Tom Moench
WHO HE IS: Creator of Orange Blossom Pilsner
WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW HIM: He is to thank for import and micro beers in Florida.
One night a group of us went to Anthony’s Pizzeria in Thorton Park for dinner. “Beer, beer, beer … let it flow like water,” sang my friend Mandy. Our waiter had just asked us what we wanted to drink; we wanted Orange Blossom Pilsner.
Ever since this dinner, I find myself singing this little ditty all the time—in the car, in the shower, at breakfast, while getting ready to go out. I’ve even professed this tune to other waiters—without even realizing it—when recently asked for my drink order. This has made me think that something is either seriously wrong with me or something is seriously right with beer—let’s just assume it’s the latter.
Besides beer, I also love art and bookstores; so you can imagine my excitement when I was asked to guest host the third Thursday art-show at Urban Think!, my local bookstore. Within ten minutes of my hosting experience, in walked Tom, the creator of Orange Blossom Pilsner. Unbeknownst to me, he had arranged with Jim, the bookstores manager, to give samples of his beer away at my art show. This seemed like a bizarre coincidence considering that just days before we sang a song for beer—Tom’s beer—and now the beer inventor was standing before me. I could even personally congratulate him for his success in making an excellent honey beer—and I did.
Within two samples of Tom’s beer, I had the confidence to ask him to interview with me. (Note: I did not mention our song; however I did make him aware of his awesomeness.) He agreed. Although, I’m not sure he thought I’d be so persistent. It took a couple of unreturned e-mails to get the response I wanted. But I finally got it, when he wrote back, “I’d be tickled to do an interview.” Finally, the green light to inquire about anything I ever wanted to know about beer.
The moral of the story is this: When you do good things; good things come to you. I got to meet a brew master and score an unexpected interview in exchange for helping out a friend. (Come to find out, Tom’s beer of choice before his own creation was Coors. This is also my favorite commercial beer—clearly why I feel qualified to call him a brew master.) So people of Orlando: pay it forward and make our community a better place. The possibility of goodness is inevitable. 
Tom: Since I’ve been around the microbrews have become very popular.
Jana: How is that?
Tom: The way I look at is that I planted microbrew seeds all over central Florida and they grew.
What do you mean exactly by the term microbrew?
I mean craft beers—beers that are made with high integrity; beers that accountants don’t oversee; beers that the brewer looks at himself as an artist and is also trying to make the best possible product. A lot of our mainstream 7-Eleven beers are designed by accountants. They’ve figure out things like, if we use rice instead of malt then that’s cheaper. The craft beer movement was started with the home brewer’s movement back in 1978. Jimmy Carter made home brewing legal. It was the year I turned 18-years-old and also the year I started making home brew; I was old enough to but the ingredients to make beer but not old enough to buy beer. [Laughs]
That doesn’t make any sense.
Yeah. I could buy hops, malt and yeast and make beer … but they wouldn’t let me buy beer.
Where could you buy those ingredients?
There were a few home brew stores; one was in Orlando. There wasn’t a whole lot of information for home brewers but I dug into it … I made a lot of bad beer at first, but I was really passionate about it.
What kind of home brew kit were you using?
A novice home brew kit is—you know—some malt extract, mixed with water in a pot, then cooled off and blended with more water, then yeast. I look at that like making a TV dinner; you can grab a TV dinner out of the freezer and throw it in the microwave for eight minutes, and technically, you made dinner. I eventually turned my garage into a home brewery; there was no room for any car.
How many wrong brews did it take before you got the right brew?
It was hit and miss. I think out of the first ten brews I made, probably three were good. Then out of the next twenty beers I made, probably six to eight were good. I just slowly refined my art.
Are these recipes that are written down?
Oh indeed, I like the creativity of brewing. That’s how I express myself; a lot of people paint on canvas or strum their guitar but I brew. I became interested in making unique beers. I’ve made coconut beers, ginseng beers, shitake brown ale …
What do you think it is about beer that tastes so good?
I almost think that as humans we are conditioned to like beer. Back in the old days, it wasn’t safe to drink water but it was safe to drink beer. That still stands in Mexico frankly. [Laughs] I wouldn‘t drink the water in Mexico even today. But I think that is the reason why we became conditioned to like beer and how it’s made such a lasting impact even today.
Before making your own beer, what kind of beer-man were you?
When I was 12-years-old, my father was going to Colorado—that was before Coors had made it east of the Mississippi—I said to him, “Dad, bring me back some Coors.” He looked at me like, “What in the world. Why does my 12-year-old want me to bring him back beer?” So I was kind of a beer geek from early on.
How had you heard of Coors at such a young age?
I’m not sure, but I had an interest.
When was the first time you drank beer?
When my Dad brought me back the Coors.
Wow, he did it? Well, I can’t blame him; Coors Light is my favorite beer—my favorite commercial beer at least.
Coors is a damn fine product.
I like you more already. What was it about your brew that made you think you could market it?
