Brewbot Interviews: Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River Brewing Company

Vinnie Cilurzo, 45, is the co-owner and brewmaster at Russian River in Santa Rosa, California. The brewery is renowned around the world for its commitment to quality and innovation. Undoubtedly the most famous Russian River beer is Pliny The Elder, a double IPA that has come to define the style.

Pliny the Elder

We never set out to make Pliny the cult beer it has become. That’s definitely something we tell up and coming brewers, when they ask ‘How did Pliny become what it is?’ You can’t create your own cult beer, it has to be consumer-driven. This whole thing is consumer-driven, it’s up to them. It’s true of anything: the iPhone, a bottle of beer, wine… you know what I’m saying?

In its time, Pliny was super innovative but quite honestly, there are now Double IPAs out there that are way more intense and way more bitter. I guess in the way that Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is still the classic example, Pliny is that level for Double IPA.

The main hop — but not the only hop — in Pliny The Elder is Simcoe. That’s something we’ve used right from the start, when it was a brand-new variety. Pliny was one of the first commercial beers to use Simcoe; and if you ask the three farms that make it, they’ll point to Pliny as the catalyst that helped propel Simcoe into being what it is now. It’s the third most used hop in the industry; 15 years ago it was nothing.

The beer is heavily dry-hopped, it sits on a pretty firm malt foundation, and we use some sugar in the kettle to give it straight fermentability and dryness. It’s a super-dry beer, that’s another main component. It’s not too bitter; it’s a 8 per cent beer but it really only tastes like a 6 per cent alcohol beer. It’s quite deceptive.

I started making double IPAs [like Pliny The Elder] long way; I believe I made the first Double IPA in the USA back in 1994, when I was at Blind Pig in Southern California. It was a super over-the-top hoppy IPA called Inaugural Ale, and then we made it a tradition to brew one for the anniversaries in the following years, until I left Blind Pig in 1996.

Then, a couple of years after I’d been at Russian River, one of our accounts — The Bistro in Hayward — were having what they called the first Double IPA Festival. There were maybe five breweries who made beers for the festival and one of them was us, with Pliny The Elder. From there, it was just a seasonal, until Natalie [Cilurzo, Vinnie’s wife and business partner] and I bought the brewery and moved it to downtown Santa Rosa in 2003. It became a permanent beer in 2004.

The Evolution of Pliny

The recipe hasn’t really changed. You always make small changes; the hops are still there. Five or six years ago we added some Amarillo into the mix, just trying to diversify the flavours. In general the concept has been the same; fermentation has stayed the same, the dry-hop profile has stayed the same.

My family were winemakers [at the Cilurzo Family Vineyards, which they owned from the late 1970s to the early 2000s] and I taught myself to brew in the basement of the winery in the late 1980s. I pretty much have fermentation in my blood! That wine knowledge has helped from a business and barrel beer standpoint — the way they handle limited supply, that sort of thing.

We brew at 100 per cent at both of our breweries. It’s a really difficult way to run a brewery: when something breaks you have no wiggle room. We don’t have space to put any more tanks right now. For now we make as much as we can; most of the Pliny is sold through our pub, which keeps it super fresh. We’re always striving to make Pliny a better beer. That’s true of all of our beers, from a flavour standpoint. We recently put in a new brewhouse to help aid that. We’re working to ensure lower dissolved oxygen for better flavour stability. Now it’s less about changing the recipe and more about little process-driven changes.

I never would have thought that California would be the centre of the beer world. It’s a complete surprise, especially with IPA being the top selling beer in craft in the US. Maybe I’m skeptical but I never would have thought that the US beer market would be buying IPA like they do. That said, there’s a lot of beers out there that are labelled IPA which are really strong pale ales; these breweries are just riding the IPA craze by making a really low-hopped beer, right on the cusp of being an IPA… it is what it is, that’s going to happen with anything.

Favourite Tipples

At the moment, my favourite styles are pilsners — dry, hoppy pilsners; we’re making one year-round now — and low-alcohol Belgian beers, like Taras Boulba from De La Senne in Brussels, and brett-finished beers like Orval or others. They’re a lot harder to make than one thinks, because of the amount of Brett you pitch and how you manage it. It can be difficult. I love that style for its complexity.

What’s Next?

We’re always looking for new things to do. We’re connected with some great hop breeders up in the North-West, which means we can get our hands on new varieties. We’re always experimenting and that’s super fun. We make this single-hop beer called Hop2It; it has the same base recipe every time and the only thing that changes is the hop variety and the quantity in the first hop addition, to ensure the same IBU. If I can get my hands on new varieties [this year] that will be very exciting.

Are you a brewer?

We’re building a network of brewers and our Meet the Brewer interview series is one initiative to highlight the people that make the beer we love.

We’d love to chat to more of you — register your interest here or email us on brewers@brewbot.io.

Pliny the Elder is just one of the beers you can brew with Brewbot, find out more at: www.brewbot.io