To the average city-dweller, Nick Gislason’s life story is as romantic, in the idealist sense, as they come. Born in 1983, he lived aboard his parents’ small sailboat for a few years before he and his family moved onto terra firma: 40 acres of undeveloped land on San Juan Island, just off the coast of northwest Washington State. As a young boy, Nick helped build his family home in the forest. Before he reached his teenage years, he was bulldozing, logging and helping his mother and father with plumbing, electrical wiring, and whatever else that needed doing as they carved out a life there.
“It was definitely culturally important and valued when I grew up to learn a diversity of skills and crafts,” says Gislason of his upbringing, “because when you’re on an island like this, you have pretty limited resources in some ways. So, if you want something done, you just figure out how to do it and then you do it.” And what Gislason really wanted to figure out and do, for as long as he can remember, was how to make fireworks.
From the age of about four, he would pester his parents to go to as many fireworks displays as possible, taking more pleasure than most at the colourful explosions in the sky. And, unlike the manifold sparks they produce, his interest in fireworks didn’t fade as he grew older. In the mid-1990s, when he was 12, he tracked down and read some of the most important literature on the subject of pyrotechnics – books by Japanese fireworks-maker and author Takeo Shimizu, and by American authorities on the subject, George W. Weingart and also Ronald Lancaster.
“There was maybe a six month period where I was reading, researching and thinking about how I was going to start making fireworks myself,” recalls Gislason. “I just went to the public library after school and requested that they borrow these books from other libraries because, of course, they didn’t have them on the shelf out there on the islands. Each one took a few weeks to come in, but when it did, I’d take it home and read it cover to cover, and take notes like crazy.”
With a list of specialist books read, and a subsequently filled notebook full of questions, thoughts and ideas, Gislason proposed to his parents that he set up a small workshop area on their property to start building fireworks. “Of course, my old man thought that was a strange idea for a young lad,” laughs Gislason, “but he was very diplomatic and supportive, always encouraging me, so he said, ‘Well, you know, I’m not sure about making fireworks, but I’ll make you a deal: if you can figure out an apprenticeship with somebody who does this professionally, then maybe someday I’ll think about letting you build a firework-making workshop on the property.’”
Gislason knew there was a great Fourth of July fireworks show on the neighbouring island of Lopez which many San Juan residents (his family included) would watch from the south end of the island, where they could look over to the east and see the display a few miles across the water.
So, he hit up his tried and trusted information resource – his local public library. He started digging through old newspaper articles, just trying to find a name or a contact – some way to get hold of the people behind the Lopez fireworks display. Lo and behold, he found an article interviewing a couple of the people involved, so Gislason grabbed the phonebook and called up the first name he’d noted, Rick King, and introduced himself. “I knew I was perhaps a bit young to be asking about trying to get involved somehow in a professional fireworks organisation, so I told a white lie,” Gislason remembers with a wry smile. “I said, ‘Well, I’m doing a school report about fireworks’ – as I figured, you know, education legitimises everything, right? – ‘and I was wondering if I could come interview you about that.’ And so Rick laughs and says, ‘Oh, since it’s for school, come on over – although the guy you really want to talk with is Dwight Walters, here’s his number.’ So I called up Dwight, explained the school report story, and he says, ‘Yeah, absolutely, seeing as it’s for school, come on over, we’ll be happy to show your around!’ I then tell my Dad that I’ve got a meeting lined up with Lopez fireworks and he just shakes his head and says, ‘Oh boy, here we go.’”
After getting the ferry over to Lopez, Nick and his Dad met Walters who took them to their fireworks workshops and storage magazines up in the woods. “There’s just all kinds of equipment and sheds and powder storage buildings and all this stuff, and I’m taking notes at a hundred miles an hour and, you know, just really taking it all in. Everything, of course, is typical island-style: they literally built all the equipment from scratch, including the various powder mills and star rollers.