It was a hobby gone wild. I was a stage-hand for 20 years; I worked in television and theater but all the while I was brewing beer. I started brewing in a little brewery here in Orlando. They didn’t understand good beer; they just knew they could make it for $1 a gallon and sell it for $4 a pint. Their accountants were like, “Yeah, let’s do it.” But they didn’t know how to do it.
They had heard about me—an artist in that type of craft—and asked me to brew for them. I was at a point in my career where I could take the extra time, 15-20 hours a week. I was kind of ahead of my time back then; microbrews hadn’t really caught on here even though I was making some incredible beer. I made a toasted coconut porter there and took it to the 1st Universal Studios Beer Festival and won the People’s Choice Award as the best tasting beer. I was proud of that. But when I went back to the owners of this brew pub and told them, they said, “That’s nice … but we’ve decided to close the brewery.”
I chose to go on for the art and love of it. I started a beer distributorship. I also contract brewed my coconut porter. Coconut was hard to work with, plus it was a dark beer that folks often are afraid of. That’s when I realized that my honey beer was what people went nuts over. So I contracted that and let the coconut porter go; I don’t regret it for a second.
What made you try honey beer?
I would go into my kitchen and look for things to make beer with. I was a pretty creative brewer. [Laughs]
Like a scientist of sorts?
Yeah, I made beer out of whatever I could imagine making beer out of. I was also famous for my Cherry Brew. The difference between my cherry beer and commercial cherry beer was my beer was made out of real cherries. The commercial beer is made out of fruit extracts. I would buy pounds and pounds of cherries and crush them up.
How did you get this kind of beer to the masses? Through contest?
At that point, I was an amateur brewer so I brewed for my friends … and home brew competitions. The home brew community started to build and host some serious competitions. They were fun.
I was unaware a home brew club even existed.
Well, there’s a home brew club here in town—the Central Florida Home Brewers—they even have a web site, www.CFHB.org. I’m one of the founding members; it started over 20 years ago.
Wow. Is there some kind of beer patent that keeps people from ripping off your recipes?
There’s copyright, but the recipe is a secret. It’s your own. I go out to the Great American Beer Festival in Colorado every year and enter OBP in the competition but I don’t bring it to the floor. That means I don’t pour it at the festival. I’ve got several reasons for this; the first being that I don’t have my beer available in Denver. That’s where a majority of those consumers are from. It’s not like I can turn them on to my beer because it’s not available to them.
There are also a ton of brewers from all over the nation there. So if I bring my crisp honey beer to them and they like it, they might decide to make a honey beer. And frankly, making a good honey beer is not difficult. Any competent brewer can make a good honey beer, but why OBP tastes so good is the sheer amount of honey I use. I’d venture to say it’s ten times more than most commercial honey beers that are available on the market. When accountants at a commercial company get a hold of how expensive it is, they say, “Oh no, you can’t spend that much money making the beer.”
With your experience, can you taste a beer and tell exactly what is in it?
To a certain degree, I’ve got a pretty good palate. I actually have judged at the Great American Beer Festival for 5 of the past 7 years. The GABF is one of the biggest beer competitions in the nation, if not the planet. To judge at an event like that is one heck of an honor.
How does one get picked to be a judge?
I was just recognized in the crowd for my accomplishments and that’s from having a good palate.
How many contests has OBP won?
The contest that means the most to me is the consumer—the people who actually drink beer. So I win every festival when I hear consumers say, “This is the best of the fest.” That means more to me than any gold medal. However, OBP did take a bronze medal at the GABF festival a couple of years ago and I’ve taken some awards at miscellaneous smaller events. Those are nice, but the real victory is when consumers come to my table and tell me it’s the best beer of the event—and I hear that often.
Now, do your recipes stay the same at every contest or do they change?My recipes stay the same. Now, I’m not going to say there aren’t outside influences that may affect the beer from batch to batch. But I’m always trying to refine my beer to make it the best that I can. I’m bringing up a fella that has a PhD. in brewing to South Carolina next week. He’s going to go over our process to make sure that we are doing everything we can for it to be the best it can be. I’m more of an artist than a scientist when it comes to brewing and you can’t ignore the science of brewing. Knowing that I lack some of the science aspect—because I am an artist—it’s necessary I bring him in.
Where does one go to school to become a PhD. in brewery?
There are two colleges in the States and two in Germany. The Doemans and Weinsthephen are in Germany and are famous. Then there is UC. Davis that is in California and The Siebel Institute in Chicago. So, yes, you can get a PhD. in brew sciences.
Do you plan on spreading your beer nation-wide? For right now, you are committed to Central Florida, right?
I actually am in Georgia and I have a distributor in South Carolina. My goal is to make OBP huge in my home market—which I’m working hard every day to do—then to make an impact on Florida, our home state. Then I’d like to grow it out from there. I probably jumped into Georgia and South Carolina a little quick but I think the brand is good enough to release it a little early.
How long has OBP been a brand?
I brought OBP to market 4 years ago.
Every time I drink your beer it comes with an orange slice. Is that the way you think it tastes best? Or is it something bars and restaurants take the initiative to do?
