Babies have become men in between the time the Whole Foods Market along The Alameda in downtown San Jose was first proposed and finally built. It appears the wait was worth it. The new market features the company’s first on-site microbrewery and taproom in California. Guy Cameron, formerly of Russian River Brewing Company, holds the title of brewmaster for the new Mission Creek Brewing Company. He took a short break from filling kegs to talk brews with Metro.

Can you recall the first beer you made and where did it go from there? I think I started off with a sort of hoppy amber ale. I started out like a lot of other brewers, home-brewing for many years and joined a homebrew club, The Silicon Valley Sudzers, which I’m still a part of. From there I decided I wanted to try commercial brewing so I went to Rock Bottom Brewing in Campbell and I was the assistant brewer there for about a year. I decided I wanted to go do some hoppier stuff and and I wanted to see ‘how it was done,’ so I went to Russian River for six years. And now I’m coming here and I’m really excited to be doing my own thing.

Would you say your style of brewing is hop-heavy varieties, like what you did with Russian River?

Yeah, American pale ales, IPAs. While I was at Russian River we did a lot of sour styles there. Here we are not quite set up for that, but maybe we could do some sort of collaboration at some point and have them produce it off-site.

What can we expect to find on tap from Mission Creek?

Right now it’s American pale ale and an IPA coming up after that. I’ll be re-brewing the pale ale just to make some tweaks and then go from there. I’ll probably end up doing some Belgian saison down the road. It’s really up to me, just kind of pick something and go with it.

At Russian River Brewing, you had a hand in their IPA, Pliny The Elder, which has a cult-like following. Any guess as to what made people line up around the block for it?

People just seem to really like that particular hop flavor and aroma. It’s very distinctive and people are really drawn to that.

As someone with South Bay roots, can you appreciate how cool this concept is for the area?

A lot of people I know have been waiting for this place to open for quite a while and the fact that there is a brewery in it, it’s even more cool.

 

Mission Creek Brewing Company  inside Whole Foods
777 The Alameda, San Jose. missioncreekbrewingco.com