And at the end of the hour-long tour, Dwight asked me if I had any questions, and so I looked at my notebook and said, ‘Well, yeah, let’s see, maybe the first one here: what do you think about using Shimizu’s formula number 49 for building three-inch Japanese style ball shells? Would that be a good burst charge?’”
With eyebrows raised, a surprised but impressed Walters responded with a (slightly incredulous) question of his own: “You’ve read Shimizu!?”
That was the moment Gislason ingratiated himself with Walters, then in his mid-60s, who soon afterwards took him under his wing as his young padawan, inviting him to come over on the weekends to learn more by shadowing him to get some practical, hands-on experience. Nick worked with Walters and his team for eight or so years, getting more and more involved until Walters retired in 2004, appointing Nick (who was now 21) as his replacement as the Technical Director of Lopez Island Community Fireworks.
“Something Dwight always told me since I was about 16 was that when the time came for me to take on jobs in the future, I’d need to explain my commitment to Lopez fireworks. He’d tell me, ‘It’s not vacation, so doesn’t count for that – it’s just community service, and it’s completely non-negotiable, something you have to do every year from the beginning of June until just after the Fourth of July.’ He told me that if I could make that work with a regular job, then great. If not, then he said to always be prepared to walk away as it’s not the right fit.”
Almost as soon as he started to work with Walters at weekends, Gislason realised that to get to a point where he could make fireworks himself, he’d need to become proficient in metalwork, specifically machining. So, aged 13, he got himself an after-school job at M. R. Fab, a local machine shop where he worked, not for money but for “all the floor sweepings I could sweep up plus some time on the machines after work to build fireworks tooling”.
While floor sweepings – the fine metal shavings created by working metal on a lathe or other machinery – is merely rubbish to a machine shop boss, to a firework-maker they are (sometimes, literally) gold dust, a vital component needed to produce different colour sparks.
“In a way there’s a similarity to making fireworks and winemaking or beer brewing,” muses Gislason. “With fireworks, we’re always looking for the raw ingredients to use – in particular the metal shavings on machine shop floors. Aluminium, for example, is what we need to create silver or gold sparks in a firework. And the nature of a particular alloy, its particle shape, will dictate the behaviour of the effect you can make with it. It’s something we don’t have full control over as we rely on whatever shop floor sweepings we can get – firework-making has traditionally relied heavily on using recycled materials – and while we phone round different metal workshops to make sure we get what we can, we then have to assess our haul and figure out, ‘Okay, how do we use this to make something beautiful?’ Another material we use a lot in firework-making is charcoal. And the type of charcoal available – and whether it’s cooked from Douglas fir or pine or cedar or willow or alder – also affects what we can achieve. Charcoal from different tree varieties has different properties and characteristics. We are always assessing what we have and working out how best to use it.”
Winemakers and beer brewers also need to assess the raw ingredients to hand – the harvested grapes or barley. “You have to understand what’s in front of you in order to figure out how to coax out the most interesting elements to create something pleasurable, right?” Gislason affirms.
Which brings us to another similarity between making fireworks, beer and wine: all three of Gislason’s professional endeavours involve a blend of science, know-how and artistry to create transient products that are consumed in a moment but with the end result being pleasure, preferably communal. So how did Gislason get into brewing beer and winemaking at the highest level?
“It started with beer,” he confesses. “My uncle grew up in Seattle and was influenced by the American craft beer movement and had been homebrewing since he was a young guy. His love of that and also liking to involve us nephews in fun projects, he would have me over and say, ‘Hey, why don’t you help me brew?’ And so, I’d go over to his place from the age of maybe 10 or 11 years old, and we’d be cooking barley and hops in the kitchen, and all the while he’d be telling me all about the beer- brewing process. I always found that very fascinating. On my twelfth birthday, he gave me a book called The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian. I read it numerous times from cover to cover.”
