Chapter 5
Chapter Five
AVERY
I wandered the brewery, fiddling and fussing, double-checking my stock of ingredients, even grabbing a cloth and polishing a scuff on one of my shiny, stainless-steel tanks.
I was procrastinating. I checked on my attempt at recreating the fall brew, currently fermenting in one of the tanks, and right on track to start bottle conditioning next week.
My gut told me it was going to be good, better than good, that it could be something extraordinary.
Yet again, I cursed my faulty memory. I always kept notes.
I had a database of recipes on my laptop, and my notebook was filled with ideas and musings about flavors that might be good together.
But with this recipe, I just couldn’t nail down the details.
I’d gone back and forth over so many things, changing my mind on technique and proportions, finally writing down my final decisions in the notebook that had been in my desk with the file on the necklace.
It had never occurred to me that anyone would empty out my desk .
I knew the basic ingredients. It was beer, after all. Water, hops, malt, and yeast. But this one, a fall brew, had a hint of apple and the tiniest aftertaste of spice. I wasn’t one for over-flavoring my beer. I liked beer to taste like beer.
But within that definition, there’s so much variation.
Lagers, ales, stouts, porters, sours, and my favorite, IPAs because I was a sucker for hops.
I stopped in front of the hops bin, drawn there by instinct.
I needed the comfort of pulling apart the bright green buds between my fingers, the deliciously acrid, piney, citrusy scent of the hops sneaking up my nose and filling my brain, spreading happiness with every deep inhalation.
The sticky shreds clung to my fingers, staining them lightly with green and soothing my soul.
I’d been accused of making more than a few too-hoppy IPAs, and I refused to apologize. In the new recipe, I hadn’t gone overboard, the bitterness of hops running counter to the hint of apple and spice I’d wanted for the fall brew.
I paced the open space, my boots thudding on the concrete floor, my brain sifting through what I could remember of the recipe and what my gut told me would give me the result I was looking for.
For the millionth time, I stopped, pulled the note card out of my back jeans pocket, and jotted down an idea, the whole time my stomach was tight. I hated this feeling of uncertainty.
Usually, when I came up with recipes, I was led by my senses, my instincts, to the ingredients I’d use.
Once I had that down, I fiddled with the proportions, with the process, the science of it at the front of my mind.
But smell and taste, the heart of the beer, always came first. I rarely did anything this way with bits and pieces of incomplete memory.
Normally, I was trying to create something new, and wherever my vision led, so be it.
Not everything came out great, but some things did, and that was enough.
But with this, I wasn’t looking for something new.
I wanted exactly what was in that vat. Nothing else would do.
It was possible I could reverse engineer it.
I shoved the note card and pen back in my pocket and crossed the room to look at a stack of labels that had come in.
The artwork was brightly colored, in deep reds, oranges, and yellows, a reflection of the gorgeous fall leaves that drew so many tourists this time of year.
Designed by a local artist, they were vibrant and unique, perfect for the new recipe.
I needed a special label since this might be the only bottling I’d have.
I wished Matt were the one who’d broken in and stolen the file and the recipe.
If he had, I wouldn’t think twice about storming over to his place and demanding my recipe back.
It could have been him, but the more I’d thought it through, I didn’t think so.
For one thing, he didn’t need to steal the recipe—he’d worked on it with me; he’d been the fucking brewmaster—and he probably had his own copy. I could ask.
I could. But every time I tried to envision doing it—picking up the phone or going over there after I’d fired him, I couldn’t do it.
Matt would know exactly how much I needed that recipe and what it meant to me.
I wasn’t going to ask Matt for the recipe; if the cost of my pride was losing it, so be it .
I’d told him I didn’t need him. If I went over there now and asked him to bail me out, it would just be proving him right.
I could do this without him. Right? I would have given anything to feel a resounding answer in my chest—in my gut— Yes, you’re in control, you can run this business just as well as you can brew beer .
