Why Are Your Hands So Tired?
The brewhouses at Tired Hands have very little automation, but that’s not quite why this collection of brewpubs is named such. “I come from a working-class background,” says Owner and Founder Jean Broillet. “My dad was a concrete layer; I worked construction in college.… I come from working-class SOBS who know how to put in twelve-hour work days and come home to still be convivial with their families. Tired Hands has roots in my family.”
Broillet has been drawing the Tired Hands logo since college; he just “didn’t know what it was yet. I’m a visual person in terms of how I live my life,” he explains. “I like things that tell stories, even if just one word or a symbol.” all our pickles in-house, and we make a gnarly 3-month kimchi,” says Broillet.
When the Broillets opened the Brew Cafe, Jean thought it was “the best thing in the world.” He’d been brewing professionally for a decade (at Weyerbacher and Iron Hill), and he had finally opened a brewery of his own. He even got his general contractor’s license to oversee the renovation of the Brew Cafe’s circa 1925 building. Life was good—other than the fact that he and his team were brewing seven times each week instead of the intended two on their 7-barrel brewhouse.
“We quickly became a community staple in an otherwise sleepy town,” Broillet says. It became clear that expansion was needed, both in the brewhouse and in the kitchen. So Broillet found the only warehouse that was available at that time in downtown and opened a second brewpub, the Tired Hands Fermentaria. The new space includes a 2,000-square-foot kitchen and a tasting room that can accommodate up to 300 people. It includes a 20-barrel brewhouse, which can brew up to forty barrels at a time on the hot side, and many wooden foeders.
These foeders, or “works of art” as Broillet calls them, allowed Tired Hands to significantly expand its saison program. Demand initially dictated that most of the saisons at the Brew Cafe be fermented in stainless steel (so they could ferment in two weeks’ time), but the added capacity of the new facility now allows for most of the brewery’s saisons to be fermented in wood. “I fill a 60-hectoliter foeder to ferment with our house culture and park it for two to three months until it’s ready,” he says, clearly enamored with these vessels. “Our culture is so much happier now living in oak.”
The Fermenteria also includes a “real-deal restaurant” with a robust taco menu as well as burgers, sandwiches, and small-plate starters. “Our food serves our beer,” says Broillet. “We believe in conscious food at a brewpub … with a lot of tacos.”
Soon Tired Hands will move into a third facility, this one for more storage and more oak fermentation. Broillet calls it his “Oak Temple.” The space will also accommodate the storage of cans, which are another new development for the brewery. For Tired Hands, “expanding means supporting people who want to support us.”