A flask filled with golden liquid — honey mixed with water — may serve as a physical representation of the scientific and artisanal philosophies informing the brewing processes at Long Beach Beer Lab.

Beer Lab co-owner Levi Fried used the flask to explain his approach to beermaking inside the brewery, which is still something of a work in progress in the Wrigley area of Long Beach. The glass flask, a common tool of chemistry, is here a vessel containing a liquid mixture nourishing a yeast culture that Fried plans to put to use in beer production.

The natural processes of the bees’ honey production and the fermentation of beer can be understood through the language of science. But when it comes to picking and choosing different yeasts, malts and other ingredients to achieve a particular flavor profile, that’s more of an art.

“There’s nothing more pure than bees collecting different bits off flowers and fruit trees and transferring it into honey, and then we get it and drink,” Fried said.

Wrigley’s new brewery

Fried and Harmony Sage, who have been married since 2001, are the co-owners of Long Beach Beer Lab. The couple wed at SeaPort Marina Hotel at a time when craft beer was relatively scarce in Long Beach, although that did not prevent them from serving their guests a keg of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

At present, however, Long Beach beer drinkers have their choice of several brewpubs, bars and restaurants serving craft beer. It’s even easy to find offerings from independent breweries such as Stone or New Belgium inside supermarket coolers.

Long Beach is also making its own beers. Besides longtime stalwarts Belmont Brewing Co. — in business near the ocean since 1990 — the city is also home to Beachwood Brewing & BBQ and almost home to Timeless Pints, which serves brews just outside the city limits in Lakewood. Additional brewers such as Liberation Brewing Co. and Ten Mile are expected to open this year, respectively, in Long Beach’s Bixby Knolls area and nearby Signal Hill, according to their websites.

Long Beach Beer Lab has yet to open to the public nor has it set a set date for its grand opening, but Fried and Sage have already stepped into Southern California’s beer scene. The brewery opened its doors to Fourth of July celebrants and collaborated with Laguna Beach Brewing Co. to produce a pale ale dubbed LB for LB.

Other beers produced at the beer lab include a tart cranberry sour and a blueberry saison. Although Fried can enjoy an India pale ale, his own tastes skew more toward the sour side than the hoppy.

“For me, give me a good fermentation profile,” he said.

Besides beer, Fried and Sage also plan to serve pizza to patrons and to bake their own sourdough bread. Sage has training as a pastry chef, and since the production of sourdough bread and beer both involve fermentation, the combination accords with their branding of their brewery as a “study in fermentation using yeasts and bacteria; both wild and domestic.”

“We like to call ourselves a fermentation lab (with) fermentation-forward beers and bread,” Fried said.

The Beer Lab is also planned as a place where religion and applied science can co-exist. Fried wants to obtain Kosher certification for the company’s beer and has already obtained Kosher-certified wine barrels to be used in aging some of the brewery’s beverages.

Building a business

For now, the owners are seeking to cultivate a customer base among those who pay attention to the Beer Lab’s social media feeds.

“Until then, we will do these little sneak peaks,” Sage said.

Long Beach Beer Lab is the first company to be licensed under a Long Beach ordinance that governs how production breweries can receive permission to operate.

Fried and Sage’s Willow Street “laboratory” takes inspiration in part from the former’s scientific career (he’s worked at Emory University School of Medicine and Tel Aviv Medical Center) as well as Brick Store Pub near Atlanta, where the couple would enjoy a drink while they both worked in Georgia.

“That pub changed the way we thought about craft beer,” Sage said.

Unlike a sports bar, The Brick Store Pub had no televisions to distract patrons from each others’ conversation and a TV-free environment is part of the couple’s plans for their own enterprise. The bar, the subject of a book called “Love at the Pub,” also had an inches-thick “Bible of Beer” listing the multitudinous beverages on sale there.

It was also in Georgia where Fried started to brew his own beer before going to Israel, where his work included research into yeast. Fried continued to make his own beer overseas and said Israel has a small but enthusiastic beer culture where European styles tend to be popular.

Fried and Sage have worked on creating Long Beach Beer Lab since March 2016. Their brewery is near the Willow Street of offices of Westland Real Estate and that company’s president, Yanki Greenspan, is a longtime friend of Fried’s.

Although building the brewery has required Fried and Sage to have new walls and a mezzanine constructed within the space of an old warehouse, in addition to all the beer-making apparatus, favorable lease terms and another friend’s gifts of the aforementioned wine barrels have helped the couple to keep startup costs below $500,000.

“Levi was looking for a place near Long Beach,” Greenspan, also a fan of the Beer Lab’s sours, said in an email. “I showed him my space and he fell in love. It took some creativity and vision, but I think we pulled it off very well.”

Fried said having no debt makes it easier for him and Sage to start the business without rushing into things before being ready.

“We’re able to dial in our brewing, dial in our procedures, dial in our employees. Dial ourselves in,” he said.