But there was a part of me that didn’t entirely believe it. I wanted to—God, did I want to—but the hollowness in my chest, the clench of my stomach—argued back. You’ve never done this without a brewmaster—not at this scale.
In the beginning, I’d barely had a taproom or business, selling just enough beer to break even, Ford’s well-timed infusions of cash keeping my head above water until I’d gained just enough of a foothold to afford hiring a real brewmaster who could teach me what I didn’t know. That had been Matt.
And now that I’d booted him out, I was going to have to sink or swim on my own.
This is what you wanted; I reminded myself.
And it was. I dropped the rag in my hand in surprise as a fist pounded on the metal door to the brewery, my mind going immediately to the intruder the cameras hadn’t caught.
My phone was in hand, West’s number on screen, when I heard a familiar voice call out.
“Ave, open up.” My brother Finn. The tension drained out of me, and I pulled the door open to see his often surly face brighten with a smile.
“Hey,” I said, smiling back.
“Did I interrupt?” he asked, walking past me to the taproom .
“No, I’m just...” I looked around. How to explain? “Procrastinating, I guess.”
“I’ve been there,” Finn said with an understanding nod. “I was heading into town for supplies, and I started thinking about that little kitchen you’ve got here. Maybe doing an apple pumpkin fall pop-up thing. After Halloween, maybe?”
“That would be awesome,” I said. Now that Matthew was gone, nothing was stopping us from bringing Finn’s culinary excellence to Sawyers Bend Brewing. “The kitchen isn’t much.”
“Yeah, I know, I’ve seen it. I’ve worked in worse. Anyway, we’re not talking about a full menu at this point.”
I tilted my head to the side and studied Finn’s face.
Since he’d come home, we’d seen many evolutions of Finn: surly and angry, not unlike the teenager he’d been years ago.
Then, after he took over the kitchen at Heartstone Manor, a settled, focused, creative Finn had emerged.
He still had a temper and an attitude when he was annoyed, but I felt like, for the first time in our lives, I was seeing the real him. And I liked him.
I’d always loved my siblings, but liking is different.
This new Finn made me regret all the years he’d been away from home, but I suspected he’d needed that time to become the man he was now.
Since he’d fallen in love with our housekeeper, Savannah, and married her, he’d become a father to her young son, another role I’d never thought I’d see my rebellious brother fill, but he filled it happily, loving both of them so much it radiated whenever they were together .
The side of Finn’s mouth quirked up, and he shrugged his shoulders.
“Yeah, just pop-ups for now, but, and I’m not horning in on your brewery, Ave, I swear. I know how you are about this place. But, you know, we own the land next door, right?”
“I didn’t,” I said, surprised. There was a parking lot on one side of the brewery, and on the other side, a small lot with a ramshackle building that until recently had sold generic tourist crap.
Sawyers Bend had a lot to offer in that area, and generic didn’t cut it.
The tenant, a transplant from Florida who thought selling cheap junk would be easy, had packed up and left a year before.
The place was growing more decrepit by the day.
“I was thinking,” he said, gesturing to the far side of the bar, “on this side of the building, the taproom is almost on the property line. If you wanted—” He raised two hands fending off the protest he thought was coming.
“Only if you wanted, we could talk to Griffen about tearing down that building and extending your taproom and the kitchen.”
I closed my eyes, letting the image Finn had described sink in.
The small kitchen off the taproom was on the side of the building that abutted the property in question.
Finn’s proposal would work. I could see it, the way the stone and beam architecture of the taproom could extend into a dining room.
“We could have indoor and outdoor seating,” I said.
“The views from over there aren’t anything spectacular, but it’s pretty.
The woods and the trees are cool in the summer, protected in the winter.
We could have space heaters or a cast iron wood stove.
” I looked back at Finn to see that a slow grin had spread across his face.
“Now you’re thinking,” he said. “I don’t want to jump in headfirst or anything. We’re talking about a lot of work—planning, designing, building.”