Another steer towards beer came from the San Juan community spirit Gislason was raised in. “In many ways, people contributed their skills and talents to the community, and there was definitely a keen appreciation for the arts and crafts on San Juan,” he says. “People really respect all the arts and crafts, from woodworking to musicianship. You know, some people, if they’re really into music, then maybe they’d host an annual music festival of sorts out at their place in the woods. They build a big stage out in the forest and then invite a bunch of good musicians to come and do their thing. And, if it’s the autumn, maybe they’d invite other people who are fishermen to bring a bunch of salmon and just make this big old party for fun – everyone brings what it is they do or are good at to the party. Everyone welcome, kids running around and there’s definitely a strong community vibe, you’d say. Everybody pitches in to try to make the party that much better.”
In his mid-teens, shortly after establishing a parentally approved path towards professional pyrotechnic proficiency, Gislason realised that homebrewed beer could be the thing he contributed to the community ‘potluck’ parties and island get-togethers. What better to bring to a party than a keg or a bunch of bottles of beer?
While on a family trip to Salt Spring Island when Gislason was 14, he spotted a rustic wooden sign on the outskirts of a town called Ganges that simply said ‘brewing supply’. Intrigued, he followed it, hiking up into the woods only to return some time later to his parents’ sailboat with an armload of barley and hops and a plan to instigate his inaugural independent homebrew.
Gislason was soon putting his developing metalwork skills to good use, welding his own stainless steel brewing equipment from old beer kegs. When he left home to study chemistry at Western Washington University in Bellingham just a couple of years later, he met his now wife, Jennifer Angelosante. Sparks flew, literally: one of the couple’s first dates was a trip to the San Juans to make fireworks. It didn’t take long before the two of them were brewing beer together on Gislason’s home-built equipment, hosting brew parties, and trading beer with the university fabrication shop managers in order to use the equipment there to make more, bigger and better brew kit as they went.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gislason’s first job was at a brewery, but his extra-curricular brewing exploits with Angelosante continued to grow organically. “First of all we were brewing for our community – our fellow students when we were at university, then the wine community when we moved to Napa,” says Gislason. “We started bringing beer to charity wine events, doing weddings, and even bigger events – all non-commercially – just for the pure love of doing it.”
Beer, it transpires, was something of a gateway obsession. It led Gislason to winemaking as he became interested in exploring the practical side of nurturing a crop specifically for the purposes of fermenting it. “When I worked in a brewery, the grain came via a distributor,” he says. “There was no opportunity to develop a close relationship with the agricultural source of our raw materials.” The way viticulture and winemaking went hand in hand really appealed to him.
Growing up, Gislason was no stranger to wine. His mother would have a glass of wine most nights whilst cooking or with dinner, and spoke of it to him in the same way she did about food. “She definitely taught me a responsible approach to wine and beer from a young age,” he says, “and to think of them as wholesome elements of food and eating, as part of a healthy lifestyle.”
His paternal grandmother, Lorraine Gislason, was also an influence. She had worked in fine dining in Seattle in the 1970s and 80s with French restaurateur Emile Ninaud at one of the city’s most celebrated restaurants, Le Tastevin. “Emile was widely considered one of the pioneers of the fine wine scene in Seattle,” says Gislason, “and when I was growing up, Grandma Raine would always bring special bottles to taste for holidays. She loved telling us all about how Washington wine got started, and about the trailblazing characters that were making great wines east of the Cascade mountains.”
Gislason’s fireworks mentor Dwight Walters was also a wine lover. “He was a huge adventurer,” says Gislason. “He worked in Africa, off the coast of South and Central America, and in the 1970s landed in Northern California for a while, and visited dozens of wineries, building a collection. When he moved to Lopez Island, he dug a cellar in the rock beneath his house to store his wine. When I was coming over to Lopez Island as a young lad in the 1990s and early 2000s, after a day of building fireworks, he would open a bottle of wine and pour me a little to taste and we sat together and talked about fireworks. He introduced me to Cabernet from the 1960s, Napa wines from the 70s, and talked about how ‘old school’ California zinfandel could age well if it was made like they did back in the 60s and 70s. We tasted some special wines and I started to gain an appreciation for them.”
