are. We are in freakin\u2019 San Diego and we know what that means\u2014the ground rule is make good beer.<\/em> But I feel that if we tell our <\/em>story and make good beer, we will be able to carve out a small place at the table with great San Diego breweries and not embarrass ourselves.<\/p>\n

WC: When is BBBC slated to open and what styles of beer do you plan to have on tap for your debut?<\/strong>
\nIf everything goes smoothly, and it never does, a pale ale, IPA, abbey single, lager, tart weizen, coffee stout and Russian imperial stout will be available when we open on Leap Year Day (February 29). It took a lot of planning-slash-missing of deadlines to line this up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year, we introduced readers to Burning Beard Brewing Company, a start-up scheduled to spring up like fire from the follicles of El Cajon. Since then, a great deal of progress has been made. If all goes well, BBBC will open its doors before spring springs. This time around, we\u2019re getting to know one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[368,1],"tags":[1353,376,442,1811,390,1299,1745,1010,2373,2374,2375,309,2377,1439,224,2376,1637,290],"class_list":{"0":"post-12667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-beer-news","7":"category-san-diego-beer-beverage-news","8":"tag-sdbeer","9":"tag-beer","10":"tag-brandon-hernandez","11":"tag-burning-beard","12":"tag-craft-beer","13":"tag-el-cajon","14":"tag-imperial-stout","15":"tag-ipa","16":"tag-jeff-widerkehr","17":"tag-mike-maass","18":"tag-promethean","19":"tag-quaff","20":"tag-quality-ale-fermentation-fraternity","21":"tag-san-diego","22":"tag-small-bar","23":"tag-weizen","24":"tag-west-coaster","25":"tag-white-labs","26":"entry","27":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdtr4y-3ij","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12667\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}