Meet Founder Alex Lynch featured in AEDP’s holiday series celebrating local entrepreneurs
Next up in our 12 Days of Small Business Series, meet Founder Alex Lynch of Mieza Blendery located in the West End of Alexandria. Read on to learn more about what’s brewing for Lynch’s business, the magic behind his beer-making process, and what he is most looking forward to this holiday season.
Name: Alex Lynch
Business Name: Mieza Blendery
AEDP: Nice to meet you! Tell me a little about your business.
Alex Lynch (AL): A blendery is both a different production and a different creative approach to making beer. Making beer can be divided into two main steps, wort production and fermentation. A blendery obtains wort from a brewery and then focuses on longer, more complex fermentation at their own site. These diverse beer components–many of which may not taste balanced on their own when blended in certain proportions–create a product that could not have been achieved as a singularly brewed and fermented batch.
We focus on barrel-aged fruited sours and mixed culture saisons. While most craft beers are fermented with a single yeast strain, a mixed culture beer has a wide variety of different yeast and bacteria that provide an element of acidity, dryness, and expressive aromatics. Depending on the type of barrel, barrel aging supplies micro-oxidation for the organisms, tannin, or imparts flavors from its previous occupant, such as red wine, bourbon or mezcal. Blends are made with local berries and stone fruit in the summer, wine grapes in the fall, and engage in spontaneous fermentation on winter nights. Due to the differences in base beer, microbes, and barrels, the variances in fruit each season, and the blender’s choices on blending day, each blend inevitably has a distinct story.
AEDP: What is the biggest challenge your business has faced?
AL: Our somewhat unexpected, and by far greatest challenge was simply finding a space. There wasn’t one consistent complication, each discussion over a space was overly dragged out, and in retrospect all it makes even less sense. You often hear complaints from brewers and small business owners regarding buildout and permitting, which we had some minor hiccups during, but overall, they made sense.
Our current greatest challenges all feel pretty taxing but are inherent to the beauty of what a blendery is. We opened just before fruiting season, and whenever peaches or other fruit were ready, we had to scramble to pick them up, and then get help to process a literal ton of fruit all within a day or three. We’d get a heads up that Tannat grapes would be harvested the next day, so we’d rent a truck only to get a text 45 minutes later that it had rained, and that harvest would be pushed off for a week or so. Spontaneous brews are 11-hour events that are dependent on the overnight temperature being below 35F which is difficult to schedule. Most of our beers spend at least a year in barrels so it is nerve-racking trying to predict what customers will like, and how much to make on that timeline.
AEDP: What has been a highlight this year for you?
AL: From my earliest business plans in 2013, I had always advocated that barrel-aged saisons and sours had the potential to reach people who hadn’t fully connected with the craft beer movement that exploded in the early to mid-2010s.
What felt exceptional is that a lot of our customers have been super local and culinarily curious but not beer-centric people. They have entirely connected with concepts that even I had thought for a beer enthusiast might have been too obscure.
AEDP: What is your favorite thing about celebrating the holidays in Alexandria?
AL: Holiday decorations in cities that still possess cobble stones can’t be beat!
How people can find you (website, social media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn):
Address: 109 Clermont Ave, Alexandria, VA 22304
Hours: Fri 3-9, Sat 1-9, Sun 1-8
Instagram: @Miezablendery