From his father, Gislason learned a crucial skill set that helped his evaluation of subtle flavours and points of difference in what he was tasting. “My father always taught me to recognise and appreciate different scents and smells out in the forest on the islands,” he says, something he maintains helped set him up for the work he now does as both a winemaker and a brewer of beer. “He was always commenting on the things he could smell when we were out working,” Gislason recalls, “and I started to pay attention from a very young age. I learned to celebrate the smell of the herbal-floral wild rose bushes in spring, aromatic wild blackberries in the autumn, appreciate the smells of all the different trees in the forest – Douglas fir, white fir, red cedar, yellow cedar, juniper, willow and more.” As Gislason and his father did a bit of logging, he started to make mental connections, not just between the smells of different trees, but also how they varied depending on where they came from. “I became intimately familiar with the smells of all the different trees and started to form a crucial mental link of knowing if they came from a rocky site or a more fertile one, how shady or sunny it was – all from how the wood smelled when we milled it at a friend’s sawmill.”
“Winemaking, or grain-forward brewing, are both informed by the same underlying principle,” Gislason continues. “First you form an intimate relationship with your raw materials, their personalities, their quirks. Then you figure out the translation between things that you see, smell, taste, feel in the raw materials, and what they will transform into through the course of the craft, or the fermentation, in the case of wine and beer.”
Periodically in his teenage years, Gislason and his father would do excavation work for a family friend setting up a new business that required earthworks. The name of the company? San Juan Vineyards. “They had hired a young French winemaker to oversee the project, and I would volunteer to come and help him in the vineyard. I could see the parallels with what I was already doing with homebrewing beer, and it seemed really complementary to know how to work with the fermentation of both fruit and grain. I kept returning to volunteer and help at the winery for ten years across the tenure of three different winemakers. I always enjoyed the work, and loved the fact the fruit was growing right next to the winery.” At one of his last stints at San Juan Vineyards, the owner Steve Swanberg asked Gislason what he was planning to do after university. Gislason replied that he hoped to study brewing at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University, but Swanberg offered an alternative suggestion: “You know what you should be? An enologist.” A seed was sown.
After giving up his first (and only) brewery job, Gislason decided to give winemaking “due consideration”. For him, that meant heading to Napa, securing a job on Howell Mountain at O’Shaughnessy Estate Winery and, over the course of about six months, visiting 350 wineries where he tasted over 3,000 wines, making detailed notes on each. His next move took him to New Zealand to work a harvest at Craggy Range. In the month before the grape picking began, he made a point of visiting 100 wineries across New Zealand, logging another 800 or so wines in his notebooks. “I was obsessed with learning as much as I could as quickly as I could,” he says. “I’ve always approached things that I’m passionate about in that way. I try to understand the underlying patterns and inner workings – the fundamental principles. Once these become second nature, this opens the door for creativity, and that’s when it really gets fun and interesting.”
Gislason’s ambition to acquire as much knowledge as possible about the focus of his passion has made for one heck of a CV. He was appointed winemaker at cult Napa winery Screaming Eagle in 2011, when he was just 29 years old. He still holds the position, and wines he made in 2012, 2015 and 2016 received perfect scores of 100 from legendary wine critic Robert Parker. But he has never stopped brewing with Angelosante multiple times a year, even as she also got into wine, travelling for several months at a time to work harvests at various wineries around the world. The pair’s combined and ever-increasing knowledge and experience in the wine world has undoubtedly informed their beer-making over the last decade. They both hold master’s degrees in viticulture and enology from University of California, Davis, and Angelosante is now a technical wine writer for GuildSomm, a not-for-profit educational organisation for wine professionals. Last year, the pair moved all their brewing equipment to a dedicated warehouse space on an industrial estate in South Napa, and officially launched Hanabi Lager, together (hanabi – meaning "fire flowers" – is the Japanese word for firework) as a bona fide commercial enterprise.
Hanabi Lager brews seasonally (four times a year) on a seven-barrel set up, with each seasonal release yielding between 1,500 and 1,800 cases of six 500ml bottles – after it’s been "lagered" (aged) for three months in the brewery’s tanks. A case costs US$90 – a price point that might raise a few eyebrows but clearly communicates that this is no run-of-the-mill lager.