Personally, I don’t drink it with an orange. The orange gives it a certain amount of flare and makes it special. People seem to like it with an orange and as long as people are drinking my beer; I’m happy. They could put a pickle in it if they want to, but just please enjoy my beer. It’s neat to go to a pub and see oranges on the side of beers and think, “Wow, that’s my beer they’re drinking.”
What percent alcohol is your beer?
5½ %
Now how does one test their beer for alcohol percentage?
That’s a great question. There is a tool called the hydrometer. What the hydrometer does is measure dissolved solids. Like how you float better in the ocean than in a lake; it is because of dissolved solids and the salt in the ocean make you more buoyant. When you first make a beer—before it becomes beer and before the yeast has a chance to eat up all the sugar—you measure the dissolved solids. Let’s pick a number, say it measures as 1044. Then after the yeast eats the sugar and converts it to alcohol—that’s the process of how beer is made—you measure the dissolved solids again. Then you take the 1044 that it was before and take the difference from what the yeast broke it down to. That’s what will give you the measurement for alcohol content. It’s very scientific.
Um, yeah I’d say so.
To say it in laymen’s terms … I have OBP² coming out. It’s an 11% version of OBP. It’s the exact same recipe, just half the water. The way I explain it to people is it’s like a pot of coffee; if you cut the amount of water you use in half, you have a stronger pot of coffee. It’s very similar to beer. If you use the same amount of grain, with the same amount of honey, but half the water, you’ve got a double strength beer.
So a brew maker is in control of the alcohol content of their beer?
Yeah, that’s the food for the yeast. The more food for the yeast… the more alcohol you get.
How does a brew maker calculate a price for their beer?
It’s the same as every other business. How much does it cost to make? I’m going to add a 10-20% mark up because I need to make a profit. Then when it’s sold to the distributor, they mark it up. Then when it’s sold to the retailer, they put their mark up on it. By the time the consumer gets the beer it’s been marked up by the brewery, the distributor and the retailer. Not to mention it is taxed at all those levels. A wonderful beer truly costs about a quarter to make, but to the consumer it’s a dollar to a dollar-and-a-half beer.
Are there a lot of rules and regulations to making beer?
Oh good Lord, yes. The ATF is very serious about what they do. I just completed getting approval for the OBP² bottle label. You have to jump through all kinds of hoops. I had problems with getting the OBP² label approved because the agent said I was touting the alcohol strength. He thought I was emphasizing that the high alcohol was the selling point and he didn’t like that.
Is this one man that makes this decision?
Yes, and he has the country’s best interest at hand. [Laughs] And he didn’t like my label. One of the things he did was look at the normal OBP label, he said, “Look, it has a normal-sized bee [logo]. Now we go to the label on your OBP², it has an Arnold Schwarzeneggar looking sized bee [logo].” So we wrestled and went back and forth; I was really pleased with how little we had to relent to get the label approved. But it still probably held up the release of this beer by 3 months.
Do the rules change per state? Like, is Florida a tough state to make beer in?
Oh certainly. Like the guy I was just speaking about, he was a Fed. The first thing you do is get Federal approval of your label and then you have to receive state label approval. Generally, if the Federal approves it, the state will also approve it. But there was a law that stopped a lot of microbreweries from coming to Florida in the early days. It was that FL had to be printed on the bottle cap.
So here’s this little microbrewery in New York who wanted to send its beer to Florida, well now they’d have to special order caps just to sell it. It was just another hurdle for small microbreweries to come here. Another stupid law Florida had—by the way the grassroots movement overturned it and I am happy to say that I was a part of it—was the bottle size. Ten years go there was a law that said that beer could only be sold in 8, 12, 16 and 32 oz. sized containers. This was absurd because of the metric system; Europeans don’t serve 12 oz. bottles of beer they sell 1/3 liter bottle of beer which is 11.2 oz. So an 11.2 oz. bottle was illegal in our state and if an import beer wanted to come into Florida they had to special bottle it with the appropriate size …
Which would make the beer really expensive?
Well that but it also made a lot of beer inaccessible to Florida.
Well it’s a good thing you turned it around!
[Laughs] When I wrote the senators, the stance I took was, “You forced me to learn the metric system in high school and now it’s illegal?” Because the metric system was illegal when it came to beer, at least that was my take. You couldn’t bottle a ½ liter bottle of beer because it’s 16.9 oz. and not 16 oz; that’s goofy. I was glad to help overturn that stupid law; it allowed a lot of European beers to come in.
I’m glad too. What are you going to do if OBP gets you filthy rich?
I’m going to be the same nice fellow I’ve always been … but I will enjoy the fruits of my labor. I love boating and one thing I’d like to do is—a lot of my markets are on the water like Jacksonville, Tampa, Pensacola and hopefully Miami soon—so it’d be pretty cool to take my boat to these places rather than stay in motel rooms.
You mean you’d like to take you’re yacht?
[Laughs] I’m being humble.
* Interview Date 2/11/08
For more info Tom’s Beer check out these web sites:
www.orangeblossompilsner.com
www.myspace.com/orangeblossompilsner