While most craft beer currently leans towards the fruitier flavours that certain ale brewing styles and varieties of hops can deliver, Hanabi Lager is forging a different path. It brews using traditional lager-making yeasts from Germany and the Czech Republic using the "very old school" decoction method for cooking the barley. Decoction mashing (involving a series of multi-step mashes at very precise temperatures) is considerably more long-winded than modern industrial methodologies, but a vital approach to tease out maximum flavour from the heirloom barley varieties that Gislason and Angelosante proactively seek out. It’s this grain-forward aspect of Hanabi Lager’s approach that really sets it apart, and which its Summer 2021 release – brewed with a barley variety called Francin – epitomises.
“Francin brings ethereal aromas of floral sweet-hay and an oceanic minerality, reflective of the fields that it came from, where the ocean meets the Skagit Valley,” explains Gislason. “Wanting to honour the nuances of this delicious grain, we brewed a Helles-style lager that we feel provides the clearest lens straight to the grain itself. While difficult and unforgiving to make, owing to its subtlety, it offers an honest expression of the grain, in the truest sense.”
While the world of wine has long been interested in grape variety as a key differentiator, the world of beer hasn’t seemed interested (yet) in a conversation about grain variety. However, Gislason and Angelosante are hoping to change that.
On each of their seasonal releases the variety and/or place of origin of the barley used to make it is the first thing listed. And while Gislason has, over the last year or so, gone to extraordinary lengths to track down a particularly ancient variety called Bere – the origins of which can be traced to the Western Isles of Scotland – not every interesting-sounding heritage variety will be right for Hanabi Lager use, no matter how unique historically or academically.
“We have a house style,” explains Gislason. “We’re always trying to find this balance of, on the one hand, richness, pleasure, texture and weight with, on the other hand, freshness, levity and vibrancy – a balance we find in our favourite wines. We are searching around the world for barley varieties that help us brew beers like this, and often in a market that’s largely been driven by high yielding ‘commercial’ barley varieties since about the Second World War, you really have to dig deep to find the varieties with the flavour that we’re after.”
Hanabi Lager represents a small but growing interest among some top bakers, chefs and distillers in wholesome, flavourful heirloom grains; grains that have been bred specifically for flavour and nutrition as a primary selection criteria, rather than simply high yields or disease resistance. And Gislason finds himself working with small, family farm growers which is, he says, fairly unusual for brewers sourcing barley in this day and age.
“There is, I think, a possibility to bring modern brewing closer to its agricultural roots,” he says. “By exploring different special varieties of grains and showcasing them using the lens of lager, people can perhaps understand the parallels to, for instance, grape variety and selection and its significance in wine. That’s ultimately what we’re all about: we want to try to help elevate the image of beer, and to re-introduce people to the agricultural side of it. After all, it’s a really ancient beverage, very simple and natural in its production as well, just like wine. It’s a very noble beverage. It has a lot of cultural importance and history.”
Gislason’s knowledge of brewing’s past is as impressive as his drive to shape its future. He points out that lager brewing using cold-loving Alpine yeasts is only around 500 years old. “That’s so young in respect to the entirety of human ale brewing history – which goes back approximately 5,000 years,” he says. “However, it’s important to remember that 500 years ago, these beers were exclusively dark in colour and often smoky from the method of drying the sprouted barley malt at the time. It wasn’t until the 1840s that light-coloured, delicate-flavoured lagers came to exist – styles such as Pilsner in Czechia and then, by the end of the 19th century, Helles in Germany. In my mind, as a winemaker, I think we’re only at the very beginning of a long and interesting story with these cold-loving lager yeasts and the delicious beers we can brew with them. There’s a lot of territory to explore and I feel like there are contemporary chapters about lager brewing that haven’t been written yet.”
This article was originally published in FONDATA Issue Two: to receive a copy, please register interest here
